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Whicker: Kariya leaves hole in the Ducks' scrapbook

[LINK] http://www.ocregister.com/articles/kariya-529681-ducks-game.html [/LINK]


You didn’t go see the Mighty Ducks. You went to see Paul Kariya.

He kept the building full when the novelty disappeared. He gave the Ducks points when games seemed pointless. He was the face of the franchise when no one was using that tiresome phrase, although he was really the legs.

Then came the Cup and the Twins and the Hall of Fame defensemen and the annual playoff trips. Kariya missed all of that.

He retired in 2011, on terms dictated by the elbows of others. He is neither gone nor forgotten, but the essential Duck is now invisible.

Oh, you can catch him at a beach now and then, surfing. The concussions that robbed Kariya of a proper goodbye do not keep him out of the water. Scott Niedermayer joins him sometimes, watches him prepare and practice as if he were facing the Red Wings again.

“He has his little warmup, he works hard out on the water,” Niedermayer said. “For someone who isn’t a lifelong surfer, I would find it hard to believe someone could be better. He loves it. It’s fun to see. He’s having a lot of fun."

“He reads the books about how to surf, he watches surfing videos,” Teemu Selanne said. “He wants to be as good as he can be. He’s out there every day. And he told me that once I’m done playing, we’ll play golf once a week.”

But Kariya will not ride a wave or a car or any other mode of transportation into Honda Center, and not because of any particular antipathy toward the Ducks, who have changed mightily since he left after the run to Game 7 of the 2003 Stanley Cup Final.

“He’s generous with the kids, and I was there one day when he gave away 10 pairs of skates and some sticks,” Selanne said. “I need to talk to him, find some way to get him back with the Ducks’ family. Obviously he was the No. 1 star here. He has a lot to give to this organization.

“They should retire his number. Absolutely. But he says, no, don’t ever talk to him about that. He’s still a little humble about that, for sure.”

Selanne senses Kariya is “bitter” about the way it all ended, about the fact that Kariya’s head became a piñata, and nobody seemed to care.

In 1997 he got his first concussion, from Montreal’s Mathieu Schneider. In 1998 he was pole-axed by Chicago’s Gary Suter and missed 28 games and the Nagano Olympics, where he would have been Canada’s best shootout weapon against Dominik Hasek.

In 2003 he took a head shot from New Jersey’s Scott Stevens in Game 6 of the Final. Carried off, he skated back and produced the most electric moment in 20 years of Ducks hockey: a massive slapper that zinged past Martin Brodeur.

In 2009, playing for St. Louis, Kariya came out of the penalty box just in time to take an elbow to the head from Buffalo’s Patrick Kaleta.
Suter got a four-game suspension. Stevens and Kaleta were not suspended.

Doctors told Kariya his career was over in the summer of 2011, just as the Ducks, at Selanne’s urging, were trying to sign him.