Mighty Ducks Need to Pay Price for Kariya, Success

For five long months of watching and studying the daily habits of Canard clutchus grabus --the Mighty Duck, as it is more commonly known--we have been told to wait and see.

Wait until March.

See how the Ducks are doing then.

If the Ducks are anywhere near the playoffs, we have been told, management would then do the right thing, the honorable thing, and reward the blind devotion of those 17,174 zealots who fill Anaheim Arena every home game by signing top draft choice and folk-hero-waiting-to-happen Paul Kariya, just in time for a cavalry charge into the Stanley Cup tournament.

Well, the calendar on the wall says today is March 2.

The standings in the newspaper say the Ducks are within three points of the eighth and final playoff berth in the Western Conference, currently held by, of all people, the San Jose Sharks.

The Olympics have been completed, meaning that Kariya, silver-medal star for Team Canada, is a free man.

So, as thumbs twiddle and fingers drum all over Orange County, the question goes up:

Where’s Kariya?

The time has come to bring him in, suit him up, send him out there. The Ducks are down to the final 20 games of their regular season, down to a three-team race with the Sharks and the Kings, those still sleep-walking Stanley Cup finalists who haven’t won a game since Feb. 11, when they beat the Ducks in Anaheim, 5-3.

If the Kings can’t help themselves--the canonization of St. McSorley has been postponed until further notice--the Ducks have no such excuse. Their help is sitting in Boston right now, kicking back in his girlfriend’s home, waiting for the Ducks to make him an offer he can’t refuse.

As you might have read, Disney recently shook loose $2 million to buy another ice-skating Olympic silver medalist, Nancy Kerrigan, and put her to work Monday at Disney World. Kerrigan was to share a motorcade with Mickey Mouse for a “You’re No. 2!” ticker-tape parade. Kerrigan complied--barely. She griped to Mickey along the way that “this is the corniest thing I’ve ever done,” complained that her arm was tired from too much waving and generally appeared so annoyed that a Disney operative had to remind her to “Smile, honey” before commencing a photo shoot.

Maybe Michael Eisner noticed.

If so, Kariya has to look like the steal of the year.

For $1.5 million, Kariya will skate for you, won’t whine about it, will share the puck with his teammates, won’t whine about it, will withstand bone-jarring body checks, won’t whine about it, and has never expressed any aversion to car pooling with a guy in a mouse suit.

Also, Kariya just might put Disney’s hockey team in the playoffs.

Think about that. You know the Duck players and coaches already have. Risking scorn and ridicule, the team had “Skate For Eight” T-shirts printed back in October, when hockey was still a novelty item in these parts and a 40-point season seemed an impossible dream.

Now, the Ducks have 53 points and 24 victories, placing them within striking distance of the NHL expansion team record (31 victories) as well as the playoffs, which have eluded every NHL expansion team since the league doubled in size in 1967.

Those T-shirts weren’t just fashion statements. The players rallied around the idea, believing that hard work could put a team led by Bob Corkum and Terry Yake on par with a team led by Wayne Gretzky and Luc Robitaille.

Coach Ron Wilson and his staff dug in, too, ignoring at least one newspaper poll that considered the Ducks the least talented team in the league and fashioning a successful, if not especially scintillating, dump-and-chase, bump-and-grind style of play.

The players, the coaches, even the fans have overachieved. The string of sellouts at Anaheim Arena has been no less remarkable than the Ducks’ home-and-home sweep of the New York Rangers.

Now, it is up to management to hold up its end.

The Stephan Lebeau trade was one step in the right direction. Signing Kariya, ASAP, would be another. Suddenly, the Ducks’ two-goals-and-a-cloud-of-ice-shavings offense would be toting a former 30-goal scorer, Lebeau, and a rookie playmaker whose puck-handling skills have drawn comparisons to Gretzky.

While no guarantee of a triumphant ride into the postseason, it certainly beats the head-banging prospect of six more weeks of 3-2 defeats.

At the moment, however, the Ducks and the Kariya are off in their separate corners, undecided. The Ducks, who made a second contract offer to Kariya on Tuesday, aren’t sure they want to spend more than $1 million a year on a player who was drafted behind Tampa Bay’s Chris Gratton, who signed for $862,500 per season. Kariya, meanwhile, isn’t sure he wants to join the Ducks now or return to the University of Maine and go for back-to-back NCAA titles.

Recent circumstances, however, could push both sides to an accord.

Maine, charged with using an ineligible player, stands to forfeit 11 victories and two ties, which would drop its overall record to 2-30 and make any return by Kariya pointless.

The Kings, expected to blow away the Ducks and the Sharks any day now, still continue to blow tires three nights a week. The race has come to the Ducks and if they know their 1993 baseball history, they know what happened to another unexpected contender from Anaheim that failed to make the necessary mid-course improvements.

If Kariya is the player the Ducks maintain he is--”franchise player,” “one of a kind”--then he is a player worth bending the salary structure for, especially now, with the Ducks so close to making a memorable first season unforgettable.

Pull back now, with the Ducks still Skating For Eight and Wilson just asking for a fighting chance, and the Ducks risk sacrificing many of the gains they have made this season. Just like that, they slip from Something Truly Exciting And New to just another denizen in the land of broken promises.