When Troy Loney was drafted from the Pittsburgh Penguins by the NHL’s new Anaheim entry, he knew he had some immediate business to take care of.
There were the personal concerns of uprooting his wife and two children, the professional concerns of going from an NHL powerhouse to an expected weak-sister expansion franchise and, finally, there was the matter of the movie.
As a way of dealing with the gnawing uncertainty of a sea change in his life, one of the first things the 6-foot-3-inch left wing did was head down to the video store to rent a kids’ flick.
Loney checked out “The Mighty Ducks.”
It was the name of his new team. It was crazy, he knew; absolutely looney, if you pardon the expression.
In a league that boasts a macho style of play, with teams named the Hawks, the Kings, the Rangers and the Bruins, Loney found himself headed for a franchise named for a fictional collection of misfit kids who find nirvana and a pee-wee hockey championship in one of those delightful, if schmaltzy, Disney-made movies.
” `Oh man, here we go,’ I thought,” Loney recalled. “After watching it, all I could hope for was that we wouldn’t have the same logo in the movie-that cute, little pudgy duck.”
Loney wasn’t alone in rolling his eyes over his fate, or over the name selected by Michael Eisner, the Walt Disney Company chairman, while he was in the shower.
“We made a movie. It did $50 million at the box office. That was our market research,” Eisner explained.
“There were some of us, including me, who were opposed adamantly to the name,” said Tony Taveras, Mighty Ducks president. “There were some players who absolutely despised it. Troy thought it was absolutely silly.”
What was considered silly and was mocked by NHL traditionalists now has become wildly successful.
Just ducky? you say. Disney already has heard all the jokes, and is turning them into cash.
Consider this:
When the Ducks take on the Blackhawks Friday night in Anaheim, it will be at an arena called the Pond and the game will be seen by the Ducks’ 20th straight sellout crowd-a mixture of parents and children, some transplanted traditionalists, but many newcomers to the sport.
They will be witness to a Disney extravaganza on ice. Hockey, yes, but also a three-hour program of interactive entertainment featuring cheerleaders on skates known as the Decoys; a feathered mascot dressed in a Ducks uniform known as Wild Wing; and the best of Disney animation on giant scoreboard TV screens featuring dive-bombing waterfowl with messages that say, “These Ducks Shoot Back.”
All that, plus a cacophony of kazoo-like duck calls, which have become, for $10, the most popular souvenir among 700 items of Ducks memorabilia ranging from temporary tattoos to baby bibs.
Even their TV viewers are recipients of the Disney touch. When a Ducks player scores a goal, Tinkerbell flits across the screen with her wand and sprinkles stardust over the celebrated player.
As corny as the name sounds and as corny as the shtick goes, the truth is the Mighty Ducks may be the biggest surprise in sports this year. The remainder of their home games are expected to be sellouts. For the season, they are averaging 16,881 fans, 98.3 percent of capacity.
Their attendance figures would be even better if the suites at the Pond, which were unsold at the start of the season, weren’t considered when calculating capacity.
At times this year, 80 percent of all NHL merchandise sold has been Mighty Ducks collectibles, retailed through the arena gift shop, stadiums around the league or 200 Disney retail shops in North America.
Oh yes, on the ice. . . . With six more wins in their final 15 games, the Mighty Ducks will tie the record 31 victories for a first-year expansion team and are currently ahead of Wayne Gretzky and the Los Angeles Kings for a final playoff spot.
In less than one year, the Mighty Ducks have become a corporate and management template not only to help the NHL resuscitate a moribund game but also for sports teams generally as they head into the 21st Century competing for the discretionary dollar of the American consumer.
“It’s great for the league,” said Hawks star Jeremy Roenick. “You knew it was a great promotional move right away. Ask any kid in the city which game they want to go to see, and they’ll say, `The Mighty Ducks.’ It gets kids and new fans interested in the game. It’s different. It’s appealing. I like it.”
Behind the creative synergy of Disney and Eisner, the Mighty Ducks have bridged whatever gulf there was between sports and entertainment. They married the two with a spunky marketing formula that is emerging as the blueprint of the future.
And the future is now.
“A couple of years before when we had a chance to buy the Orlando Magic basketball team, I just wasn’t sure we should be in the sports business. And I wasn’t dying to own a hockey team,” Eisner told Charles McGrath for a story in the New Yorker magazine. “My three sons play hockey, and for years my wife had been after me to make a movie about hockey.
“We made the movie, but we weren’t looking for a team. Then I saw how well the Kings had been doing, and I began thinking about this interactive world and the information highway, and I thought, Are kids really going to have dates at home while their parents are in the next room?
“People want to go out, which is why we’re getting more and more into live entertainment.”
Actually, it was Bruce McNall, owner of the rival Los Angeles Kings, who nudged Eisner into the NHL market, hoping the Disney magic would give a boost to the stagnant league.
“You are now looking at a situation where Disney and Wayne Huizinga’s Blockbuster Video (owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning) are involved in trying to make the sport more entertaining,” McNall said.
“They are very aggressive in their merchandising and marketing, and I think they’re going to help lead this sport to a place it hasn’t been before.”
McNall, who began his fortune with coin collecting, had other motives as well. He received $25 million of Disney’s $50 million franchise fee to split up the vast Southern California market.
Loney has grown to like the name.
“How can I really complain when I came from a team called the Penguins?” he said.
And he didn’t have to worry about the odd duck on the kids’ uniforms in the movie.
The logo consists of a white goaltender’s mask shaped to fit the face of a duck, with crossed yellow hockey sticks centered over the mask. It was chosen by Eisner after a contest within Disney and all of its affiliates.
The team colors are purple, white, jade and silver, chosen initially by executive Tavares and his 13-year-old son from sample paint chips. They took them to Disney’s costumers, who made the colors a bit brighter and designed a jersey with a non-traditional colored angle across the hips.
“In some ways, it is surprising how far we’ve come,” said Bill Holford, director of sales and marketing. “We started with the franchise March 1, 1993, and began selling tickets without a completed arena, no players, no team colors, no logo, absolutely no identity. We were selling a brochure, and we have sold 12,500 season tickets.”
The venture has become so successful it has gone full circle. Later this month, a sequel to the movie “The Mighty Ducks” is scheduled to be released, and this time the junior hockey team will be wearing the logo of the NHL Ducks, not that pudgy little creature Loney once so despised.
