Ducks add Tony Hrkac to front office

Tony Hrkac is the Ducks’ new director of pro scouting.

With Rick Paterson being promoted to general manager of the San Diego Gulls, the Ducks needed a new director of pro scouting. They’ve found their guy in former Mighty Duck Tony Hrkac.

Hrkac has spent the last nine seasons as a pro scout for the Tampa Bay Lightning, where Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek first cut his teeth as a front office executive.

It was Verbeek who first brought Hrkac to the Lightning and now he has done the same in Anaheim.

Their familiarity goes back even further than Tampa though. Hrkac and Verbeek were teammates on the Dallas Stars during the 1997-98 and 1998-99 seasons, winning the Stanley Cup together in 1999.

Hrkac was drafted 32nd overall in the 1984 NHL Draft by the St. Louis Blues and spent 12 seasons in the NHL. Two of those seasons came with the Mighty Ducks in 1999-00 and 2000-01.

One last note on Hrkac, whose duties for the Lightning primarily consisted of scouting the Central Division along with the Ducks and Los Angeles Kings. In 2023, while scouting a game between the Kings and Detroit Red Wings, Hrkac used the Heimlich Maneuver to stop an NHL employee from choking.

“I was just standing there, kind of minding my own business,” Hrkac said to Chris Krenn of TampaBayLightning.com. “I just thought he was spitting something out at first. I was the only guy that saw him do that because the garbage can was kind of in the corner.”

But once it became clear that the employee was choking, Hrkac sprung into action. He had learned the Heimlich Maneuver over 15 years ago while coaching at Concordia University Wisconsin, where they took first aid courses every two years and had refresher courses along the way.

“I’m just glad I could help,” Hrkac said. “Obviously, it was a great feeling just to be in the right place at the right time.”