Mighty Fine Memories Of the Ducks

Rugged John Brophy was the model for the Paul Newman character in "Slap Shot," and later coached in the NHL. (Newsday File Photo, 1976)

An Essay By Mark Herrmann

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THERE REALLY ARE no ``former'' Long Island Ducks. As John Brophy, the most famous Duck of all, once said: ``Once you're a Duck, you're a Duck for the rest of your life.'' And he should know because his general manager, John Muckler, said he traded Brophy six times and got him back seven times.

There really are no ``former'' Ducks' fans. Once you've built a bonfire in the stands of the chilly Long Island Arena, you're a Duck fan for life.

Once you've locked the visiting team out of its locker room and tossed forward Ted McCaskill around the corridor, there is no turning back. (It was OK, Brophy said years later, ``He could handle himself pretty good.'').

After you've celebrated the Eastern Hockey League championship on April 17, 1965, by shoving a live chicken into the arms of a Nashville Dixie Flyer (McCaskill again), you are forever in the club.

No one thought they were making or witnessing history in the drafty, hut-shaped Commack arena. They were just having fun, which was the point.

In their own low-budgeted, two-fisted way, the Ducks (1959-1973) had charm. They still do, 25 years after the team went out of businesss. Long live the Ducks.

``Everything about Long Island was fun,'' said Brophy, now a popular and successful coach of the East Coast Hockey League's Hampton Roads Admirals. ``Every rink I go into, people come up to me and say, `I'm from Long Island. I remember you.'''

Who could forget?

One night, the Ducks' bus arrived four hours late for a home game against New Haven. They put on unwashed uniforms, and, at the drop of the puck around midnight, started a lengthy brawl.

Another night, the start was delayed because no one could find a puck. The pucks turned up in an icecream freezer.

Al Baron doubled as owner and radio play-by-play announcer. In a 1986 interview (a year before his death), he reprised his account of the bonfire in the stands: ``This game is being brought to you by the Smithtown Fire Department!''

``It was quite a franchise. The fans were really tremendous. On weeknights, we didn't draw well, but you couldn't buy a ticket on a Sunday afternoon,'' Muckler said. ``We'd have 4,000 people in that building. We'd play in Johnstown [Pa.] on a Saturday, ride on a bus all night and play in the afternoon.''

One thing they didn't do was get rich. Sam Gregory, who settled on Long Island, said he was making $150 a week when he scored 100 points in 1962-63. The Ducks offered a $5 raise, but he held out for $10. He held out only as long as the bread and milk in his pantry did.

Players held full-time jobs in the offseason that paid more than the Ducks did.

The team was about to fold in the early 1960s before Muckler convinced Baron -- owner of an electrical supply store who covered the team for a local newspaper -- into investing $5,000.

Muckler, who had arrived from Charlotte in the 1959 expansion draft, put in $5,000 of his own. Thus, he was coach/general manager/part-owner. ``It was great experience. I had to do all the marketing. I knocked on doors to get advertising,'' he said.

``But it was pretty tough. We only had 13 players -- nine forwards, three defensemen and one goaltender. The league had a spare goaltender in those days, and the trainer always had to be able to play goal. That was one of the requirements for being a trainer,'' Muckler said.

Muckler went on to coach the Edmonton Oilers to the Stanley Cup, then was the general manager of the Buffalo Sabres. His bruising Ducks defenseman, Don Perry, coached the Los Angeles Kings. Brophy coached the Toronto Maple Leafs.

On Long Island, though, each always will be a Duck. Especially Brophy. It was in Commack that he built a reputation on a mountain of penalty minutes. It was on Long Island that he was suspended for hitting a referee - then showed up in a beer commercial, portraying a referee.

He is believed to have been the model for Paul Newman's character in the movie ``Slap Shot.'' He kept getting himself traded -- ``His play would drop off, or he'd get suspended or some crazy thing,'' Muckler said -- but the Ducks always brought him back. Buzz Deschamps, a 50-goal scorer for the Ducks, said he had a lot more room to work because of Brophy. To that, Brophy replied: ``I played a certain way. If it helped him score, OK. But I was going to play that way anyway.''

It is part of the Ducks' legacy, which still is standing even though Long Island Arena has been razed for a shopping center.

The legacy stands whenever someone recognizes Brophy, Deschamps or their teammates (which is often). The legacy stands at Nassau Coliseum, under the Stanley Cup banners. The Islanders built on the foundation the Ducks created with their bare knuckles.

Not that the Ducks ever thought about leaving a legacy. They were just trying the best they could to live on the fly - rookies sleeping on cots in the arena during tryouts, guys playing poker on two-day bus rides to Jacksonville, Fla., watching a fan give an opponent a live fowl.

There was a reason for that. Someone was retaliating for insults by the Dixie Flyers' coach.

Nobody gets away with calling a Duck a chicken.