How the Mighty Ducks took flight, an oral history

By Lisa Dillman,Eric Stephens and Josh Cooper

Oct. 5, 2018

In the fall of 1993, there was a professional sports team in Southern California taking to the ice that was inspired by a popular sports movie named for an animal that makes water its residence.

Where could such an idea like this be hatched? In the shower, of course. A fowl idea this had to be.

“I was in the shower where I do a lot of my thinking,” Michael Eisner said. “And it occurred to me that maybe we would help Anaheim out. The whole motive of this was to be a good citizen for Anaheim. It wasn’t about the Mighty Ducks. It wasn’t about sports fanaticism. It wasn’t about anything other than we have a lot of business in Anaheim. And I’ve been offered a franchise by the owner of the region and ignored it. It just all came to me in this shower that maybe I could help out Anaheim.

“So, I came into the office and I said to the financial people at Disney, ‘Give me a low-level recent graduate of college business school and I will work with that person alone.’ I will tell them, ‘If you can find a way to do it where we don’t lose any money at all, I will go to Anaheim and solve their problem.’ That is the beginning and end of the entire story. Everything else is rumor and incorrect. And like many things, most things in my career that I either got blame for or credit for, I was a peripheral player. In other words, I didn’t make the movies. I was there to improve them, I guess. I didn’t build the theme parks. I was there to improve them and work on them.

“But in this particular case, it was a shower decision. And a community relations decision more than anything else. I’m sorry if it doesn’t give you a more romantic version where, ‘Oh, we saw Gretzky score a hat trick and that decided it for us,’ or anything like that.”

Eisner is the founder and owner of The Tornante Company, an investment firm that has several media and entertainment entities among its portfolio. He is also the chairman of Portsmouth FC, a third-tier English soccer club. But the 76-year-old is perhaps best known as the mogul that was chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company from 1984-2005. And as 1992 came to a close, the Disney head became a sports owner when the NHL ventured deeper into the greater Los Angeles metropolis and expanded into Orange County.

The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim were born. They’ve been since re-christened as theAnaheim Ducks and they’re about to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their inaugural game on Monday night against Detroit, the organization’s first opponent. It is a proper reprise of the moment the Mighty Ducks took flight and The Athletic talked with about a dozen of those that were directly involved in how they came to be.

The Movie

“The Mighty Ducks” starred Emilio Estevez, an actor with decent name recognition after his Brat Pack roles in “The Outsiders,” “The Breakfast Club” and “St. Elmo’s Fire.” What started off a critically panned movie ended up an unlikely cult hit, much to the enduring surprise of two NHLers, Mike Modano and Basil McRae, who appeared in one scene, playing themselves.

Bruce McNall (thenLos Angeles Kings owner): Emilio Estevez and I had been good friends for a long time and I used him on a film called “Wisdom.” He directed and starred in it with Demi Moore, a “Bonnie and Clyde” type thing. This was 1984, way before the Mighty Ducks movie. They got engaged after the movie … the engagement didn’t work out.

Guy Hebert (former Mighty Ducks goaltender): I think anybody who played hockey regardless of how old you were or how young you were, you knew Disney was coming out with this blockbuster to be. I think it surpassed all its goals – I guess no pun intended – in the box office. It just became a huge hit. I watched it. I thought it was great.

Many of the scenes for “The Mighty Ducks” were filmed at locations in Minnesota, including the home of the Minnesota North Stars, the Met Center in Bloomington. The plan was to give a few lines to the face of the franchise, Minnesota forward Mike Modano. North Stars enforcer Basil McRae was supposed to get a line or two, but a pivot was required.

Basil McRae: I really didn’t even know who Emilio Estevez was. Mike and I got picked for the roles and it was during the ’92 strike before the playoffs and we shot the scene at the old Met Center. I had broken my ankle and the one thing I do remember was that I just came out of my cast. It was so swollen I couldn’t put my skate on. I remember I had to wear Derian Hatcher’s skate. I was a size 9. He was about a size 12.

Mike Modano: They asked if Bas and I could come out there. It was fun. I think we were there for a good six, seven hours. From Bas’s end, I’m sure he’ll say that I think I planned on having a certain part. I think we were butchering the heck out of it. They gave Bas the longer speaking part.

McRae: I always give Mike a tough time. He was really North Star Player 1, but he couldn’t do the line. I became North Star 1 with the five lines and Mike had two lines. Mike will dispute this – we kid each other and have a lot of fun with it.

Modano: I’m sure he’s got his whole spin on it.

McRae: I didn’t even know if I was in it. They called me to say there were down to 300 minutes of film but they weren’t sure and were taking stuff out and putting stuff in. The scene is near the end, and I remember my wife (Jill) turning to me, and saying, “Sorry, I don’t think you made the cut.” And all of a sudden, boom, it was on. My daughter, being four, was like, “That’s daddy!” Kids would come up and say, “You were in the Mighty Ducks.” And I’d always say, “Fifteen years of pro hockey and 30 seconds in a movie. That was either a heck of a movie or I was a pretty shitty player.”

Modano was drafted by the North Stars in 1988 and remained the franchise’s biggest attraction after it moved to Dallas for the 1993-94 season and became the Stars. His 23 points in 23 playoff games helped the Stars win the Stanley Cup in 1999. He would score 561 goals in the NHL and be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2014.

Modano: Sometimes I get a younger group of kids that have never seen me play but know me from the movie. It’s still a cult movie. All the kids know it and they watch it. I still get recognized from the generation of today that probably never watched me play a game but know me from the movie.

McRae would play in 576 NHL games, racking up 2,453 career penalty minutes. He is the director of player personnel for theColumbus Blue Jackets.

McRae: A funny thing happened last winter. One of our interns – his name is Jeremy – came up to me and said, “Mr. McRae, I just wanted to say, congratulations on the anniversary.” I looked at him. He said, “The anniversary, 25 years.” I said, “No, no, my wife and I have been married 34 years.” He said, “No, the Mighty Ducks. It’s the 25th anniversary.” Jeremy said he was from Indianapolis or Ohio and he said he watched the movie and it’s what got him into hockey. I think it really had an impact on kids wanting to play hockey in non-traditional markets.

