BANG, Not Byng

The Stanley Cup finals begin this week, the Mighty Ducks are there, and a Kariya will be brawling.

Chasing opponents into corners. Stunning them with quick jabs. Waiting for that delicious moment when they crumple.

“I know it sounds evil, but I love it when you hit somebody right on the nose and they go down,” she says. “I just love it.”

Yeah, she.

This Kariya is not the hockey player.

This Kariya is his sister.

Noriko Kariya, an unbeaten amateur boxer, hears the catcalls and cringes.

“Oh, so you’re the fighter in the family!” fans shout.

Paul Kariya, the Ducks’ polite captain, hears it and smiles.

“Obviously,” he says.

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Here in the land of cartoons turned real, where the Mighty has become greater than the Duck, the wonders never cease.

One of the players has a sister who fights?

And that player is the two-time winner of the Lady Byng Trophy for gentlemanly conduct?

Says Noriko, proudly: “I box just about every day.”

Says Paul, just as proud: “I haven’t been in a fight in my career.”

At first glance, the differences between the siblings are as great as those between a Zamboni and a curling broom.

Noriko, 23, is a 126-pound featherweight who is 5-0 in less than one year.

Paul, 28, is a 182-pound cruiserweight who has yet to drop his stick in nine years.

Noriko regularly climbs into the ring for bouts lasting six minutes.

Paul once spent only six minutes in the penalty box in an entire season.

Growing up in Vancouver, Paul remembers once bugging Noriko while she was talking on the phone to a boy.

“She hung up the phone, came downstairs, and belted me,” he says.

Of Tetsuhiko and Sharon Kariya’s three boys and two girls, Noriko was fire and Paul was ice.

Noriko remembers: “Everybody else in the family was finesse. Not me.”

Paul remembers: “I’ve gotten a few right crosses from her in my day.”

While Paul began playing ice hockey, Noriko played field hockey.

After he became an All-Star with the Ducks, she became an All-American at the University of Maine.

He ended up stuck in a struggling Duck franchise.

She ended up stuck in a fancy Toronto hair salon as a stylist and cosmetologist.

Then, suddenly, last summer, those Kariya kids didn’t seem so different after all.

A continent apart in postal codes and personalities, they embarked on similar missions stitched together by genes.

Even though he was meeting his sixth head coach in nine years, Paul chose to integrate himself into Mike Babcock’s system without fuss, sacrificing his personal numbers in hopes of a championship that seemed terribly distant at the time.

Even though she has a degree in psychology, Noriko decided to go knock somebody’s lights out.

Says Paul: “After winning the Olympic gold medal with Canada, I realized, this is all there is. You win, or you lose. There’s nothing else. At the end of the day, it’s the only feeling that matters.”

Says Noriko: “My father was worried I would ruin my hands for cosmetology if I boxed. But I needed the challenge. I needed to be tested. It runs in our family.”

While their careers have run down opposite paths, the parallelism in those paths is striking.

By losing himself, Kariya has experienced the greatest season of his career.

By losing herself, Noriko has found a career.

Both transformations have come, perhaps not coincidentally, amid the loss of their father, nicknamed “T.K.,” who died of a heart attack in Vancouver on Dec. 27.

Kariya chose to honor his father by playing for the Ducks in Vancouver the next night. Noriko was so distraught she couldn’t watch.

“My father never wanted us to stop doing what we were doing,” says Paul. “He taught us to finish what we started. That’s one of the reasons I’ve always wanted to stay in Anaheim. I want to finish what I started.”

The inspiration remained with Paul throughout the winter. He scored the fewest goals in any of his full Duck regular seasons -- 25 -- but discovered a reputation as a leader. He sacrificed the spotlight to the likes of Jean-Sebastien Giguere and Petr Sykora but has been embraced by fans as the most golden of oldies.

Who had the puck on his stick in the third overtime of the playoff opener against Detroit? Whose goal gave them the win that fueled this amazing playoff run? Who do you think?

Not that Kariya thinks any of this star-becomes-soldier routine is a big deal.

“When a coach comes in and tells you what to do, you do it,” Kariya says. “It’s not ‘refreshing.’ It’s just the way it is. This is how we play.”

Babcock, who says Kariya is “light-years” better than when the season started -- how is that possible? -- agrees that his attitude is no big deal.

“Why would you not be like that?” says Babcock, who obviously hasn’t been watching much NBA these days. “Why would you want to put yourself in the way?”

Whatever, Kariya certainly didn’t, paving the way for a championship that he was the only Duck to dare to publicly dream about so many years ago.

A similar feeling fills Noriko, who was so impressive in her first five fights, she has had seven consecutive potential opponents refuse matches.

“The word has gotten out on her, and it has nothing to do with her name,” says Brian Bynoe, her co-trainer at the K.O. King Boxing club in Toronto. “She has great hand speed, tremendous punching power. The hardest part now is finding her a fight.”

That, and getting some sleep. Noriko works as a waitress at a bar-restaurant at night, and works out during the day. Her goal is to eventually turn professional, not with the circus flailing of a Tonya Harding, but with the real punching of a Christy Martin.

“I’ve been tested like I’ve never been tested, but I’m lucky,” she says. “I have this mental thing that helps me get through it. It has helped me in all sports. Everyone in my family has it.”

Paul has never seen her fight. Noriko often watches him play. Sometimes it drives her crazy.

“I see some of the things that happen in here and it’s like, if that were me, I’d be in there fighting,” she said.

Paul, ever the gentleman, would let her.

“Women should be allowed to do anything, because they’re tougher than men,” he says. “If you have the ability to go through childbirth, that’s tougher than anything we do.”

Even tougher than hanging around in Anaheim for nine years waiting for a championship?

Says Noriko: “My brother has such tenacity, such drive, I can’t imagine how he’s done it.”

Says Paul: “I guess it runs in the family.”

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

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

No ‘I’ in Paul

*--* Duck Coach Mike Babcock asked Paul Kariya to sacrifice his scoring for the betterment of the team. It resulted in Kariya’s lowest goal total in a season in which he wasn’t injured: YEAR GP G A PTS 1994-1995 47 18 21 39 1995-1996 82 50 58 108 1996-1997 69 44 55 99 1997-1998 22 17 14 31 1998-1999 82 39 62 101 1999-2000 74 42 44 86 2000-2001 66 33 34 67 2001-2002 82 32 25 57 2002-2003 82 25 56 81

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