There’s no blond in his clean-cut, jet black hair.
And he doesn’t look particularly tanned. But Paul Kariya, one of the most exciting hockey players to ever come out of B.C and a 2015 inductee into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame, is a fully invested California surfer dude these days.
“Yeah, four or five days a week,” the North Vancouver native said Wednesday of his days riding the surf with friends and former NHL teammates like Scott Niedermayer.
Word is that Kariya is pretty good, too.
“For someone who isn’t a lifelong surfer, I would find it hard to believe someone could be better,” Niedermayer said a couple of years ago.
Teemu Selanne, another ex-Anaheim Ducks teammate, says Kariya reads all the how-to-books and watches surfing videos. “He wants to be as good as he can be.”
“Very exaggerated. I can barely stand up,” said a laughing Kariya after taking part in a formal unveiling of his Hall of Fame plaque.
“My friend says the best surfer in the water is the guy who’s having the most fun. So under those conditions, I’m a good surfer. But under normal conditions, not really.”
Kariya picked up the sport during the NHL lockout several years ago. It was a good way to stay active and healthy.
“And now there’s a lot of retired players that live in the area and you get a chance to kind of be in the hockey community, stay in shape and you get that camaraderie that you get playing hockey.”
Some would suggest he’s only barely part of the hockey community these days. He hasn’t played any pickup or old timers hockey since playing his last NHL game with St. Louis in the spring of 2010.
“I skated with my niece once. I do a little bit of roller blading, but I haven’t played hockey since I retired.”
He’s also rarely seen at the rink or around the Ducks franchise with which he starred – he missed Selanne’s jersey retirement in January to go on a family ski trip – and has often been referred to as reclusive and mysterious.
Selanne said two years ago that he senses Kariya is “bitter” about the way his career ended at age 36 as a result of too many concussions.
Kariya insists he hasn’t been “divorced from hockey."
“Some players when they’re done playing they almost have a career path into coaching or scouting or being a general manager. My love was for playing. If I could still play, I’d still be playing out there.”
Picked fourth overall in the 1993 NHL draft, the swift, skilled Kariya recorded 989 points (402 goals) in 989 NHL regular season games with the Ducks (nine seasons), the Avalanche (one), the Predators (two) and the Blues (three). He was a three-time first-team all-star and a two-time winner of the Lady Byng trophy.
But the big hits he took – pole-axed by Chicago’s Gary Suter in 1998, the head shot from Scott Stevens in Game 6 of the 2003 Stanley Cup finals and a 2009 elbow to head from Buffalo’s Patrick Kaleta — took a toll.
After sitting out the 2010-2011 season to try to recover from the effects of the multiple concussions, he announced his retirement.
At the time, he was sharply critical of the league for not doing enough to eliminate head shots. He called for 10-game suspensions for first-time offenders and fines to owners and coaches.
“We’re still talking about it, so I think there’s still an issue there. To me, targetted head shots have no place in the game and the players that take those type of actions have no place in the game.”
Kariya, who played in the BCHL with Penticton and at the University of Maine, went to a Stanley Cup finals with the Ducks and won Olympic gold with Canada in 2002. But he says his most memorable hockey moment was playing with the Canadian Olympic team as a teenager in 1994 and winning silver at Lillehammer.
“That was the last time amateurs represented our country. Growing up as a kid, a lot of people said I was too small to play in the NHL, but maybe the big, Olympic sheet might be a better fit for me.
“To achieve that . . . I can remember it like it was yesterday, walking into the arena for the opening ceremonies with the figure skaters, the bobsledders, the speed skaters and just being part of a bigger team. It was just an incredible experience. To me that ranks at the top.”
At Thursday night’s formal Hall of Fame banquet, he was inducted alongside several others, including longtime North Shore resident Denny Veitch in the builder's category for his lifetime's worth of contributions to soccer, rugby and football at both the professional and amateur levels and legendary North Shore Twins baseball coach John Haar who is also a member of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.
“It’s just an incredible honor to be amongst so many great athletes that have meant so much to our province,” said Kariya. “I still get chills about it. It’s just incredible . . . a humbling experience.”
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