‘Peanuts’ Creator Gives Some Ink to Mighty Ducks

ANAHEIM —  No wonder Marcie, the character in Wednesday’s Peanuts comic strip, confuses the “Mighty Ducks” with the “Mighty Flamingos.”

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Peanuts creator and hockey enthusiast Charles M. Schulz thinks the Anaheim team “probably has the strangest name ever given a hockey team.”

In a telephone interview Wednesday from his home in Santa Rosa, Schulz said the team’s recent launch made them “topical,” and a natural for the strip.

“Why not?” he asked. “I own the most beautiful ice arena here in Santa Rosa, I know Michael Eisner, and hockey season’s started.”

Unlike Marcie, the 70-year-old cartoonist is unlikely to confuse a Zamboni with a zucchini, since Schulz owns two of the vehicles used to maintain the playing surface during hockey games.

“Who else do you know that owns two Zambonis?” he asked.

The Peanuts strips’ best-known hockey duo are Snoopy and the little bird Woodstock, who frequently face off on a frozen birdbath. Snoopy has also appeared in live ice shows at Knott’s Berry Farm and the Ice Follies.

Schulz himself plays regularly, “pickup games mostly,” on the rink he built for the people of Santa Rosa in 1969. The rink offers a complete skating program for children during the day, and hockey games and ice shows at night.

“It’s quite a place,” he said. “People outside the area don’t know much about it, but we don’t care.”

Schulz said he has not attended any Ducks games--he hasn’t even made it down to San Jose to catch a Sharks game yet. But Disney President Eisner, another hockey enthusiast, has visited him in Santa Rosa.

Reports about Anaheim Arena have reached Schulz, though.

“Everyone’s been telling me how beautiful it is,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll have a good team. It takes a while to build up a good franchise.”

A member of a hockey Hall of Fame because of his support for the sport in the strip and in his home town, Schulz said it is the “up-and-down quality of the game that makes it so wonderful,” allowing for both individual and team excellence.

But one thing Schulz doesn’t like about professional hockey is the violence.

“Most of it is pretty stupid,” he said. “Any contact sport will certainly result in some kind of anger, and probably fighting.” But brawls that erupt in the first minute of play baffle him.

Most of his experience with hockey growing up in St. Paul, Minn., he said, involved back-yard rinks built by his father and street games with his friends.

“I hate to disillusion people,” he said with a chuckle, “but I never played much when I was a kid.” Nor did he play on his high school team.

Although he now skates regularly at his own rink, most recently on Tuesday night, he said, “I was always more of a golfer than a hockey player.”