Kariya Is Pushin’ Too Hard

Paul Kariya’s stomach is clenched. You can tell. You can tell by the hard set of his mouth, by the way his eyes narrow as he looks past you and onto the skating surface at Disney Ice, the Mighty Ducks’ practice facility.

You must get up close and pay attention to hear Kariya, for he speaks in a quiet, even voice. Kariya would so much rather be skating in fast circles, having the puck slam onto his stick, pushing his body around the ice until his sweater is sweat-soaked and his muscles ache and cramp before they stretch some more.

Kariya says, calmly, that, yes, he is eager to be at full strength. He will not betray frustration over his sore left hip, but he is incapable of being nonchalant about a minor training camp injury. Heck, lots of superstars in any sport would be thrilled to have a good reason to sit out the monotonous, grueling, nausea-inducing, hateful preseason drills.

But Kariya is not most superstars.

“Paul Kariya is the most focused, most intense athlete I have ever been around,” Duck Coach Craig Hartsburg says. “Paul Kariya wants to be the best more than anyone I’ve known, sometimes to the point where he puts too much pressure on himself.”

Understand that Hartsburg is not a man easily pleased. Hartsburg is a perfectionist himself, a man whose hair is always stiffly combed, whose clothes are always crisp and pressed, whose practices are always choreographed to the second. And yet Hartsburg says in no way is he as much a perfectionist as Kariya.

And, yes, sometimes, according to Hartsburg, someone’s greatest strength can also be their biggest weakness.

That’s what Duck General Manager Pierre Gauthier says. If there is any fault to be found with Kariya, “It’s that he doesn’t know when to stay off the ice. Sometimes he wants things too badly and works too hard,” Gauthier says.

It is this character flaw, this intense need to push an extra step, work an extra hour, try a little harder, that has Kariya in this pickle now.

Remember how Kariya broke his right foot during the playoffs last spring? After spending seven weeks with his foot in a cast and his off-season workout plans in a shambles, Kariya burst out of the house and into an intense weightlifting program as soon as he could.

Grudgingly, head lowered a little, cheeks reddened a touch, Kariya confesses that, yes, “I probably pushed too hard. I was compensating for my foot still being sore and that’s how I hurt my hip.” Even as his hip began hurting, Kariya kept pushing, pushing, pushing. This is the essence of Kariya. It is what fills his heart, the need to make himself better, to make himself better so the team is better.

As our horrible summer of baseball ends, as we have watched the Angels lose their health, their good sense and, for a time, their spirit, it is with some skepticism that we watch an athlete with a financially rewarding long-term contract have to be told to ease up, take it easy, to please not be quite so intense.

Can this be real? Can the best player on a team be the first one to work every day?

Yes, according to Hartsburg.

“He beats me every morning,” Hartsburg says. “I pull up and there’s that old red Lexus, or whatever it is he drives, already parked and Paul will be trying to find someone to let him in the building.

“In this world, in any professional sport, it is so unusual to have your best players being the hardest workers, but that’s what we have with Paul and Teemu [Selanne]. They treat everybody with respect, even the youngest players. A guy like Paul, a quiet guy, he’s still the perfect leader. Because I tell the young players to watch how Paul approaches his preparation for every day and to learn from that.”

So sometimes Kariya has to be saved from himself. Sometimes he needs a Hartsburg to put an arm around his shoulder and tell him to slow down, cool off, relax.

The thing is, Kariya--who is spoken of around the league as perhaps a fine replacement for Wayne Gretzky as the NHL’s best pure talent and sweetest ambassador, so great is his skill and so pleasing is his personality--feels the need to be on the ice every day because he doesn’t want to lead with his aura. He wants to prove his worthiness every day. He wants to work hard because it’s the right thing to do. He wants to be the best not because it is what his ego needs but because it is what you do in life. You be the best.

For that alone, for being allowed to watch this type of professional athlete, it is nice to welcome hockey season to the Pond.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com