Basil McRae and Mike Modano act out their scene in the movie “The Mighty Ducks.” (YouTube screenshot)

The Inception

In 1988, McNall purchased the remaining shares that Jerry Buss had in the Kings and became the sole owner of the team. Five months later, McNall acquired the NHL’s biggest star, Wayne Gretzky, from Edmonton in a trade that rocked the sports world. In 1992, the league elected him chairman of its Board of Governors.

Michael Eisner: First of all, to debunk all the rumors and false articles about it because the movies had nothing to do with it. When we got to naming the team, the movies came up. But not before that. That’s number one. Bruce had been this bigger-than-life character who was not only owner of the Kings but he was entertaining before every hockey game in Inglewood. Stars and personalities and executives – a big dinner before the game. It was a fun era with Gretzky and all of that. I kind of knew him through that, I guess. Also, it’s kind of interesting that this is before we were indicated about his sidestepping of legal issues … but bigger-than-life. He would tell me about his coin collecting and his coin dealing. All of that kind of exotic, romantic, taking coins from Italy. Never thought that was appropriate.

And he would periodically say, “Oh, Disney should have a franchise.” And I ignored it. I don’t know how long that went. A couple of years maybe. And that was that. Hockey had come to L.A. Hockey was a big deal in L.A. Wayne Gretzky had come to L.A. The Goldie Hawns of the world would go to the games. It became kind of an event at the Forum. And then at one point – I don’t know the sequence exactly – the Kings got in the Stanley Cup (final) and we all went to the game together. We flew up to Montreal. But it was just kind of a running (thing). Occasionally he would suggest it. I didn’t know that he controlled Southern California in total through the Kings. I wasn’t really aware in those days about commissioners and owners being the same and some of that. So that was that.

McNall: When they built the arena in Anaheim, they wanted me to get (Donald) Sterling to move the Clippers there. They paid me $2 million for that effort. (Clippers president) Andy Roeser and I thought we had a deal done. At the last instant, Sterling said no because he didn’t want to make that long drive. That was his answer. He was going to be making almost $20 million more, we calculated, per-year, but the drive was too far. That was it. But I felt bad because I had a couple of million bucks. So I said to them, “Look, let me think about this, but maybe I’d consider putting a hockey team in there.”

Former Kings owner Bruce McNall poses in front of the Forum. (George Rose/Getty Images)

Just three miles east of the Disneyland resort, Anaheim Arena was under construction near Interstate 57 and would sit opposite the highway from Anaheim Stadium. It would open with a Barry Manilow concert on March 19, 1993. Tim Ryan, who is now CEO of Honda Center and chief operating officer of the Ducks, was the assistant general manager of the new facility as part of Ogden Entertainment after a long run operating Long Beach Arena.

Tim Ryan: I got there in June of 1992. The building was about 50 percent done. There was no discussion (of a potential NHL team). I had got in there with Brad Mayne, who is now the president of our association in the arena business (International Association of Venue Managers). We had a few concerts. We had the circus. We had WWF, which is now WWE. We had professional bull riders. And that was about it. Certainly a building like this – as beautiful as it is – wasn’t being built to not have anNBA or NHL team.

So when I got there, construction was ongoing. But it wasn’t until I’d been there for quite some time that all of a sudden, the idea of, Would the Clippers move from Los Angeles? came up. Or the idea of would we be able to house an NHL team that might move. There was some discussion at the time with the Minnesota North Stars, with their owner. My best recollection after two-and-a-half decades is when The Walt Disney Company decided to do this. It happened really fast.

Eisner: All of a sudden coming out of the ground was an arena in Anaheim. I guess what I learned was Santa Ana was going to build some kind of an arena. Anaheim didn’t want – the city council didn’t want them to be usurped. And so Anaheim committed to this arena. And the arena was built. I think they had a bond – I think it was a payment of $110 million. I think they finished it in about $85 or $90 (million). And they couldn’t give the money back. Rumor is they ordered a lot of marble. That’s why it looks so good. So that was that.

At the same time, we had a long relationship with Anaheim. We were contemplating building a second gate. We had issues with beautification and all sorts of things that later happened. Building a parking garage. And Anaheim was – they built a field of dreams and nobody came. Donald Sterling wouldn’t move the Clippers down there. For whatever reasons, he wouldn’t do it. So, the only opportunity was hockey and it was all controlled, the region, by the Kings.

McNall: Where it was located, the most obvious place was Disney. So I called Michael Eisner and he was like, “Well, I don’t really know.” His kids played and I started bringing them to all these games. I had the kids come to the All-Star Game. I think it was in Vancouver that year. I hustled around all I could to get him involved, brought him to games, sat him with the Reagans to get him excited. Finally, at the very end, I had worked on Wayne Huizenga (of Blockbuster Video) at the same time. Finally, I said, “Look Michael, I’m not sure if they’re going to take two teams in and right now I’ve got Blockbuster going in (with theFlorida Panthers),” and I told the same thing to Huizenga. That’s when I got them both to the same party and, bingo bango, to the December (NHL Board of Governors) meetings and I got them both approved and here we go.

Less than two months after Anaheim was awarded a new NHL team, Gary Bettman was ushered in as the first commissioner of the league after Gil Stein had served a year as interim president following the ouster of John Zeigler. Bettman has presided over a league that has gone from about $400 million in revenues to more than $4.5 billion – as well as three lockouts of its players in labor stoppages.

