Kariya Playing a Waiting Game : Hockey: The Ducks’ first-round draft choice hasn’t decided whether to join NHL or remain at Maine.

Paul Kariya is the player the Mighty Ducks plan to build their franchise around, but to see him play you need to go to a college rink in New England on a night when the University of Maine is in town.

The Ducks’ No. 1 choice in June’s entry draft still wears the navy-and-sky-blue of the defending NCAA champion Black Bears, and plays his games in front of crowds of a few thousand, including the occasional dog wandering through the stands.

The three players chosen ahead of Kariya in June, and some of the ones picked after him, are in the NHL now--Alexandre Daigle with his five-year, $12.25-million contract with Ottawa, Chris Pronger with Hartford, Chris Gratton with Tampa Bay.

Kariya--who won the Hobey Baker Award, hockey’s equivalent of the Heisman Trophy, as a freshman last season--still lives in a Spartan dorm room in tiny Orono, Me., where he revels in a college student’s existence and gets little news of the NHL.

“I try to follow it as best I can, but A) I don’t have a TV in my room, and B) I don’t get any major newspapers,” said Kariya, who will leave school at the end of the first semester to play for Canada in the Olympics, then decide whether to join the Ducks for the end of the season or return to school. “Guys come in the dressing room and say, ‘Hey, the Ducks beat the Rangers, 4-2.’ I keep up with it that way.”

The moments when he thinks he should be elsewhere are rare. He saw Pronger play one game on television, and hears bits and pieces about the other top rookies.

“That’s terrific, I wish those guys the best of luck,” said Kariya, who turned 19 on Oct. 16. “I couldn’t be happier right now. I mean sometimes I think, when I’ve got five hours of homework to do, you know, ‘What am I doing here?’ But generally I’m really having a fun time. I’ve said a lot of times before, last year was the best year of my life, not only on the ice but off the ice . . . It’s nice to be back in Maine, seeing all my friends.”

Maine opened the season Friday at Providence College, and Kariya’s precise, elegant passes and bursts of speed as he carried the puck up-ice elicited a half-astonished, half-reverent “ohmigod” from a man in the stands pulling for the home team.

High in a far corner, where the scouts like to sit, Mighty Duck General Manager Jack Ferreira and team President Tony Tavares watched as Kariya darted around and between helpless Friar players.

“He skates,” Ferreira said, “like Barry Sanders runs.”

Kariya is so important to the Ducks that Coach Ron Wilson and assistant coach Tim Army--coincidentally both former All-Americans at Providence--made the trip to Rhode Island on an off-day last week, flying in from Montreal after a morning practice and returning the next morning in time for the game-day skate before the Ducks played the Canadiens.

Wilson’s eyes were ablaze after one period of watching Kariya, a slight playmaker who could have had half a dozen assists in the first 20 minutes if his teammates had banged home the pucks he skillfully passed in front of the net.

“I’m very impressed,” Wilson said. “He’s got quickness and speed and he sees the game. He’s on the ice all the time, in every key situation. He played in traffic tonight, too.”

Kariya--whose only drawback is considered to be his size (he’s listed at 5-feet-11 and 180 pounds)--says he tries to play hockey the way Magic Johnson plays basketball. Even when he practices, he works more on no-look passes and passes off his skates than on slap shots. And when you watch him play, you can see the influence of his model, Wayne Gretzky, in the way he uses the space behind the net and the way he hovers around the outside of a play, waiting to dart in and steal the puck the moment it is unattended.

Even before Kariya has signed his first contract, a youngster was seen at Madison Square Garden last week wearing a Duck sweater with “Kariya 9” on the back.

Kariya, though, seems to be in no hurry to don that sweater, and says there is a very real chance he will finish the season at Maine instead of joining the Ducks immediately after the Olympics, as many people expect.

The Ducks encouraged him to play in the Olympics, but they want to sign him immediately after the Games. Ferreira says Kariya has outgrown college competition, and that it will be time for him to move on after the Olympics. But he also knows Kariya.

“It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he goes back to school,” Ferreira said.

The Ducks have drafted a young man who loves his life in college and is intent on his studies, and Kariya said he has not decided when to turn professional.

“Everywhere I go, people have my schedule written out and they say I’m going to Anaheim after the Olympics,” he said. “I’ve never ever stated that to anyone. There’s a big chance that I’m going to return to the University of Maine, and there’s obviously a chance I’ll be in Anaheim. It took me so long to make a decision on where I was going to start the year that I really want to focus now on the Olympics and not where I’m going to be after.

“It’s not a negotiating tool at all. It really is a very viable option to return to school. I just have such a great time at the University of Maine and I really enjoy being around the guys and going to school. If I feel it’s in my best interests to return, I’ll return, and I won’t have any concerns about the financial ramifications or anything like that. The way I see it if they want me then, they’ll want me next year, and or if I go back, they’ll want me the year after. You can never go too late. You can go too soon, but I don’t think there’s any cases of players out there who have gone too late.”

One factor will be how well he plays in the Olympics, where he could increase his market value considerably, as well as boost his confidence about his readiness for the NHL.

Another, Kariya said, will be the postseason. If Maine gets some other players back from the U.S. Olympic team and is playing well, he might be influenced to play out the season.

“I mean, if we have another shot at the NCAA championship . . . .” he said. “But the way Anaheim’s playing, maybe they’re going to have a shot at the playoffs.” So while Daigle travels the NHL, Kariya studies business law, statistics, literature and the history of Maine.

That last course was a bit of a misjudgment on his part. He heard it was an easy elective--though perhaps not for natives of North Vancouver, Canada.

“I neglected that fact,” Kariya said, laughing. “I have to study hard. She talks about different rivers or cities in Maine, like everyone’s supposed to know them and everyone does, except for me. Sometimes I get totally lost. I have no clue about the states, how many there are or where they are. I thought Massachusetts was just this one huge state. I just thought everything except Maine was Massachusetts.”

He is already too prominent to be just another student. A crew from KCAL-TV traveled to Orono to do a story, and CBS visited to film an Olympic feature.

“My professors are kind of getting used to having cameras in the classroom,” he said. “When I’m on campus I try and keep a very low profile and not say too much, but when TV cameras are following you around, everyone gets a big boot out of that. It doesn’t really make me uncomfortable, but I sort of, you know, they’re paying a lot of money to go to school and I hope it’s not a disturbance to the class. But if it’s not, it’s no big deal.”

The Olympics will be, however. “I sit in my room sometimes thinking about it, playing in the Olympics,” Kariya said. “Just being there and being a part of it, not only the hockey team but the Canadian contingent. It’s going to be a huge rush.”

Then the rush will be to make up his mind.

“It’s just a number of factors are going to come into the decision. I have no feelings at all, either way. I can’t even tell you when the decision will be made. I can envision not knowing after the Olympics are over, and maybe needing a week or two to just think about it. I think I’ll get a gut feeling and I’ll go with that.”