Ducks Will Have No Excuses Amid Mighty Expectations

For once, there are no contract disputes casting gloom and doubt over the Mighty Ducks’ training camp, no new coach bringing a new system for players to learn and no new general manager to direct them onto another philosophical course.

Team captain Paul Kariya signed his three-year, $30-million-plus contract before he could become a free agent, eliminating a potentially huge distraction and ensuring that the core of the team will remain intact. Kariya, right wing Teemu Selanne, center Steve Rucchin and goaltender Guy Hebert are signed through the 2001-02 season, as are Ruslan Salei and Pavel Trnka, young defensemen expected to play key roles this season.

Their best players have been the best players in camp, a good measure of their work ethic and determination.

Training camp has been so peaceful and purposeful, it’s almost scary. Coach Craig Hartsburg has actually been seen smiling several times.

“Everybody’s familiar with each other, the coaches and the players and the players with the players,” Hartsburg said of the calm atmosphere as he begins his second season. “We’re able to focus on taking that next step.”

With no holdouts or controversies to distract them, the Ducks have had a lot of time to talk about that next step and turn it into a catch phrase. They even had T-shirts printed, “Take the next step,” on the front and “Ready for the challenge,” on the back.

They’re fine phrases--or at least they are now, before they turn up in countless advertisements, marketing campaigns and cliched speeches. But the Ducks’ mission this season really boils down to a phrase that may not look as good on a T-shirt but cuts more sharply to the point:

No excuses.

As in, there will be no excuse if the Ducks don’t challenge the top teams in the West this season and join the ranks of the NHL’s elite.

The addition of winger Ted Donato and defenseman Oleg Tverdovsky makes the Ducks better than they were a year ago. And there are indications that the teams that finished above them last season will slide down to meet them or fall below them.

The defending Stanley Cup champion Dallas Stars, for instance, are revamping their lineup, having discarded veterans Craig Ludwig and Dave Reid as they break in speedier youngsters, and they may experience some bumps along the way.

Colorado, which ranked second in the West with 98 points, lost Theo Fleury, Valeri Kamensky and Sylvain Lefebvre as free agents and will play a month or more without standout center Peter Forsberg, who underwent shoulder surgery. Goalie Patrick Roy is expected to be ready for the season after undergoing hip surgery, but there’s no telling how that will affect him--and whether highly touted Marc Denis is ready to stand in.

The Detroit Red Wings, who kept only Chris Chelios of the four deadline-day acquisitions they made last March, are a year older and arguably shakier on defense with Steve Duchesne in their top four.

The Phoenix Coyotes have a new coach, Bobby Francis, and are at an impasse with goalie Nikolai Khabibulin on a new contract. The St. Louis Blues are in the middle of the pack, as usual, never deep enough to challenge for the top but coached too well by Joel Quenneville to be ignored.

That leaves a clear opening for the Ducks, and they know it.

But how do they make that tricky climb?

“The next step is for us to become more aggressive, gritty, and have more character,” Hartsburg said. “We know we’re going to have speed and we’re going to use our skills. The next step for us is going to be to win some character games. . . . A team has to build that. Look at teams around the league that have been successful. Detroit and Dallas have always been that type of team the last few years. Our players have to be grittier, more determined and more persistent in our game.

“If you have good people, and we feel we do, they’ll accept the challenge.”

There is no drill that will instill character, that will make a player fight to the finish for a loose puck, take a hit to make a play or make one last effort in a one-on-one battle. A player must want to sacrifice a scoring chance or make that extra effort when he’s exhausted and near the end of a shift. That drive is the catalyst that can transform a group of good players into a championship team, and the Ducks didn’t have it last season.

They had so many other ingredients. They had speed, skill, the NHL’s second- and third-ranked scorers in Selanne and Kariya, outstanding goaltending from Hebert, and the league’s most efficient power play, but they didn’t have the grit to rise above the ordinary when it mattered--when they could have gotten a higher playoff seeding and a relatively easy first-round matchup.

They were 5-9-2 in the last five weeks of the season and 2-6-2 in their last 10 games, enough of a skid to keep them behind the fourth-place Coyotes, allowing the Blues to finish ahead of them. After that, it was hardly a surprise when they were swept by Detroit.

“When you talk about character games, I look back at what happened in the last 15 games,” Hebert said. “We worked so hard and got a playoff spot and then kind of went, ‘Whatever.’ We could have shaped our destiny and we didn’t. We went from playing Phoenix to playing Detroit.”

“That’s the character we need to develop. I think we’ve learned from that and we recognize what it takes. We know character wins games down the line.”

The road they’re on probably won’t lead to the Stanley Cup this season, so don’t start lining up along Katella Avenue quite yet. But at least the Ducks know what they had been missing. Adding character is fine; adding a bruising defenseman would be even better.