MIGHTY DUCKS ‘93-94: PREMIERE SEASON : Are You Really Sure You Want to Do This?

This story is dedicated to the memory of Pete the Penguin, one small but exceedingly courageous flightless waterfowl who gave his life for expansion hockey 26 years ago.

Pete was going to be the Pittsburgh Penguins’ mascot during their inaugural NHL season of 1967-68. He was the real thing, not some moth-bitten relative of the Phillie Phanatic, and the Penguins’ public relations staff thought it would be a hoot to push Pete onto the ice in between periods and have him skate around for a few minutes.

So they laced tiny blades onto Pete’s feet and gave him skating lessons. Eventually, Pete was able to master a teetering waddle, mimicking some of the human Penguins perfectly, and was ready to make his debut when, suddenly, he contracted pneumonia--strange for a penguin, one might think, but true--and passed away in midseason.

It is a sad tale, for sure, but, in a way, also emblematic of the typical expansion hockey experience.

So often, what sounds like great fun in the beginning is enough to chill a man’s soul by season’s end.

Some ghost stories for the Mighty Ducks’ next midnight campfire:

* The Pittsburgh Penguins were the Mighty Ducks of their day, which is to say their nickname was an embarrassment to everyone older than the age of 11 associated with the team.

“A penguin?” cried an aghast Red Sullivan, the first coach of the Pittsburgh franchise. “What kind of name is that for a hockey team? . . . I can see it now. The day after we play a bad game, the sportswriters will say, ‘They skated like a bunch of nuns. ‘ “

Penguin management was so wary of the team’s laughing-stock potential that it refused to decorate the uniforms with any penguin logo--the jerseys displayed, simply, PITTSBURGH and dressed the players in pale blue rather than black and white.

So instead of looking like penguins or nuns, the ‘67-’68 Penguins merely looked like powder puffs. Played like it, too--finishing with the 10th-best record in a 12-team league.

* The Penguins’ first cult hero was a 31-year-old rookie goaltender named Les Binkley, who was a 31-year-old rookie for a very good reason.

He had horrible eyesight.

The NHL has never had much demand for goalies who couldn’t read an eye chart, but the great expansion of ‘67, when six new teams entered the league at once, was the great equalizer. Binkley, who wore glasses off the ice and contact lenses during games, also had a nervous twitch that caused his mouth to form a half-smile every time he caught the puck. On many nights, the Pittsburgh defense made him look like the Mona Lisa.

Binkley will always be remembered for the game in Madison Square Garden when he lost a lens while lunging to block a shot at the final buzzer.

In a scene symbolic of the Penguins’ first season, Binkley and his teammates spent the next few minutes on their knees, groping in the crease for a small piece of glass resting on clear ice. Riveted to their seats by the suspense, the crowd waited until the lens was retrieved--and when it was, promptly launched into a standing ovation.

* The ’67 expansion doubled the career opportunities in major league hockey from 120 to 240 and as the new teams scrambled to fill their rosters, the wannabes came wriggling in from the woodwork.

Larry Zeidel, a 39-year-old defenseman who spent 16 seasons in the minors and led three leagues in penalty minutes, couldn’t buy a tryout, so he decided to sell himself. Zeidel shelled out $150 for a brochure that he mailed to the new teams and arranged conference calls with general managers to personalize his pitch.

Included in Zeidel’s brochure was an outline of his many skills as a player--and who wouldn’t want a guy who once ripped the door off the penalty box in a fit of anger?--along with 8-by-10 glossies of “The Rock” and an affidavit from a doctor asserting that Zeidel had “the heart of a 20-year-old.”

Could anybody be so desperate, so gullible as to fall for that?

Well, yes. The Philadelphia Flyers not only gave Zeidel a contract but wound up playing him--extensively--and kept him on the roster a second season. Zeidel’s career scoring totals with the Flyers: one goal, 11 points.

* In 1972-73, the New York Islanders became the first NHL team to lose 60 games in a single season--and, by consensus, they earned every one of them.

The Islanders’ woes included drafting a 20-year-old right wing who had to be given remedial skating lessons; losing a 1-0 game to Minnesota because they forgot to complain that Jude Drouin scored the winning goal with an illegal stick; and playing such inept defense that goaltender Gerry Desjardins claimed, “I can see pucks in my sleep. And when I wake up, my wife gives me the shots on goal.”

Within five months, the Isles were the butt of so many jokes that a team official begged for mercy.

“We are the cripples of the NHL,” he said. “If you saw a cripple walking down the street, would you laugh at him?”

Not on Long Island.

On Long Island, they’d boo him.

* The worst expansion team in history, of course, was the fabled Washington Capitals of 1974-75. The Capitals will live forever in infamy for:

--Finishing 8-67-5, the fewest victories in league history.

--Managing only 21 points, the lowest total in league history.

--Winning only one road game, a record tied by Ottawa in 1992-93.

--Going through three head coaches in 80 games.

--Wasting its first draft pick on a defenseman named Greg Joly, who appeared in 44 games, scored one goal and had a plus-minus rating of minus 68.

