‘Magical’ duo answers Duck call
Selanne and Kariya catch wave to shrine in deep class of ’17
When Paul Kariya got the call from the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday, he wasn’t around to answer it.
Lanny McDonald, the ex-Leaf who’s the hall’s chairman, had to leave a message informing Kariya of his presence on a list of 2017 inductees that also includes longtime teammate Teemu Selanne. Kariya, it turned out, had been surfing in the Pacific Ocean, not far from his southern California home.
“Well, I didn’t get eaten by any sharks, so it was a positive day,” Kariya quipped later. “There’s been quite a few shark sightings out here. So I’m rolling the dice.”
As a player Kariya enjoyed less-thanperfect luck gliding among hockey’s human predators. The speedy scoring whiz didn’t retire in 2011 because he was too old or too slow or sapped of his passion. He retired, too early, because he’d suffered repeated concussions from a series of illegal hits. Probably the most infamous of those was delivered by Scott Stevens in Game 6 of the 2003 Stanley Cup final — a blindside elbow to Kariya’s head unleashed no less than four strides after Kariya released a pass. Stevens wasn’t penalized for that brutal takeout. As Kariya not-so-happily noted upon his retirement, his assailants generally paid nothing for their crimes against his brain health.
But if Kariya’s lack of engagement with the sport since he hung up his skates could have been interpreted as disenchantment with the NHL and its operators, on Monday Kariya said his scarce presence is more a matter of a lack of job offers and his nature as a “private person.”
“There’s no fences to be mended,” Kariya said. “I’m very grateful for every second I played in the National Hockey League, and hockey in general … If there was any way of waving a magic wand and getting an opportunity to live through my entire career, the good and the bad, I would do it again in a heartbeat. And I’d love to still be playing now.” On Monday both he and Selanne sounded as though they’d love to still be teammates. Selanne was the no-brainer choice among this year’s group of impending hall of famers. The all-time scoring leader at the Olympics, the Finnish Flash led the NHL in goal scoring on three occasions and currently sits 15th on the league’s all-time points list.
Also among the announced player inductees were Mark Recchi, the threetime Stanley Cup winner with Pittsburgh, Carolina and Boston, who played the fifth-most games in NHL history; Dave Andreychuk, the ex-Leaf who
scored more power-play goals than anyone in history; and Danielle Goyette, the two-time Olympic gold medallist and eight-time world champion with the women’s national team. Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs and University of Alberta coaching legend Clare Drake were announced as inductees in the builder category.
If Kariya and Selanne had undeniable chemistry as linemates — Selanne called their combination “magical” — on Monday they were awfully entertaining in a brief appearance as a conference-call odd couple. Selanne, who also lives in southern California, began by suggesting that he and Kariya could fly together to Toronto for the Nov. 13 induction gala.
“You can pick up the tab for the plane,” Selanne said to Kariya.
Quipped Kariya: “We’ll be flying coach, Teemu.” And on it went. “Teemu always joked I could read his mind. Off the ice it wasn’t hard to read — he was always watching Baywatch shows,” Kariya said.
Said Selanne, acknowledging Kariya’s higher-brow tastes: “We’re still great friends even though we have totally opposite personalities.”
But the mutual respect was as palpable as the laughter.
Said Kariya: “If I didn’t get the opportunity to play with (Selanne), I wouldn’t be in the hall of fame.”
Perhaps Monday’s best news came when Kariya, who hasn’t regularly done interviews since his retirement, described his health as “fine.” He said that in the immediate wake of his exit from the game’s grind that he needed about a year of rehab “to feel normal again.” But he said he hasn’t experienced the headaches that are common among ex-players who’ve dealt with concussions. And while he acknowledged that the NHL has made progress in eliminating the types of hits that prematurely ended his career, he’d still like to see more action.
“In my experience, it’s the ones that guys are targeting your head, and they’re doing it when you have no way of protecting yourself — those are the (hits) that are really damaging,” Kariya said. “It’s going in the right direction. I’d still like to see more done in terms of how long the suspensions are . . . Hopefully things can continue to progress.
“I remember growing up in peewee hockey . . . when we started contact hockey, the coaches didn’t tell you, ‘When Joey’s not looking, elbow him in the head. That’s a hockey play.’ To me, it’s not a part of the game. It never was a part of the game. It shouldn’t be a part of the game. And it should be punished accordingly.”
More than once, Kariya was asked about his lack of involvement in the game of his life. And while he admitted that he’s currently more attached to his surfboard than his one-time sport — he rides waves three or four times a week — he didn’t rule out the possibility of returning to the rink.
“I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know if I have the skill set to coach or to be able to scout players or to be a general manager. I mean, these jobs are very difficult. They take as much commitment, if not more of a commitment than being a player does … And I wouldn’t want to do something unless I was going to be able to put 100-per-cent commitment and the same kind of passion that I did when I played the game,” Kariya said. “(But) I would be open. There’s really been no calls from teams wanting coaching advice or anything like that . . . We’ll see what happens in the future.”
Not long after, Selanne suggested said that his ideal future includes Kariya as a more active part of the hockey community, and not simply as a resident immortal at the sport’s Yonge Street shrine.
“One of my missions is to get Paul somehow back in the business,” Selanne said, “because I know he can make a big difference.”
Hear-hear to that, and safe surfing in the interim. Maybe the NHL’s player-safety department can open a branch on a Pacific coast beach and appoint a soon-to-be hall of famer vice-president of common sense.