Page Takes On Challenge of Selling His Game Plan

Forty-seven dutiful Mighty Ducks showed up at the Anaheim Doubletree Hotel for their preseason physicals Tuesday. Of course, the only person anyone cared to talk about was the player who wasn’t there. Paul Kariya will be the story on the Mighty Ducks until (or if) he signs a new contract. And when and if he shows up, he’ll be the story.

Basically, this season is about Kariya, how his negotiations are handled and how he gets along with new Coach Pierre Page.

Right now the team’s core economic philosophy and commitment to winning are being put to the test. Will they spend the amount of money it takes to keep top-level talent in Anaheim? What kind of message will they send to future free agents from other teams about the climate here? They have the opportunity to make a bold statement about the direction of the young franchise. If Kariya continues at his current, 100-point-a-year pace, whatever the team spends on him now will look like a bargain in three years.

The Ducks have the right to keep Kariya by matching any outside offer and they’ve said they will, so the real issue is whether Disney will come up front with the cash to keep him from holding out.

“We’ll pay market value,” General Manager Jack Ferreira said. “What that market value is, we don’t know.”

But it’s rounding into shape. As soon as Philadelphia re-signs Eric Lindros--and the numbers floating around come out to $8.5-million per year--the ceiling will be set. Kariya deserves a salary in the same neighborhood as Lindros, but until Kariya gets a Hart Trophy and a Stanley Cup finals appearance of his own, Lindros gets dibs on the best house on the block.

You could say the Kariya negotiations are at a stalemate, but it would be tough to even call them negotiations right now. According to Ferreira, Kariya’s camp has yet to make a counteroffer to the five-year contract worth $5 million a year the Ducks laid out in July. Ferreira said he and team president Tony Tavares flew to Vancouver last week and met with Kariya and his agent, and according to Ferreira, no numbers were discussed. I wonder how that explanation went over when he turned in his expense report.

Into this mess walks Page, who, like any new coach, is filled with optimism.

“Everything is falling into place,” Page said. “As soon as Paul Kariya falls into place . . .”

The thought is that everything will get easier. But for Page, that’s when the hard part begins. There’s a simple formula for coaching pro sports in the ‘90s: You clash with the star, you’re history. You don’t need a scale to know that the Hart Trophy for the NHL’s most valuable player outweighs the Coach of the Year’s Jack Adams Award after the fallout between Dominik Hasek and Ted Nolan found Hasek still with the Buffalo Sabres and Nolan unemployed.

It doesn’t help Page that Kariya didn’t like the team’s dismissal of Ron Wilson. And it won’t help that one of Page’s first duties will be to tell Kariya what no player wants to hear: you’ll be spending less time on the ice. Kariya was one of the most heavily used players in the league last season, and there’s no way he can keep up that pace in what promises to be the most unusual season in NHL history. Normally the league plays its 82 games in 192 days. This year, to accommodate the 17-day break for the Winter Olympics, the 82 games will be compacted into 178 days of play.

“I think once he sees the schedule and he sees a lot of three games in four nights, four games in five nights, a lot of long trips because the schedule is really jammed, [he’ll see] everybody’s really more important this year than ever,” Page said.

And after Kariya and Teemu Selanne return from the Olympics in Japan, sure to be worn out from the travel alone, he’ll have to phase them back into his regular rotation. Page plans to have them jump back in right away, then give them days off a little bit later.

Tuesday, Page wondered how the basketball Dream Team handled this situation. Of course, they didn’t have the same problem because the Summer Olympics took place in the NBA’s off-season. For what it’s worth, Chicago Bull Coach Phil Jackson’s solution was to let Dream Team members Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen skip training camp. That upset Horace Grant, who bolted from camp for what he called unfair treatment.

Life and sports are unfair, they call for differential treatment. When players are among the top scorers in the league, when they’re pressured to produce everything from points to ticket revenues, they deserve whatever special breaks they get. Fortunately, Page understands this, which could be his best asset in dealing with his superstar.

“I think you treat everybody different,” Page said. “There’s no way you can treat everybody the same. I don’t think you can treat everybody the same. You can’t make an artist be a plumber, and vice versa. You’ve got to appreciate everybody for what they are. And I think that’s the biggest challenge of coaches today. Because we’ve rewarded so much statistics, as opposed to character.”

The trick of coaching is to keep both the stars and the worker bees happy. In the middle of all the Kariya talk Tuesday, Page tried to get in a plug for the little guys, saying, “The other players want to feel important. They want people to know that they’re there.”

Page knows the proletariat can start a coup as well. You can cater to the stars or not, but by all means cater to the players.

“Because of the players association’s strength and because of the fact that the players are different today, you have to involve them in a lot of decisions without lowering your standards--and that’s a challenge,” Page said. “Someone made me understand once if together we make a decision that’s not what I wanted, but they’re much more committed, you still get better results than if you force them to do what you want and they’re half committed. It took me a long time to figure that one out, but that’s basically the new age.”

The coach’s job is to get the players to buy into his system, but the burden eventually comes back to the men on the ice. Superstars need to sacrifice a little bit for the good of the team. The supporting cast can’t be jealous and must understand that if the team wins championships, the glory spreads to everyone (which explains such past sporting phenomena as an autobiography of Phil McConkey and a 1-900 line devoted to insights from Will Perdue).

“Over the years, you talk to players who are really good and you say, what do you want to accomplish?” Page said. “Money? Famous? They all want to win. We’ve got to talk about the price to play. That’s the only way you handle people who make $500 or $5 million or $15 million a year.”

$15 million a year? Don’t give Kariya any ideas.

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DUCKS OPEN WITHOUT KARIYA: All-Star winger Paul Kariya isn’t in camp because his contract talks have stalled. C5