Gary Bettman: If my memory serves me well and it’s been almost 26 years, the fact that the league was going to expand to Anaheim and South Florida was a surprise to everybody. Nobody was expecting it. And I don’t think anybody was fully aware of it in advance of the (Board of Governors) meeting, much in advance of the meeting. The fact that they started playing the next season meant there weren’t a whole lot of advance planning by anybody on anything. And the fact there was some issue about the terms of the player draft, which necessitated a board meeting again in early January. … The effort to assimilate these two new teams in record time was something I obviously was involved in. The rumblings were quiet and short. This came about very, very quickly. And, in fact I didn’t know that it was a done deal until I got to Florida at the meeting at which I was going to be elected. So, I was even surprised at how quickly they were anticipating moving things. And it’s a testament to Michael Eisner and Disney on one hand and Wayne Huizenga on the other, that they were able to get things done as quickly as they did.

It was also imperative that the prospective deals were not leaked to the media.

McNall: I kept it as secret as possible. I met with Wayne at the Van Nuys airport where I kept my plane. He was flying in at the time to close the deal at the airport. I kept it as quiet as I possibly could. With Eisner and Disney, it’s not easy but everybody was kind of on the same page to do that, to make sure the league would approve it and go along with the deal. Of course, bringing two giant companies like that to the board meeting, you can imagine how fast that approval was. Pretty quick.

Eisner: We owned ESPN. We knew the issues of the ownership of clubs. We knew about public companies owning a team. A lot of this we (also) learned later because we also owned the Angels. But if you run a team for the community, you’re likely to lose money. And if you run the team for your shareholders, you’re likely to never be able to visit the community again. It’s a very difficult scenario of club ownership, baseball team ownership or whatever. That’s changed a lot in the digital world. But in that era, it was a very dicey proposition to be an owner. If I thought we could do it without losing money – not necessarily making money – it would enhance Anaheim. It would bring something to this really great arena, which my wife named the Pond. She grew up on the Canadian border and everybody across the border and even up where she lived, would create their own little pond in the backyard to skate. So she named it the Pond. It became clear to me that well, we are a movie company. … Let’s call them the Mighty Ducks. We didn’t fill out a lot of forms. It wasn’t like today. I went to Miami. I presented. I wore the Mighty Ducks shirt from the movie. And we were accepted.

Bettman: Michael was and is bigger than life. He had just transformed over the prior decade The Walt Disney Company into one of the most, if not most, compelling content companies, media companies, entertainment companies in the world. And he was and is a dynamic leader. By the way, Michael was my guest at a Stanley Cup final game in Las Vegas. We’re still in touch.

Ryan: There’s somebody or an organization that is willing to take a huge risk. Even when there’s a number of people that are detractors. That are risk-averse. … We have this beautiful arena being constructed. And all of a sudden, The Walt Disney Company – with Ogden and the city – says, “Let’s bring an NHL team to Orange County.” Again, there had to be a number of detractors that said, “That’s got to be a bad idea.” But somebody said, “Let’s roll the dice.”

The master stroke of bringing in Disney and Blockbuster at the same time had the impact of pulling the NHL into a new era of operation.

McNall: Everybody says what a great thing I did with the (Wayne) Gretzky deal, but I tell (Gary) Bettman when I see him, “Hey Gary, you know I did the Gretzky deal, but I never get credit for you since I hired you.”

The Nickname

Troy Loney was the first captain of the Mighty Ducks. A left wing that came out of the Western Hockey League, Loney had spent his first 10 NHL seasons with Pittsburgh.

Troy Loney: I remember when Disney brought us all out there for the press conference. I remember Michael Eisner asking what we thought of the name. We all kind of kicked the dirt a little bit and kind of mumbled. He said, “Don’t worry about that. Guys, it’ll be a huge marketing success. We’ll make sure of that.”

Eisner: I think the league was completely supportive from Day 1. Everybody trusted that we would do it well. They liked the fact that Disney was there. They liked the fact that we were naming the team after a successful trilogy of movies.(The sequels to “The Mighty Ducks” were released after the team was in existence). The league was completely supportive. I never had one word of question from them. They liked the merchandise. Some of my colleagues told me I was spending too much time on it. But it was fun. It was exciting. It was something new. And the people that were Disney fans and Disney supporters and Disney shareholders all loved it. We all had a great time. It couldn’t have gone better.

Bettman: I had to approve it. There was a variety of trademark and ownership issues that we had to wrestle with. But, yes, I was good with it. I can’t tell you exactly whether or not I completely shared their vision or Michael’s persuasion persuaded me of the vision because it was over 25 years ago. But I was all good with it and excited by it.

Ryan: I did (know beforehand). When I was there and they announced the Mighty Ducks, the one thing I knew is – and Disney uses this word a lot – the synergy that they had teed up around this name. A lot of the movie shots, we did at the Honda Center. Knowing the synergy, whether it was the movies, whether it was the merchandise, whether it was the cartoons, certainly swayed me in the direction that these folks know what they were doing.

Not everyone was on board with the Mighty Ducks. Many traditionalists joked about the nickname or openly mocked it. The Disney connection spawned a number of references to them as a Mickey Mouse operation.

Stu Grimson (former Mighty Ducks forward): I remember sitting in the Chicago Blackhawks’ dressing room when the word came down that the league had approved this franchise. They were going to be called the Mighty Ducks and I remember saying to several teammates sitting in the training room, I said, “Can you believe you’re going to let them name them that and could you imagine playing for that franchise?” Well that’s the kiss of death, right? That’s generally how it works. I’m the lone Blackhawk that moves over to the Mighty Ducks.

Ryan: Yeah, probably – and Mike would be the first one to say – what caught us a little by surprise is when he said, “And they’re going to play here on the Pond.” So here we were trying to sell the naming rights and we had a couple different (automotive) companies that we were in discussions with. It made it a little more difficult when you name anything a noun. But, again, there’s The Walt Disney Company. They helped with the Arrowhead deal. Made it happen. It was logical.

The Mighty Ducks nickname was announced by Eisner at a press conference on March 1, 1993. The enduring image from that pep rally-style event is of Eisner, McNall, then-Mighty Ducks chairman Jack Lindquist and the new NHL commissioner blowing duck calls out toward the audience.

Bettman: It was a packed room. There were a lot of, I’ll say, inquisitive people. There may have been some cynicism in the room. But it was an exciting, fun time. And that may have been the hallmark because it was clear that The Walt Disney Company was not only going to embrace it but have fun with it.

