When the NHL team was founded in 1992, the Mighty Ducks were owned by The Walt Disney Company. The team's name was selected from the Disney movie The Mighty Ducks, about a group of misfit teens who form an amateur NHL hockey team. Disney has also made an animated series called The Mighty Ducks, featuring a fictional Mighty Ducks of Anaheim Hockey team that consists of actual (albeit anthropomorphized) ducks.

With their first draft pick, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim chose Paul Kariya 4th overall in Round 1 of the 1993 NHL Entry Draft. Kariya would become the cornerstone of young Mighty Ducks franchise, the team captain, and would almost lead the team to Stanley Cup glory in 2003 before his leaving for the Colorado Avalanche. In 1997, the Mighty Ducks Hockey team made their first playoff appearance and defeated the Phoenix Coyotes in seven NHL games in the Western Conference quarterfinals. Though, they lost in the semifinals to the Detroit Red Wings.

Their best playoff performance in franchise history was during the 2002-2003 Hockey season which saw the Mighty Ducks come within one game of the Stanley Cup. Mighty Ducks swept defending Stanley Cup champs the Detroit Red Wings, beat the Dallas Stars in the quarterfinals, defeated the Minnesota Wild in the Conference Finals, and lastly fell to the New Jersey Devils in the Stanley Cup Finals in 7 NHL games. For his heroics which had kept Anaheim Mighty Ducks in the playoffs many times, goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere won the Conn Smythe Trophy as most-valuable-player of the playoffs.

During the following season with the NHL CBA in its final year and as the National Hockey League labor dispute (2004-2005) appeared, the Mighty Ducks were overwhelmed with low attending figures despite their magical playoff run the year before and failed to make the playoffs. During summer 2004, as the NHL and the NHLPA were apparently headed towards a lockout, Disney tried to sell the team but got a low offer of $40 million, less than the franchise's original worth. Several quotes from numerous well-paid Mighty Ducks players in the press that stated that Mighty Ducks were a safe franchise were seen as completely out of touch with the NHL economic situation and the shaky situation of the Ducks club.

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