It’s Hard to Understand This Loss

The Mighty Yuk-yuks have done it again, one month after their greatest triumph, transforming throat-lumping cheers into sad, sad laughter.

The Mighty Yuk-yuks have done it again, celebrating victory with a cross-check, rewarding success with a slash.

The Mighty Yuk-yuks have unimaginably, unconscionably lost Paul Kariya.

It is a feat previously considered an impossibility along the lines of Los Angeles losing the Hollywood sign or Disneyland losing Mickey Mouse.

It is Ron Wilson, squared.

The combustible announcement Thursday that Duck captain Kariya joined former teammate Teemu Selanne in signing with the Colorado Avalanche enveloped the franchise in the familiar dark smoke of anger and betrayal.

Through which appeared the usual question.

How does this happen?

Hockey teams lose their teeth. They lose their kneecaps. They lose their razors.

They do not lose their leader, their statesman, their symbol.

They do not lose their one star who grew up with them, the one who represented everything good about them, the one who was always in the scoring race but never in the police blotter.

They do not lose their one star who was often ignored but never complained, the one who sacrificed himself for the system, the one who fought the jokes and stared down the cynics.

Paul Kariya was the first one, the only one, who ever truly believed that the Mighty Ducks could win the Stanley Cup. He bet nine years of his life on it. He came within 60 minutes of being right.

Hockey teams don’t lose a guy like that for $10 million. And they certainly do not lose him in a sports town where perception is tickets, perception is buzz, perception is reality.

The trip to the Stanley Cup finals may have fooled the Mighty Ducks’ bosses into thinking this is Ottawa or Vancouver, where winning can overcome a brusque coach and no-name players, where players aren’t worth as much as the system.

They, like their front-office predecessors who fired Ron Wilson after the celebration of 1997, are dead-duck wrong.

This is still Tinseltown, and the Ducks just let their biggest box-office star walk across the street to a rival studio.

And less than four weeks after he created the most memorable and important moment in the franchise’s 10 seasons.

On June 7, in Game 6 of the finals, Kariya was decked by New Jersey Devil Scott Stevens. He lay motionless at the center of the Pond ice. The crowd gasped, his teammates cringed.

Kariya eventually staggered to the bench and into the trainer’s room and he was done for the game.

At least, that’s what everyone thought, until he skated back on to the ice and scored what became the clinching goal in a victory that sent the series to Game 7.

The Duck crowd has never been louder than when Kariya scored that goal.

The Ducks have never been more inspired than after Kariya scored that goal.

And later that month, just as his head finally stopped pounding, he learned that the Ducks wanted him to take a pay cut.

Brilliant idea by Bryan Murray, an old-school general manager who clearly doesn’t understand this team’s history or its market.

On Monday, he did not make Kariya a $10-million qualifying offer, which would have been equal to last year’s salary and would have essentially kept him on the Ducks.

It was a move that allowed Kariya to become a free agent. But it was a move that caused many to shrug.

There is no way Murray would have made that move if he really believed Kariya would leave, right? There is no way Murray would have gambled like that if he and Kariya had not already discussed a lesser figure, right?

Well, turns out, Murray must have talked to his star employee as much as he talked to his Zamboni.

Because, three days later, Kariya shoved his obvious anger and feelings of disrespect into Murray’s face by accepting a $1.2 million deal to play with the Avalanche.

“I never had an inkling,” Murray said.

How can that be?

Either Murray is as thick as a pair of sweaty shoulder pads, or he really did want to lose Kariya and use that $10 million to buy two or three worker bees who would fit easier into Coach Mike Babcock’s system.

“I’m sorry to have lost Paul Kariya,” Murray acknowledged. “But $10 million was too much.”

That is the spin that some blindly loyal Duck fans will be working today, the same sort of spin that annually convinces King fans to boo Rob Blake.

Kariya was a declining talent who wasn’t worth one-fourth of this team’s total salary, they will say.

Oh yeah? Then what explains his team-leading 81 points during the regular season?

Paul Kariya disappeared in the playoffs, they will say.

True, except during the playoffs biggest moment, when he captured Southern California like no other hockey player since Wayne Gretzky.

Where is Kariya’s loyalty for all the money Disney paid him, they will say?

In nine years of exemplary service and behavior, he has paid Disney back with interest. This is even when lots of these fans were not so loyal to him, allowing him to spend some of his prime years in front of empty seats.

Those seats were filled enough by the end of last season that the Ducks have announced an increase in next season’s ticket prices by 11%.

It is an announcement that now deserves a brief postscript along the lines of, “Suckers!”

Like the Ron Wilson era, the Paul Kariya era was fun while it lasted.

And, if the Ron Wilson aftermath is any indication, the Ducks will now disappear for another six years.

Maybe it’s better that way. The Mighty Duck smell of success is a foul one indeed.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.