Eisner: We were actually in the Pond and we made Gary Bettman blow a duck call. A lot of people, including Gary, still talk about it. Thought we were pretty silly. Except we (eventually) put a very good team on the ice. We got Paul Kariya. It was a little bit like this year with Vegas except we had to split with (Florida), each of us getting a player that wasn’t protected from every team.

Bettman: Michael is persuasive. He can talk anybody into anything. In my older, wiser, more senior days, I might have thought better of (the duck call photo). But, actually, we all had fun with it. And even today, looking at that photo, everybody gets a good chuckle.

Michael Eisner, Gary Bettman, Bruce McNall and Mighty Ducks chairman Jack Lindquist blow duck calls during the press conference announcing the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim as the name of the new NHL expansion franchise. (Doug Pizac/AP Photo)

The Arena

There were nine months between the awarding of the franchise and the first exhibition game the Mighty Ducks would play where the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim had to be readied in order to house a hockey team and host NHL games.

Ryan: What was interesting is that I worked for a company called Spectacor for 10 years. We were one of the largest arena-stadium management companies in the world. And our CEO was Tony Tavares. I remember receiving a phone call from him basically him saying, “I’m back.” He was putting together, as fast as you can imagine, a team from finance to marketing to operations to get this team up and actually running.

They were huddled up in a hotel in Anaheim building a staff as fast he could. My hats off to them. That was seven days a week and they weren’t eight-hour days. They were just making it happen. I think they knew they had the right guy. Tony … one of his major roles was going in and taking over major arenas or stadiums. A lot of times they were run by municipalities and (he was) doing it in record time. Our job every time was to take a look at the existing organization. Typically start over. Hire everyone from scratch. And get it up and running in – sometimes it was actually weeks. But it was usually in months. I haven’t talked to Tony in a while but I’m guessing he would say he would tell me, it wasn’t his most daunting task. Because it was what he did. A hard-driving executive that had a lot of people pulling on the rope together. Now that I look back, we did it.

The Jersey and Logo

Eggplant and jade became part of the hockey lexicon as the Mighty Ducks released their team colors. The logo depicted a hockey mask shaped like a duck bill. The merchandise became an instant hit with hockey fans, particularly young ones that had seen the first movie. The jersey immediately became the most popular in the NHL.

Eisner: About 50 percent of our publicity worldwide came out of the Angels and the Ducks. And I would like to say one percent of our revenue – it was probably a tenth of a percent. It was nothing. But the interest in sports teams is so enormous that it was overpowering kind of the rest of our operations. This was such a little project that I was going to do it myself. So we did the logo out of my office. We did the team colors. We did “Darkwing Duck.” We did the entertainment. It was like making a movie.

Bettman:By the way, I had to approve it. At the end of the day, I was excited about the opportunity to reach out to more and more people. People that are touched, millions upon millions, by The Walt Disney Company and all of their products. By their products, I’m talking about movies and shows and characters – and I’m not referring to licensed merchandise – we were going to be taking hockey to what would be a new fanbase. And in terms of my focus on growing the game, this was an unbelievably exciting opportunity for the league. It was so unique and special. Nobody had ever named a team after a movie.

Eisner: I think we considered tons and tons of different images and logos and colors. I think. I’m sure we did that. So many people thought it came out of the movies that the people that actually made the movies tried to convince us that we owed them money as the merchandise from the movie. Which it was not.

The General Manager

Call it team building on fast-forward.

The Mighty Ducks hired a general manager on March 23, 1993 and the clock started running. Unlike theVegas Golden Knights GM George McPhee, the first Mighty Ducks GM, Jack Ferreira, didn’t have the luxury of a full season to make hires and scout amateur and pro talent.

Ferreira: When they offered me the job, I couldn’t believe it. We were packing up, up north in San Jose (where I had been theSharks general manager), to move back East. We had made arrangements for movers to come, to give us estimates. I got the job and we were off and running. I signed my contract and the league only had two weeks left and then the season was over. We were drafting in June. We didn’t exactly have a long time to review.

The interviewing process was wildly different than when Ferreira was hired as GM with the Minnesota North Stars in 1988. He had a series of interviews with team owners George and Gordon Gund. Gordon Gund, now 78, lost his sight in 1970 due to retinitis pigmentosa.

Ferreira: George fell asleep. He was right across the table from me. He was asleep and everyone was afraid to wake him up. Gordon said, “George, what do you think?” He mumbled and said, “I agree with Jack.” I had three interviews with the Gunds. That’s when I got up and left. I hit the wall. I said, “I don’t know what more I can tell you. I can’t come back for a fourth interview.” One of their financial advisors said, “Why?” I said, “I’ve only got three suits and you’ve seen them all.” I got up and left. They offered me the job that night.”

Ferreira would move West with the Gunds to San Jose to be the first GM of the expansion Sharks. His first interview for the Mighty Ducks job was with Eisner in January of 1993.

Ferreira: I’m sitting in the waiting area, the reception area at Disney studios and there’s a bunch of other people there and everybody is talking to each other, asking, “Who are you interviewing with,” and talking about this producer. Then they asked me and I said, “Michael Eisner.” They almost fell over. There were two girls sitting next to me. They couldn’t believe that I was meeting with Michael Eisner. Then I interviewed with him and I was supposed to fly back that night. Then he asked me to stay because he wanted to go to dinner. Then we went out to dinner just Michael and I. I thought, “Oh this is pretty good. You can’t get any higher than him.”

The Coach

Ron Wilson was an assistant coach with theVancouver Canucks, first for Bob McCammon and then Pat Quinn. He didn’t have any major professional head coaching experience to that point, but the Mighty Ducks liked what they saw in him.

Ferreira: I had interviewed about three or four people and then I had made arrangements to talk to Ron and we were going to meet in Seattle. He was coming down from Vancouver and I was flying in. I met him there. We went out to dinner. We talked and I knew right away he was the guy.

