Maybe Duck Rookie Kariya Won’t Be Another Gretzky, but He Idolized Gretzky, Studied Gretzky and Even Has a Gretzkyesque Quality, so There Are . . . : Great Expectations

The day the Mighty Ducks used their first draft pick on a smallish playmaker from the University of Maine, Chairman Michael Eisner of the Walt Disney Co. watched as a smiling, boyish Paul Kariya pulled a Duck jersey over his jet-black hair , his shirt and tie.

“Perfect,” Eisner said out loud, to no one in particular. “Perfect. Perfect.”

Eisner had only glimpsed the skill, speed, creativity and intuition that have made Kariya the Ducks’ best player from the moment the 20-year-old rookie stepped on the ice with them. What Eisner saw, with a corporate mind used to selling images of idealized youth, was a young man exuding genuineness, intelligence and modesty, mingled with the air of a talent not yet fully seen.

Kariya is the All-American kid who isn’t American at all. He is Canadian, and his hair, his eyes and the structure of his face hint at the Japanese heritage on his father’s side. Tetsuhiko Kariya was born in an internment camp in Canada during World War II, a difficult chapter of family history that Kariya says is rarely discussed.

Paul is Scottish on his mother’s side and the combination makes Kariya a powerfully appealing image of the increasingly multiethnic face of society.

He is also an edge-of-your-seat hockey player, already the second-most watchable in Southern California.

“He just has that knack. . . . You start to expect something when he’s on the ice,” Duck Coach Ron Wilson said. “It’s like a baseball game, in a way. When Frank Thomas comes to bat, you expect something, whether it’s a great strikeout by the pitcher or a home run. It’s like that when you play against Wayne Gretzky. You wait for his shift because when he’s on the ice, something could happen at any time.”

Kariya has played in only nine NHL games, but anyone who has watched him knows what Wilson means. They also will recognize bits of his idol Gretzky in the things he does. There is his uncanny eye for the open man, his skill with the puck, the sudden flashes of inspiration.

He is still adjusting to the NHL, where the players aren’t merely bigger and faster but often

both. Some of the passes that used to get through

don’t make it past NHL players, and some of the passes that ought to be assists aren’t converted by his teammates. He is also drawing his share of attention, with some opposing teams choosing to put a shadow on Kariya almost from the opening faceoff.

Every day is “a constant learning process,” he says. But even so, he looks as if he will score at nearly a point-a-game pace, what with four goals and three assists in his nine games.

The three teams that passed on Kariya before the Ducks took him fourth in 1993 might be second-guessing themselves. Then, he was a skillful young forward whose size left some wondering if he could make it in the body-crunching NHL. He had just helped Maine win an NCAA Division I championship and become the first freshman to win the Hobey Baker award, given to the best U.S. college hockey player.

But since, Kariya has grown a bit more solid at 5 feet 10 and 175 pounds. More important, he proved on a silver-medal Canadian Olympic team and gold-medal World Championships team that his skill, cleverness and elusiveness more than make up for any lack of stature.

“I’ve dealt with that all my career,” said Kariya, who is quick enough to slip away from many a hit but can’t avoid them all. “When I was in pee-wee, it was 150-pound guys. Now it’s 220-pound guys. It’s the same thing, at a different level.”

NHL players aren’t given to hyping rookies, but they know Kariya is special.

“I saw Paul play in the Olympics and World Championships, and even then you knew this was not a fluke or a couple of good games,” said Duck center Stephan Lebeau, who is 10 pounds heavier but an inch or so shorter than Kariya. “I knew he was good, but he’s even better than I thought he was.

“There’s no doubt this guy is going to do things in this league. He’s going to be fun to watch. He surprises opponents all the time--even sometimes his own teammates. His passing ability is something to see.”

Jim Montgomery, a college teammate now with the Montreal Canadiens, remembers when he discovered Kariya’s sixth sense.

“The first time we played together, I was open for a pass, and I’ve always been in the habit of shouting to let people know I’m there,” said Montgomery, one of Kariya’s closest friends. “Just as I started to yell, the pass came. We got back to the bench and he said, ‘I know you’re there. You don’t have to yell. It just lets the opposition know you’re there.’ ”

Duck center Bob Corkum says, “There are not very many guys who have been in the league a long time who are as good as Paul is right now.”

And Lebeau, asked who Kariya resembles in the NHL, zeros in on one.

“You have to say Gretzky right away, that’s for sure. They’re the same type of hockey player,” Lebeau said. “If he’s going to put up the same numbers as Gretzky, that’s another question, but who knows?”

*

The comparisons to Gretzky are not really comparisons, in the sense that no one is predicting Kariya will become hockey’s leading scorer or acknowledged as the greatest to have played the game. They are more an attempt to describe Kariya’s style, one that pays obvious homage to Gretzky.

But their careers are not parallel. Kariya turned 20 on Oct. 16. The year Gretzky turned 20, he won the second of his eight consecutive NHL scoring titles, posting 109 assists in a 164-point season.

“The area that will have to be monitored and kept under control is expectations relative to points,” said Shawn Walsh, who was Kariya’s coach at Maine. “It’s still an expansion team.”

But Gretzky-like?

“Gretzky is in a league by himself,” said Glen Sather, Gretzky’s longtime coach in Edmonton and general manager of the Canadian team Kariya played for at the World Championships last summer.

“Paul Kariya is a very gifted player. He sees the ice, the way all great players do. He has great instincts, good work habits, he’s dedicated and sincere.

