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Paul Kariya picked a fight in practice Thursday and called the performance of his Anaheim Mighty Duck team “embarrassing” in its 6-0 loss to the Florida Panthers on Wednesday.

It’s as if Mister Rogers kicked the dog and called the kids in the neighborhood big fat losers.

And Kariya has every right.

He has the right to say what he wants about his teammates. He has the right to say what he wants about management. Here’s a request of Kariya. Please, Paul, say out loud what you must be thinking. Ask your owners to either make a big, loud, definitive effort to prove they want to have a winning team soon or trade you now.

The public so often shakes its collective head when highly paid athletes on losing teams demand trades. That seems disloyal. That seems nothing more than an inability to take responsibility. We wonder why the highly paid athlete isn’t making the team better. Why, if he is being paid so much, can’t the athlete play better, harder, can’t make his teammates better or harder working?

As Michael Jordan is proving, being really, really good and practicing harder and smarter than everybody else might make him better than he has a right to expect, considering his 38-year-old body, but it doesn’t make Richard Hamilton an all-star or the Wizards anything but pathetic.

Just as it is a little sad to see Jordan playing a succession of increasingly meaningless games, it has become disheartening to watch Kariya wasting a potential Hall of Fame career with a team that has no ambitions now that its owner, Disney, has quit making nice little hockey movies.

Kariya proves that being a loyal employee is worth nothing and can be very bad for a career.

Just 21/2 years ago, when Wayne Gretzky retired, Kariya was prominently mentioned as one of the men who could take Gretzky’s place.

Kariya was the kind of player, with his speed and creativity and sweet demeanor, who could attract new fans to the game and make old ones stand up and cheer. The Japanese-Canadian Kariya would be a great NHL advertisement in the U.S. and Canada, two countries with increasingly large populations of Asian-born citizens. Kariya is respectful of the game. He is clean-cut and polite.

And the Mighty Ducks seemed to be a good, young team, one on the rise, one in a big media market with a pleasant arena and the marketing muscle of Disney on its side.

Now even hard-core fans might be excused for wondering if Kariya still plays.

The Ducks are forgettable.

General Manager Pierre Gauthier may be the most anonymous general manager in professional sports. Before that 6-0 loss, Gauthier said: “We are, in my opinion, very close to turning this around.”

More than the bad performance of his teammates, that statement should make Kariya tremble.

If the team is committed to Gauthier and if he believes the Ducks are close to “turning this around,” then Kariya’s career is doomed.

Kariya is 27. This is his time. He has been in the league long enough to know all the tricks. Physically, he is at his peak.

Kariya joined the Ducks almost from the franchise’s beginning, arriving here a year after the Ducks entered the NHL. He was to be the centerpiece.

Seven years later Kariya is a star if you consider his statistics and ability. But of what? For whom? What is the point of being a star if team owners have given up? What good is playing hard, working hard, if teammates take their cue from ownership and give up too?

Lucky for Kariya he, at least, has the Olympics this winter. He will have a chance to showcase himself, to show that he is an elite player, that if he were playing on a good team, he would be a worthy star.

Kariya’s agent, Don Baizley, speaks carefully about Kariya and what the player wants from his career and from the Ducks.

“Paul bargains hard, signs contracts and once he does that,” Baizley says, “he doesn’t let himself think about anything else. I like the fact he’s so principled, so strong-minded about things. When it’s time to negotiate, he negotiates. When it’s time to deliver, he delivers.”

Now might be the time for Kariya to play hard in another way. Maybe he owes it to himself and to Mighty Duck fans to become more selfish. Maybe he needs to sit down with Gauthier face to face and start asking tough questions and making tough demands.

Kariya is a restricted free agent at the end of this season. As badly as the Ducks are managed, as uncommitted to its sports teams as Disney is, Kariya can’t possibly be set free. He can’t be an unrestricted free agent for three more years. By then he will be 30. His prime will be almost over. He has already had serious injuries. He is only 5 feet 10 and 176 pounds. His body won’t hold up forever.

Baizley spoke of another client, Joe Sakic, who quietly suffered while he was with Quebec, when Quebec was awful and Sakic was the only significant talent.

“There were three or four years when things were terrible,” Baizley says. “Joe was patient, though, and now he’s won two Stanley Cups.”

But Sakic didn’t win them until Quebec turned into Colorado and there were new owners and a new commitment to competing and winning.

Kariya should be playing in games that matter. He should be playing with teammates who can make his talent shine, not disappear. He shouldn’t have to drop his gloves to make a point, unless it’s at a Disney stockholders meeting. There is no point for Kariya to be playing for these Ducks.

It is a waste.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.