I wanted somebody young, energetic and somebody very knowledgeable and just to grow with the position. He had been an assistant in Milwaukee (in the IHL as well). He wasn’t even a head coach. As soon as we started talking, I could tell he had a real good grasp on the NHL. When we sat down and talked, we almost did the expansion draft right then.

Grimson: I think Ron Wilson enjoyed the experiences as much or more as any of the players did. He got pretty swept up in it too. He had a lot of fun with it.

Sean Hill (former Mighty Ducks defenseman): I think he was enjoying it. I think it was a great time in his career. There probably wasn’t a ton of pressure with an expansion team. I don’t think anybody besides us expected us to win games. So, I think for him it was probably a unique situation that he hadn’t been in before where, as long as we were respectable and competed hard, I don’t think there was going to be any issues with how he was doing stuff. I think that probably loosened it up for him and took some pressure off and he was able to have fun and enjoy it. I think it was probably a situation where we might have done even better than he was thinking we were going to do. With low expectations and that kind of thing, it probably made it a lot of fun for him. I would have to guess it was a pretty neat time in his career as far as a totally different animal from what he was used to.

Ron Wilson at the announcement of him being named head coach of the Mighty Ducks. (Jed Jacobson/ALLSPORT)

The Expansion Draft

On June 24, 1993 in Quebec City, the Mighty Ducks and Panthers started to fill their organizations with players left unprotected by the remaining 24 teams. Two players from each team were selected. Each was allowed to protect one goaltender, five defensemen and nine forwards. Florida drafted first and chose goalie John Vanbiesbrouck. Anaheim then chose next.

Ferreira: You had a hard time finding a game because everyone was at the end of their season. So that was another factor and then trying to get ahold of video. We didn’t even have a video machine. It was nuts just trying to get it all together.

Hebert: So, I didn’t want to sit around at home. We didn’t have cell phones back then and so I was back at my parents’ house for the summer and I always went fishing at a local stream and so I threw my fly rod in the back of my Jeep and I went fishing for a couple of hours and kind of lost track of time and drove home and drove into the driveway and my younger brother, who was pretty young at the time, came running out of the house and blurted it all out like, “Where have you been? You were taken by the Mighty Ducks! You’re a Mighty Duck!” And I was like, “How about that?”

Hill: It was a bit of a shock to me. I had played the previous season with theCanadiens and won the Stanley Cup and I had a feeling it might happen, but it still was a shock when it did. To go to a team like the Mighty Ducks and be owned by Disney and know that you’re going to play in California and the weather and such a great place like Orange County – once I was done being numb the first half hour, I was pretty excited about it. I started researching a little bit about the area. I definitely wasn’t going in there with the woe-is-me attitude. I was excited to get there.

Grimson: I think this was one of our first summers at the lake back in Northwestern Ontario. The family and I were all back at the lake when the news came through and I think it was my agent Buddy Meyers called me and communicated the news. It was a mixed set of emotions right at that moment.

Hebert: I had worked my way up the system in St. Louis and kind of finally played with Curtis Joseph in Peoria in the minors and a couple of other guys, and I kind of felt I had finally established myself as Cujo’s backup and a guy, like “I think I can push him. I can push him for more playing time and I can push him certainly to be better.” And that was kind of my immediate course of action. It was funny because I was excited for the opportunity. I was like, “OK, I’m getting the break of a lifetime to try to be a No. 1 goalie. Going out to Southern California. It could be worse.”

Loney: I remember it well, still. I was with thePenguins, we were going for a third Stanley Cup in a row and when we lost I knew there were a bunch of us that weren’t going to be around. They went with the youth movement and I knew I was going to be exposed in the expansion draft. It was just a matter of whether I was going to be a Duck or a Panther. I ended up being a Duck. For me, I went from being a Penguin playing in the Igloo to a Duck playing in the Pond. So, it’s not really that different if you think about it.

Pierre Gauthier, Tony Tavares and Jack Ferreira of the Mighty Ducks at the 1993 expansion draft. (Courtesy of the Anaheim Ducks)

The New Team

Hill eventually played 17 seasons in the NHL and logged 875 games over the course of his career. He made his debut with Montreal in 1992-93 and participated in three playoff games during the Canadiens’ run to a Stanley Cup. Hill was the Mighty Ducks’ fifth choice in the expansion draft.

Hill:Most hockey players generally, I think 80 percent, most hockey players have never met a stranger (within the game) is what you could say. All the guys – hockey players are pretty well the same wherever you go, whatever team you’re on. Generally, they’re hardworking guys and pretty good guys, and down-to-earth and hardworking-type of guys. It wasn’t any different on that team. We had a really good group and it didn’t take long before guys were really enjoying each other’s company. I was lucky. I knew a couple of guys. I had played on the Olympic team with Joe Sacco and Tim Sweeney so I had a relationship with those guys so I knew that was going to be a little bit easier, going in there and knowing someone I could pick out in the locker room and go to lunch with the first day without being a total stranger type of thing. I was definitely embracing it and kind of looking at it as, “Hey, here’s a really good chance for me,” and my teammates all were obviously left exposed or got drafted or traded or whatever. And I looked at it as a fun challenge to try and gel as fast as we can and see what we can do.

Hebert:I think everybody was a little familiar with everybody even if you didn’t know them super well. It was just one of those things where you’re leaving a team with a rich history like me and the St. Louis Blues and maybe other guys leaving different franchises and coming in where everything is brand new. Our first session of ice is brand new. We have a new coaching staff and they have their ideas on how they want to coach and what systems they want to implement and all that. It was certainly a learning curve to all that and trying to get some chemistry down with guys.

One of the league’s most feared enforcers, Stu Grimson carved out a 729-game career from 1988-2002. His size and pugilistic skills earned him the nickname “The Grim Reaper” as he became a fan favorite in Anaheim and several other stops.

