They Can Now Call Wilson ‘The Wizard’

PHOENIX —  OK, Mighty Ducks fans, click the heels of those Guccis together and repeat after me.

“There’s no place like Ron Wilson’s mind . . . there’s no place like Ron Wilson’s mind.”

He did it again Sunday, this absolutely perfect Disney coach, sending his players off to work carrying lunch pails filled with equal amounts of imagination and inspiration.

Just before the Ducks faced the Phoenix Coyotes in what could have been their last hockey game this season, Wilson walked into a deathly quiet locker room, stared around and asked a question.

“Hey, anybody here remember the Wizard of Oz?”

The players looked at their coach like a house just fell on him.

“He comes up with some, uh, odd stuff sometimes,” defenseman David Karpa said.

And this was one of those times. Wilson told the players to imagine the movie, to imagine the team as Dorothy.

“We’re away from home, we’ve landed in a new place, the rules have changed,” he told them.

Then he asked them, which character were they?

The one who nobody figured had a brain?

The one who was accused of being without a heart?

The one with no apparent courage?

“Everybody in our locker room has had such things said about them,” Wilson said. “I wanted them to decide which was them.”

Some picked the Scarecrow, others chose the Tin Man, still others picked the Cowardly Lion. Wilson was thankful nobody chose Auntie Em.

Teemu Selanne didn’t pick anybody, mostly because he had never heard of any of these strange people. Movies about Kansas apparently aren’t too big in Finland.

“I never saw the wizard movie, I didn’t know what he was talking about,” Selanne said, shrugging.

Wilson pressed on. He told them to remember the ultimate success of each character, and apply it to their own situation.

“I reminded them of how, if everyone looks hard enough, they can find that special trait in themselves,” he said.

For some, it was perfect.

“It was a good thing, guys were talking about the Tin Man and thinking about having hearts,” said center Ted Drury.

For others, it was too perfect.

Karpa told Wilson he had chosen the scarecrow.

“Why?” said Wilson.

“Because he was the scared one,” Karpa said.

“That proves it,” Wilson said. “You really don’t have any brains.”

The players chuckled about it all for a moment, then stopped.

They took the ice moments later and immediately transformed the series from black-and-white to color.

They skated faster. They hit harder. They were surrounded by 16,210 howls that helped turned America West Arena into a forbidding cave, yet they heard nothing.

It was like Wilson said. What these young players thought they were missing, apparently they possessed all along.

They defeated the favored Coyotes, 3-2, in overtime to send this first-round series to a deciding game in Anaheim on Tuesday.

Although, by my way of thinking, it has already been decided.

If the Ducks can beat the Coyotes under those conditions Sunday, they can beat them anywhere.

“This game showed us a lot about ourselves,” Karpa said.

And a lot about the Coyotes, who were standing around even before Jeremy Roenick was injured in the second period.

The team with every advantage took advantage of none of them. They acted as if this entire series had been a terrible mistake, and could they just go home now?

They skulked around the puck like street kids around an ice cream truck until Duck mistakes finally allowed them to challenge in the final minutes.

The Ducks, meanwhile, had everything against them.

For 10 minutes before Sunday’s game, the white-clad crowd stood and roared. There was nobody on the ice, nothing on the scoreboard, the fans just wanted to celebrate their new toy.

For those Ducks who heard, the 10 minutes must have seemed like two hours.

Midway through the first period, the Coyotes already had two power plays after tackles by the Ducks. The howling continued. Young girls hung Donald Duck dolls in effigy.

“I told the team it’s just noise, they are just white pom pons,” Wilson said. “I don’t believe they allowed anyone in here with guns, knives or machetes, did they? The noise would not hurt them.”

And once again, the players looked at their crazy coach and listened.

“I decided, they were all cheering for me,” Karpa said.

Second period, Paul Kariya took three shots in a span of about 10 seconds, all of them fastballs, the third one slipping past Nikolai Khabibulin for a goal.

Second period, Dmitri Mironov went into a four-corner offense, held the puck behind the goal forever, then flicked around a shot that bounced off Khabibulin to Brian Bellows, who batted it in.

Second period, Selanne appeared to score on a slap shot that was disallowed because a poor replay did not show the entire puck crossing the goal line.

Bad call.

“What can I do?” Selanne said. “I keep shooting.”

And so, after the Coyotes scored twice in the third period when the gasping Ducks skated in wrong directions, the Ducks kept shooting.

Wilson said it in the locker room before the overtime, before Kariya threw an 80-mph curveball into the corner of the net, the prettiest pitch from a Southern Californian since Orel Hershiser worked here.

“Shoot anything,” he told his team. “Anything.”

This time they did not laugh. Somebody lay down some more of those yellow bricks. This trip isn’t finished yet.