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Feathered friend Wild Wing getting boost in popularity with spotlight of finalsPosted: Friday June 06, 2003 6:25 PM
ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) -- Wild Wing is making hearts sing. The feathered mascot of hockey's Mighty Ducks is getting a huge lift in popularity as the team battles the New Jersey Devils in the Stanley Cup finals. But little is known about the origin of the giant duck that rallies crowds, hugs kids and rappels from the arena ceiling at the start of regular season games. The National Hockey League calls him "elusive" and couldn't even pin down basics like his height and weight. "This flighty character, we suspect, is a direct descendant of Donald Duck, but we were never able to confirm that," the NHL says on its Web site.
Four-year-old Paul Selleck of Laguna Hills can recite the number of every Ducks player but had to pause when asked for Wild Wing's at a recent Stanley Cup game. "He doesn't have a number," Paul finally said. (The mascot actually sports "00" on his jersey.) Some fans trace the quacker's roots to the "The Mighty Ducks" cartoon series by Disney, which owns the team. Lore has it, according to the series, that Wild Wing was part of an intergalactic hockey team from another dimension that got trapped on Earth. With no way to get home, they built their headquarters under a defunct hockey rink. Many tend to believe, however, that the giant duck was another creation of Disney's prolific marketing machine. Either way, the mascot had a rough couple of seasons in the beginning. On opening day in 1995, Wild Wing got his skate stuck in a trampoline as he tried to jump through a wall of flame and fell on the fire-spouting device. Later that season, he was left hanging while making an entrance on a guide wire that got stuck. The next year, the accident-prone fowl missed a couple of games when his image was revamped to more closely resemble the character in the Disney animated series. Fans were told he had reported to camp overweight and was suspended until he could lose a few pounds. He returned more muscular and sported a hockey mask. "There is no mascot that comes out of the NHL factory," said Frank Supovitz, the league's group vice president of events and entertainment. "They all have personalities of their own. They all have stories of their own." Of the 30 NHL teams, only 16 have mascots. "Not every team has a desire to have one," Supovitz said. "Quite honestly, it's very unusual to find them in the more traditional markets." Fans in Anaheim have a habit of latching onto family-friendly mascots. When baseball's Angels made their 2002 run through the playoffs en route to winning the World Series, they had the Rally Monkey -- an unofficial mascot that popped up on the stadium's big screen when the team was down. Even Marc Chouinard, who scored the Ducks first goal in the Stanley Cup finals, is a fan of the fowl. "Wild Wing is a great mascot. He really excites the kids, and they seem to love him," he said. Among them is Caitlin Phelan, 8, of Anaheim Hills, who wore her autographed Ducks jersey to Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals. "Wild Wing signed it. See?" she said. "I like him because he's wild." Her mother, Lohri Phelan, suspects there's a college student beneath the feathers. "He wanted to autograph the front of my shirt. I told him no," said Phelan, 38. "I guess when you put a costume on, you can get away with a lot of stuff." |
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