Grimson: It was a little bit crazy because when you get to camp at the NHL level, everything is so regimented. Teams have been around for a good, long while. The training staff, the coaches, everybody, they’ve had the opportunity to just have everything buttoned up tight but we were hitting the ground running for kind of the first year and things were a little bit up in the air. I remember we had the eggplant jersey but white helmet for an exhibition. It looked like a beer league really. But, again, it was just one of those things where you just had to kind of roll with it because complaining about it and being upset about it didn’t really make it any easier so we shook it off. We laughed and did our best to make due with whatever happened.

Hill:I was wearing an Original Six classic jersey (with the Canadiens) to all of a sudden throwing on a color I didn’t really know existed with the eggplant. I was kind of a little bit skeptical at first …

Hebert:There’s kind of a theory that if you get into an expansion team, you’re either going to get moved immediately because you’re not panning out or you’ll have an opportunity to play for a long time. Every guy who was there was there for a different reason. You had young guys who had never played in the NHL or getting their first chance and they wanted to kind of put their stamp on if they could be an NHL player. You had guys who had kind of kicked around the minors and kind of got a shot here and there and they knew this could be their last kick at the can. And then you had older veteran guys who were certainly very valuable to us.

The Main Street Parade at Disneyland

Though the Mighty Ducks franchise wanted to be taken as a serious hockey organization, it was still owned by Disney and named after a movie. Quickly the players learned there needed to be some symbiosis with the parent company.

Hebert:Somewhere in that first season, we were just in training camp and we hadn’t played our first game yet and we were told to all meet at Disneyland. And we showed up at Disneyland and we got to see the inner workings of Disneyland and we found out we were going to be in a parade. So here we all are – hockey guys, unshaven, long hair, whatever. We put on our game jerseys and we all get on these trucks and floats and whatever and we all go right down Main Street in some Main Street parade. And we’re waving at everybody and hooting and hollering, and nobody knew who we were. And it was hysterical. People were like, “Is that the guys from the movie? They all look way too old.” It was hysterical.

Grimson:Through my family as a young boy and the exposure to the theme park, we knew about the parades on Main Street. I never in my wildest dreams envisioned being in the parade. All I can remember is the laughs we had while riding as NHL players on Disney floats through the theme park down Main Street and then seeing the reaction of my oldest, who was roughly three at the time, so she’s old enough to appreciate like, “Here’s my dad in a parade and that’s pretty amazing.” So the look on her face was amazing as we floated by, literally floated by.

Hill:They’re probably wondering, “Who are these guys that aren’t really dressed up?” and “What’s going on here?” That was one thing that you’re kind of like, “Well I guess we’ll do it. They’re asking us to do it, it was no big deal.” It was kind of funny where people were looking at us like, “I wonder who these guys are? Who are these big strong guys?”

The Final Details for the Opener

Building the team itself was only one part of creating a successful franchise launch. The other involved making sure everything was ready for the home opener from an entertainment perspective. Fortunately The Walt Disney Company specialized in such matters.

Ryan: Everything’s happening so fast and it’s all happening at the same time. So you’re dealing with construction issues. Whether it’s the press room or the Ducks’ locker room. The visiting locker rooms. All the furniture and fixtures that are necessary. And I think more than that, now you’re getting ready to hire 2,000 people to handle an additional 45 events per-year that we anticipated that they’d be all sold out. I think that for us, as the Ducks were trying to do everything they could to sell every tickets, get sponsorships and run the organization, we were going down a parallel path with them to make sure that the building was ready. We weren’t 100 percent sure of everything they would need from an entertainment standpoint. It was going to be The Walt Disney Company. What were they going to do? They were probably going to do a lot of outside-the-box thinking, which they did. But as I think back, opening night, it’s coming no matter what. It was a bit of a whirlwind.

Bettman:I knew that with The Walt Disney Company fully engaged, there was no way this team wouldn’t be a success. They were building a state-of-the-art practice facility and rink in Anaheim. I knew the Pond, as it became affectionately known, was a beautiful state-of-the-art arena. All the vital signs were good. I never had any concerns about that. If I had any concern, it was the speed with which they were anticipating play. Because they had an option of waiting a year. And Michael and Wayne decided they wanted to go for the next season. And in terms of the logistics of getting up and running, as simple as getting a uniform together, icing a team, they had a lot to do in an unbelievably short amount of time for that effort. And I’m not sure that there’s any expansion team either before or after that could have come into being and actually started playing as quickly as this one did.

Eisner:We opened a lot of things. We opened theme parks. We had television shows. We knew how to do that. … We had a lot of publicity in the bank. Getting Paul Kariya from the University of Maine (in our first draft). Great kid. I spent a lot of time going over the day of game, so to speak. What the Jumbotrons would look like. What the music was like. How we would present ourselves. So we spent a lot of time trying to get it right.

The First Night

It was a given that Disney would make sure the Mighty Ducks’ official entry into the NHL would be a show. More than $450,000 was spent on a pre-game extravaganza. A capacity crowd of 17,174 was treated to a 15-minute production. Lumiere, the beloved candelabra from “Beauty and the Beast” welcomed the new Ducks fans. Costumed skaters and cheerleaders. Choreographed routines to “Be Our Guest” tailored to a hockey theme. A Dixieland band. Pyrotechnics. Duck calls.

Ryan: You only get one opening night. One grand opening night. As I look back, there was an awful lot of pressure. The building had been done. It came in on time. On budget. The staff was hired. A team was put together. And as I look back, the puck dropped on time. There were probably a bunch of little things that weren’t going right but the public wouldn’t know about it. Our job is to make sure that we put on a good show. I think back and there was probably a little more pressure on everyone because we didn’t want to let anybody down. And we knew that The Walt Disney Company had very high expectations when it comes to entertainment.

Ahead of opening night, then-Disney Sports president Tony Tavares said, “It’s a very expensive production. When you see it, you’ll understand. It’s very theatrical. You just don’t go out and decide to put a show on like this and not have cost.”

Ryan: I’d be lying if I said a lot of us weren’t nervous. It’s like what you didn’t want was something bad to happen. Something big. An electrical problem. Zamboni cuts too deep. All of the things that run through your mind. And all the big stuff worked fine, which gave us an opportunity to go back in with our critique and really start to fine-tune things. It probably continues to this day, to be honest with you.

