NHL CAMPS : DUCKS : Two Millionaire Teens Will Grab Most Attention

The Mighty Ducks’ new teen-age millionaires, Paul Kariya and Oleg Tverdovsky, have arrived for their first training camp with full pockets but not much swagger.

“He called me Mr. Wilson again,” Coach Ron Wilson said of Kariya, 19.

At 39, Wilson isn’t even called Coach by most of his players, but simply Ron.

“I’m going to call him Dennis, as in Dennis the Menace, until he stops,” Wilson said.

Kariya, the former Hobey Baker winner at the University of Maine who starred for Canada in the Olympics and World Championships, finally signed a three-year $6.5-million contract last week--a full 14 months after the Ducks took him fourth in the 1993 NHL draft.

“Right now, everyone is pretty much mister to me,” said Kariya, who will take the ice with his new teammates for the first time today in a public session at The Pond of Anaheim. “It’s something I was brought up with, respecting your elders as people who have a lot more experience in life. Teammates are always personal, but coaches and management are mister to me.”

Tverdovsky, 18, an offensively talented defenseman with as youthful a face as Kariya, is far less well-known. He was a higher draft pick than Kariya, going second overall in June, but his contract will pay him $2.3 million less over three years. Tverdovsky said: “That’s fair.”

“One shouldn’t really make that comparison because Kariya is the champion of the world and an offensive player,” Tverdovsky said through an interpreter.

Kariya and Tverdovsky are the highest-profile additions to the team, but General Manager Jack Ferreira has made a number of moves to strengthen a team that won 33 games in its first season--sharing an NHL record with Florida--but had the NHL’s worst power play.

Tom Kurvers, a veteran defenseman and power-play specialist, was acquired from the New York Islanders in exchange for captain Troy Loney in a draft-day trade. Another draft-day trade brought stay-at-home defenseman Robert Dirk from Chicago.

In addition, Ferreira signed winger Valeri Karpov, the team’s 1993 third-round pick who played for Russia at Lillehammer, and Nikolai Tsulygin, a talented but inexperienced defenseman who was the team’s second-round pick in ’93.

Defenseman Randy Ladouceur will be the new team captain, replacing Loney, who was traded to the New York Islanders in June.