--Wearing white pants on the road, the NHL’s greatest sartorial gaffe until the team from Anaheim put a Disney duck on its chest.

The quintessential Capital moment came late in a game Washington was losing, 12-0, thanks in part to two goals scored by Capitals.

Joly tries to clear the puck and mistakenly slaps it into his own net.

Teammate Jack Lynch accidentally knocks another puck past Washington’s aptly named goaltender, Ron Low, and the siren revs again.

Finally, Lynch puts a shot into the other team’s net, making the score 12-1, and immediately bursts into a jubilant dance.

Bryan Watson, a Capital defenseman, skates over to Lynch and growls, “You ever do that again and I swear, I’ll sucker punch you in front of all these people.”

Lynch didn’t dance another step.

* Patience was a virtue that never cluttered the life of Bert Olmstead, head coach of the 1967-68 Oakland Seals. He demanded immediate results from his hapless team, winner of 15 games that first season, and when the Seals responded by simply flopping around on the ice, Olmstead experienced a near mental meltdown.

“A lot of them are getting a chance of a lifetime,” Olmstead would grouse about his players, “and they’re reacting like playing in the NHL is a prison sentence.”

Eventually, Olmstead lost it. During a Christmas night melee with the Boston Bruins, Olmstead grabbed a stick and chased a Bruin fan around the Boston Garden ice level and was fined by the league. In February, he threw up his hands and turned over the line-changing decisions to his assistant coach. Growing paranoid, he began locking the dressing room to reporters and refused to give them his home phone number.

“If Olmstead did public relations for Santa Claus,” a former rival once observed, “there wouldn’t be any Christmas.”

After the season, the Seals replaced Olmstead with Fred (No Kid) Glover. It was considered a true act of mercy.

* Coaches On The Edge of a Nervous Breakdown, Part 2: Losing also did a number on Wren Blair, the once mild-mannered coach of the expansion Minnesota North Stars. Enraged by his team’s lethargy during an open-to-the-public workout, Blair hauled off and flung his stick against the boards, shattering it. One ragged piece ricocheted off the glass and caught Blair in the eye, splattering his new white jacket with blood and eliciting gasps of horror from the 500 apple-cheeked Minnesotans in the stands.

Another night, the North Stars trailed Pittsburgh, 8-1, after two periods and Blair couldn’t bear to look his players in the face. So he opted for a small adjacent utility room, closed the door behind himself and began to brood.

Soon, Blair heard a click. Someone had closed the padlock on the door. The buzzer sounds, the third period begins and Blair is locked inside. “To hell with it,” Blair said, and he enjoyed the remainder of the game of peace and solitude, the mood broken only when the North Star trainer located him after the game and let him out.

* With regular goalie Jeff Hackett laid up with a sinus condition, the San Jose Sharks made an emergency call to their Kansas City farm team and flew in a replacement, Arturs Irbe, a native of Latvia.

Irbe made his first NHL start Feb. 15, 1992 against Detroit, and was pounded for eight goals in a 1 1/2 periods before being pulled, the Sharks on their way to an 11-1 defeat.

Surmised Arturs in the aftermath: “Everything is much easier in Kansas City.”

* You Can Say That Again: San Jose Coach George Kingston’s post-mortem after his Sharks went 0-3 in their season series with the defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins, getting outscored in the process, 25-5:

“We didn’t earn one iota of respect from those guys.”

* How bad were the 1992-93 Ottawa Senators?

They were so bad they:

--Lost 39 consecutive road games before beating the Islanders in New York, 5-3, after five Islander shots hit the goal post. It was Ottawa’s last road game of the season. Said Senator goalie Peter Sidorkiewicz: “Better late than never, right?”

--Suffered losing streaks of 14, 11 and 11 games, along with a winless streak of 21 games.

--Gave up 129 shots in three games in December. The next morning, when goalie Sidorkiewicz arrived at the airport, someone quipped, “I smell rubber--did Peter not have a shower this morning?”

--Heard their home fans boo Sidorkiewicz after it was announced that the valiant goaltender had made the Wales Conference all-star team (one Senator had to). At the time, Sidorkiewicz’s record was 3-31-3.

--Turned cartwheels after logging their 22nd point of the season, moving them one point ahead ahead of the Worst Expansion Team of Them All, the 1974-75 Caps. Ottawa won one more game before the season ended, finishing with 24 points. “There are only two teams in the NHL this year who will achieve their goals,” remarked a much-too-happy club President Bruce Firestone. “The Stanley Cup winner and the Ottawa Senators.”

* And, a final word from another expansion mascot:

Dean Schoenewald, the man inside the lion costume at Ottawa home games, sued the Senators for more than $350,000 after being fired at midseason.

Citing breach of contract and wrongful dismissal, Schoenewald asked for, among other things, $100,000 for “damage to reputation,” $25,000 for “mental distress” and $5,000 for “loss of opportunity to win a Stanley Cup ring.”

Except for the mental distress part, Schoenwald doesn’t have much of a case. Stanley Cup ring? The Senators can argue, and argue successfully, that Schoenwald was never signed to a lifetime contract.