Bettman: If I remember it correctly, it was an elaborate show. It went longer than any pre-game I’d ever seen for a regular season game. I think there were fireworks and Wild Wing repelled from the rafters. And it was a major, world-class, Disney-esque production. It may well have been the forerunner of what the Vegas Golden Knights did last year. It was a spectacle. For it’s time, it was the most extraordinary, unique and over-the-top production at the start of the game in any sport.

Ryan: I think that anybody that’s in our business has mental checklists. I would say the best of my recollection is that there was on everyone’s side, a sense of nervousness. How’s this going to go? I remember I carried a walkie-talkie at the time. In some ways, I wish I would have recorded that. And it was so corny. I remember I was standing by the front doors. And I’ve never done it before in 40 years and I’ve never done it since. I said something to the effect to the entire 2,000 employees, “Ladies and gentlemen, the doors are open for the first Mighty Ducks game.” And I get a little emotional to be honest in saying that right now because I’ve never said it before. It was just one of those things where it was like, yeah, there were little things that we had to fix here and there. But everybody pulled this off. Sold out.Detroit Red Wings. We’re going to play the first-ever NHL game in this building. I look back and say, you know what? Hats off to everybody, from Tony Tavares to the concession stand worker. We pulled it off.

Bettman: There was a ton of celebrities there. A ton of celebrities. It was the actors from “The Mighty Ducks” movies. I think there were A-list celebrities there. Michelle Pfeiffer was there. Celebrities all over the place. And this was in Orange County. They had made the trek from L.A. to see this. It was a star-studded, big deal. The atmosphere was great … until they lost to Detroit, if I’m not mistaken.

Ryan: I was in Section 213 where I’ll stand again this opening night. It wasn’t a sense of relief, to be honest. I remember thinking how proud everyone was. We have a full-time professional sports franchise in this building. Owned by The Walt Disney Company. What was interesting is once the game started, the flow was started. People needed to eat. They needed to drink. Building needed to be maintained. There was entertainment on the ice. There was the competition between the two teams. If you’re not ready for the puck drop at 7:07 p.m. on any night, there’s no catching up. You’re just behind the whole night. I’m guessing at the time – and Tony would probably say the same thing – we were probably focused on the little things that didn’t work. But now 25 years later, you look back. It was really a sense of accomplishment. All the big stuff did work.

Except one thing. There was the ill-fated, short-lived debut of the Iceman, a guitar-wielding, curly-haired sunglasses-wearing ghostly – or ghastly, if you will – figure adorned in thick, silver face paint and sparkled jeans and skates. Matt MacKelvie, a Southland-based musician, was brought in to ramp up the crowd throughout the game but lasted only two periods before Disney put a stop to the man meant to be the cranked-up alternative to the silent Wild Wing. His shtick only angered fans as the game went on, with many turning to boos.

Ryan: If you don’t have a number of failed ideas, you’re not trying hard enough. I mean that seriously. The Walt Disney Company tried a lot of new things. A lot of it worked. A lot of the video worked. The famous one is the Iceman on opening night. I think it was Tony Tavares’ quote, “The Iceman cometh, and the Iceman goeth.” But if you think about it, they were trying things that were possibly ahead of their time.

The Game

The arena erupted at the 4:13 mark of the second period when, while the Mighty Ducks were on a power play, Hill jumped up into the slot area to go after a rebound left by Detroit goalie Peter Ing and buried a one-time shot past the netminder for the franchise’s first goal. By then, the Red Wings had already built a 3-0 lead on scores by Aaron Ward, Ray Sheppard and Sergei Fedorov on the way to an easy 7-2 triumph.

Loney: I developed some lung infection the day before. I felt awful, really awful. Dr. (Craig) Milhouse (the team physician) saw me and gave me some stuff because I was going to play no matter what. And I was not feeling good. I remember the excitement of getting out there. About 10 minutes before we were going out, I remember someone from the office brought a bunch of people through the locker room. We were like, “Who are these guys?” We had to have a conversation afterward …. saying, “Hey listen, you can never bring them in. From this time on, nobody comes in the locker room (before a game).” If I remember right, there were some movie stars in the group and some corporate sponsors and they came wheeling through the locker room. As you know, you just don’t do that.

Eisner: I think we did win the next game or two.(Their first win came against Edmonton, 4-3, in their third game). But the whole thing was nervous – just like the opening of a Broadway show. Except for the show being scripted and written and choreographed and rehearsed, this was more extemporaneous. There are people on the other side that are trying to make sure your show doesn’t go on very well. Apart from that, it all went on fine. The game actually played. The lights worked. I guess the scoreboard didn’t. The fans had a good time. And we were off and running. I should say skating.

The Season

Despite winning two of their first 12 games, the Mighty Ducks eventually found their footing. They won four straight games on a Western Canada road-trip in mid-to-late November and established themselves as a group that was hard to play against.

Hill: I think right away we probably saw we had some talent and that we had some pretty good goaltending with Guy and Mikhail Shtalenkov. So I think we kind of had a feeling right away that we were going to be pretty decent. I think probably the first month was kind of rough and then we went on a road trip at some point and we started winning a few games and it kind of started snowballing from there. We kind of started to believe in ourselves and believe in each other. It got to the point where we started winning some games and winning games against teams you wouldn’t expect us to win games against and the next thing you know you’re kind of in the thick of things. Obviously, success breeds success and you start believing and now you start winning some games and it just kind of snowballs.

Hebert: We were in the playoff hunt until really toward the end of the season. We kind of felt like we had something to play for every night. It was fun and for me personally it was just all about giving the team a chance to win – making saves I’m not supposed to and if I could make a couple extra of those on any given night, we could keep the game close or we could keep the lead. It was fun because I always faced a barrage of shots and for a goalie I’d rather get 40 shots than 20 shots and have to make some incredible saves.