“I don’t know if he’ll be a great player in this league. That takes time to prove. He’s a rookie. He’ll have good nights and bad nights. He’s not going to step into this league and dominate right away. . . . I’m sure Paul Kariya is embarrassed if anybody tries to compare him to Wayne.”

As Kariya has said: “To be mentioned in the same breath as Wayne Gretzky is a tremendous honor, but to me Wayne Gretzky is untouchable. Incomparable. He should be left alone on a pedestal.”

Still, when Kariya sets up behind the net, he is using the advantages of that protected position in a way virtually created by Gretzky. When he makes a no-look pass or kicks the puck off his skates to his stick, much the same. Even when he swirls behind the play, cheating into position for a breakout pass, he is like Gretzky. So much of what Kariya does, in fact, was directly inspired by the young Gretzky, whom Kariya watched for hours on videotapes as a boy.

“It began extremely early, and I think he identified with him because he was smaller in stature than most players,” said Sharon Kariya, Paul’s mother. “To this day, when he comes home from school or wherever he’s been, he puts on tapes of Wayne Gretzky.

“We’ve got all the Canada Cup games and Gretzky’s own personal tapes. He’s always watched them over and over. Possibly by the time he started playing junior hockey, he started watching other people too, to learn from them, but Gretzky continued to be his model.”

Kariya, a lonely voice growing up in North Vancouver, cheered for the Edmonton Oiler dynasty. The day Gretzky was traded to Los Angeles, his mother picked up 13-year-old Paul at school and tried to break it to him gently.

“He didn’t believe it,” Sharon Kariya said. “He absolutely could not believe it. I said, ‘Paul, I think Wayne Gretzky is going to be traded from Edmonton.’ He said, ‘No, he’s not.’ And I said, ‘Well, I think we’ll hear something about it on the news tonight.’ He was absolutely flabbergasted.”

The next day, the Kings replaced the Oilers as Kariya’s favorite team and he never reconsidered until the day he became a Duck. He waited a year before he put on the Duck uniform for real, mostly because he wanted to play for Canada in the Olympics.

“I think he remembered one time Wayne Gretzky saying he regretted not being able to participate in the Olympics,” Sharon Kariya said.

*

On the ice, Kariya is full of flash, boldness and risk. Off it, he says, with his typical half-suppressed smile, “I’m a very conservative person.”

He arrived at training camp addressing the 39-year-old Wilson as “Mr. Wilson,” until he was invited--begged, teased and implored--to stop.

When Wilson and General Manager Jack Ferreira had dinner at the Kariya home a few months after the draft, it was Paul who got up to clear the table at his mother’s prompting.

“Every single time I come home, the big thing is, I have to make up my bed,” Kariya said, laughing. “I wake up every morning and my mom says, ‘Did you make up your bed?’ I come home, and I don’t get treated special, probably the opposite. It brings you down to earth.”

Even when he decided to use a sliver of his three-year, $6.5-million contract to buy his first car, “something safe” was all he had in mind. He chose an Acura Integra. And instead of getting a place at the beach, he moved in with a family, friends of Wilson who could ease the adjustment to being alone on his own for the first time.

The way Kariya is stems from the philosophy of his parents. One should do one’s best to contribute, and do it quietly, they believe. They try hard to treat their five children as equals. When Kariya won an NCAA title and later when he played in the Olympics, his parents weren’t there, and they have yet to see him play in the NHL.

“My parents go where the majority of kids are,” Kariya said simply.

Wilson nods his approval. “That’s what makes Paul so different,” he said, pausing for effect. “He’s normal.”

What Kariya does on the ice is sometimes so imaginative that people wonder about the connection between this thoughtful, respectful young man and the impulsive, instinctual game he plays.

“He pushes the envelope in terms of his creativity. That’s fun to watch,” Wilson said. “That’s probably where he feels the most comfortable, on the ice. That’s where he shows you his real personality.”

The people who know Kariya best say his game is the product of an analytical mind, one that anticipates actions and reactions.

“As much as he is very spontaneous, very creative and imaginative, that in itself is part of his game plan,” said Tom Renney, the Canadian Olympic coach.

A split-second improvisation can have a polished look, almost as if Kariya has done it before.

“I think it’s something he’s already seen, already done many times in his mind, maybe 10, maybe 50 times,” Montgomery said. “When he does it, it looks new, but it isn’t new to him.”

One morning last week, Detroit Coach Scotty Bowman, who has won more games than any other coach in NHL history, watched Kariya practice before the Red Wings took the ice.

“He was making a pass left-handed to an assistant coach and getting it back and shooting a one-timer right-handed. I’ve never seen a player do that,” Bowman said. “He’s going to be one hell of a player in this league.”

Kariya always has some work in progress. A left-handed shooter, he has worked on a right-handed wrap-around shot so he can score from either side of the net without having to use his backhand. The right-handed one-time shot he is honing is for use when the pass is coming to that side of his body. And one-timing the puck--shooting off the pass in one swift motion without stopping the puck--is so difficult there are plenty of NHL players who can’t do it on their natural shooting side.

In another drill, he works to knock down waist-high passes with his stick, useful in controlling the puck on breakaway chances. What is his success rate? 70%? 80%?

What you want, Kariya says quietly, is 100%.

“The nice thing is, he’s a perfectionist in striving to improve,” said Walsh, the Maine coach. “He’s not a perfectionist who gets caught up or overly negative if perfection doesn’t happen.”

The perfect perfectionist.

Perfect.