MIGHTY DUCK NOTEBOOK / ROBYN NORWOOD : Once-Quiet Corkum Speaks Up for Union

Bob Corkum is your basic, solid New England citizen: hard working and reliable.

He was a fringe NHL player when he came to the Mighty Ducks a year ago. But now he is one of their solid centers, NHL Players Assn. team representative and assistant captain.

His career-high 51 points were second only to Terry Yake last season, and had he not suffered a severed tendon in his foot with eight games left in the season, he probably would have been the team’s leading scorer.

Now Corkum, once quiet, is finding a public voice as the labor negotiations go on without a resolution. Corkum doesn’t want to see a work stoppage, but he says he’s ready to stand his ground.

“Last year was the biggest year the NHL has ever had, and you’d hate to put a damper on that in any way, shape or form,” he said. “But the players shouldn’t be responsible for small-market teams.

“If you have five doughnut shops over here on Katella Avenue, and two or three aren’t doing so well, the other doughnut-shop workers aren’t going to bail them out. I don’t think the players should be responsible for Hartford or Winnipeg.”

Most fans haven’t sided with the baseball players in their opposition to a salary cap, Corkum realizes. All he can think is, “they must not really know the issues.”

“When they see a guy making $6 (million) or $7 million a year, their first reaction is obviously that that’s a lot of money. But they may not realize that the owners wouldn’t pay that kind of money if they couldn’t afford it or it wasn’t market value.

“Sure, I hate to be missing baseball games. I follow the Red Sox even when they’re not doing so well. But we have to suck it up.”

Corkum’s work with the union--a job he inherited when Troy Loney was traded--hasn’t hurt him with Duck management. On the contrary, they made him an assistant captain this week.

“You lead by example, and the best leaders lead not just by what they say but by what they do,” Coach Ron Wilson said. “I think Bob was the epitome of a Mighty Duck player last season, someone who came in and overachieved by working hard every day to improve as a player.”

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Expectations are high, but Paul Kariya didn’t disappoint in his first scrimmage Tuesday at The Pond of Anaheim.

“Paul didn’t waste any time cranking it up,” Wilson said.

General Manager Jack Ferreira likes to say Kariya needs only about three shifts to adjust to any level of competition. Not Tuesday, he didn’t.

“ Maybe one,” Ferreira said, a pleased smile on his face.

Maybe 15 seconds.

Playing with center Anatoli Semenov and rookie right wing Valeri Karpov, Kariya showed his speed, vision and an ability to get the puck to the open man. He scored a goal during the scrimmage and later, when speed testing was complete, finished as the second-fastest skater on the team, behind Joe Sacco.

“I think our guys are real surprised at his speed,” Wilson said. “He’s going to make a lot of other players better.”

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Fists flew briefly during the scrimmage, and it looked for a moment as if a fight had broken out Tuesday between tough guys Stu Grimson and Todd Ewen.

Not in this case. It was Grimson and Ewen’s look-alike younger brother, Dean, 25, who played 19 games in San Diego last season. A few minutes later, he tangled with tryout Kevin Sawyer.

“We announce at training camp we don’t want any fights in scrimmages,” Wilson said. “You can try to ban it but it’s going to happen. Tough guys, especially young tough guys, like to show what they can do. You’d end up with Stu Grimson and Todd Ewen fighting all the young guys. The fights would be one-sided battles, but Stuie and Ewie hurt their hands. It’s not proving anything. We know who’s tough, we want to see who can play.”

The Dean Ewen-Grimson bout started after Grimson tried to slash Yake’s stick and slashed Yake instead.

“Dean took exception to that,” Wilson said.

Said Dean: “It’s just part of life. If you’re not going to score 50 goals, you’ve got to do something else.”