Grimson: It was kind of like no pre-set decisions. No kind of, ‘baked into the recipe’ expectations. It was kind of like a blank canvas. Everybody had an opportunity to kind of carve out their own role, carve out their own niche. Everybody kind of knew what their role would be, but it would be a role but with plus. A role, but with added opportunity, added I guess space to kind of add to what you did with a previous club. I think that was a really exciting moment.

We all embraced it for what it was and had a lot of fun with it.

Kings forward Wayne Gretzky and Ducks forward Tim Sweeney go against each other in a game at the Arrowhead Pond. (Courtesy of the Anaheim Ducks)

Hebert: Sean Hill, he was just that guy, he was tons of fun all the time and he made sure guys were ready in the locker room. He was everywhere. He was in everybody’s business. Before the game, during the game, after the game he was the guy you could count on to make sure everybody was ready. But when it was time to have fun, he was Mr. Fun and he made sure after a bad game, guys weren’t going home and sulking in the hotel. He wanted to make sure guys were together and that we were living a dream and we should enjoy every minute of it.

Grimson: Hilly I thought really captured – he was a great guy in the room. He was one of those guys who never had a bad day. He could relate to anybody and oddly enough everybody thought he was crazy because he was so off-the-wall. But it was an off-the-wall that really kind of grew on you and he had this way of keeping it so light inside the room that I think he kind of personified the spirit, some of the atmosphere that year.

Hill: To tell you the truth I’m not sure I was the perfect personality for them because I was only there one year. I think probably the guys mentioned me because I was a guy who didn’t really like things to be boring. I brought a lot of energy and a lot of life to the locker room, to the rink and to the game and I think the guys appreciated that. When you go through an expansion year there are some periods you go through when you’re not winning many games and you have to try and work hard and somehow even though you’re not winning a great percentage of them sometimes you still have to have fun or it’s going to turn into a job really fast and that’s not what it’s about, you know?

The Main Street Parade in the preseason wasn’t the only Disney-ish thing the Mighty Ducks ownership made the players do. There were other moments, almost equally as funny to the team, where the parent company used the guys for marketing.

Hebert: We had to do a photo shoot like we were the Pirates of the Caribbean. So we went to the pirate ship at Disneyland and we went into makeup and costume and they all had all these outfits for us.

It was just a big poster they wanted to make. And we were climbing up on the netting. We looked like a motley crew. We looked like we could have been the Pirates of the Caribbean. A lot of us grumbled about, “I can’t believe we go to do this,” but the final product was pretty cool.

Grimson: We all thought it was great and just being able to dress up in pirate costumes and the guys really played it up. It was a whole lot of fun, and again there we are at the theme park riding on this great, big pirate ship and it all felt pretty close to authentic.

Hill: I remember we did a picture on a pirate ship as well, which was kind of funny. We all got dressed up for that one. Guys had a good time with that. That was a good laugh too.

The players were able to make their own deals around town as well as their celebrity profiles increased.

Grimson: I was one of the first guys, we kind of had a relationship with a car dealership. It was right across State Route 57. It was a Mercury, Lincoln Town Car dealership. They were so good to the team. They were so excited to kind of have the relationship and then expand the relationship. They gave me a dealer car and in exchange we would do different advertising, like television or radio spots for them. It got completely ridiculous. It was like, I would go to the rink and the guys would say, “Hey Stu, can you get me a deal over there?” I would go back to the dealership and they would say, “Yeah no problem. Tell them to come over.” So it ended up where we had like 11 guys in these great big Town Cars. And every time we went to practices or to games, it would look like we were an extension of the mafia the way we pulled up in these Town Cars.

And then for practice days, we would go to the practice rink but we would dress at the Pond, so everyone was in gear and we jump in our Town Cars and we’re bombing to the practice rink in our Town Cars with hockey gear on and it just looked completely ridiculous. It was the funniest thing in the world.

Disney tried to ensure that the Mighty Ducks players got A-List treatment wherever and whenever possible. Being in an expansion situation is often not easy and they wanted the players to be comfortable.

Grimson: Disney did it and they did it first class. They treated us so well from the very beginning from the moment we were all claimed. They flew us in. They did their best to acclimatize us, orient us to the area and they just treated us absolutely with kid gloves and rolled out the red carpet. It was just a terrific experience. Given that they worked so hard to make it a great experience for us that we as players felt we needed to respond in kind so we all worked really hard being the best we could be on the ice and secondarily working as hard as we could from a marketing, promotional point of view – players and staff alike – to make it a great experience for everybody and that’s exactly what it was.

Hill: The travel was great. Hotels were great. When we went and played in Florida, we had a couple of days off in between games they took us to Disney World. I can’t remember the name of the hotel we stayed at there, but it was their flagship hotel. They weren’t worried about spending money. They were more worried about, “Hey, let’s make this a great experience and show that we’re serious about treating this team and these guys the right way and we want to do it like the best teams in the league are doing it,” and they definitely did.

Because of the success of the movie, the team had fans nationwide – but a lot were children.

Hebert: Wherever we went it was a big fanbase of people, especially the young kids wearing the Mighty Ducks gear in the stands. It was a lot of fun because guys would even mention that like, “I played for this team, that team in Calgary or St. Louis and there might be some diehards but it certainly wasn’t to the level we were seeing.” It was great, being on a new team with people excited to come see you play.

Hill: I think we probably had a decent following from young kids who weren’t diehard hockey fans and didn’t already have a team. I think those kids were easily attracted to us.

Young Mighty Ducks fans demonstrate their support for their team with by blowing the Mighty Ducks whistle. (Getty Images)

Overall, there was a level of pride around the team as the season came to a close. The group exceeded expectations by finishing 33-46-5, ahead of the Kings andOilers in the Pacific Division, and helped create a national sensation that still has a cult following.

Loney: We had a heck of run that season. The Panthers played well. We played very well. With a couple of breaks here or there we could have been in the playoffs, which was our goal, which was everyone’s goal. It was fun to bring hockey to a non-traditional hockey market and see it thrive, see them win the Stanley Cup a few years later.