Free Wayne Gretzky's Ghost by Roy Macgregor Page A

the ice, it has not been such a simple matter. He is only twenty-one, and they say he is cool. Aloof. In a recent Southam poll of Canadian hockey writers, his name surprisingly was on a list of those few players in the game who are generally considered “jerks.”
    This early and unexpected image problem has perplexed and, in some cases, angered those who know him best, the officials who have worked with him and the players who have played with him. Gauthier considers him “one of the nicest kids I have ever met.” Canadian Hockey Association people find him dedicated, loyal and selfless. While several Canadian stars bailed out on the world championships, claiming everything from tiredness to lack of contract, Kariya immediately said yes, despite the fact that he had just spent ten hours in a dentist’s chair getting repairs to four broken teeth.
    The focus is hockey, and it leaves very little room for anything else. He doesn’t read the papers or listen to the radio, and one suspects it is because he has not trusted what can be said about celebrity in a world that both craves and criticizes it. “I don’t go out and try and create an image,” he says. “I’m a pretty quiet person. You’re not going to get an outrageous quote from me.”
    But what you will get is an insight into the game that only Gretzky before him has been able to offer. Gretzky once said he didn’t go to where the puck was, but to where the puck will be. Kariya says: “Hockey is a lot like chess. You have certain moves that are always repeated and, knowing that, you can plan your next move.”
    He is convinced that hockey prowess is a learned, rather than an inherited, ability. “My father never played the game,” he says,“so you can’t say it’s natural. It’s all learned.” He studies hockey as a scientist might study cultures. He talks to players and builds mental scouting cards on what everyone might do in a certain situation, just like baseball managers will study the opposition. He studies film to see how Gretzky would attack, how Lemieux will pass. When he discovered Bobby Orr on film, he found the secrets of acceleration.
    â€œYou’re going to be a lot more effective,” he says, “if the defence has your speed pegged at seventy–eighty and then you can suddenly jack it up to a hundred. Bobby Orr had four to five speeds. I’ve only got two.”
    So far. But he is also twenty-one, and on the verge of hockey superstardom. He will need to acquire more tricks of the trade, both in Bobby Orr acceleration and in Wayne Gretzky’s renowned ability to pull out of something that seems to be spinning out of control.
    Gretzky in fact met with Kariya, by arrangement, at the NHL All-Star Game in Boston, and they talked about image and responsibility and being ready for the spotlight when it finds you. Teemu Selanne, perhaps hockey’s friendliest star, has been brought to Anaheim both to help Kariya score points and to help him adjust to being in the limelight.
    There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that this slight twenty-one-year-old who never imagined he would even be here is being groomed to become the game’s next big star. Paul Kariya did not have a Walter Gretzky to warn him that he’d be on display all his life, with people watching for every mistake. He didn’t have that because he was never a ten-year-old phenomenon, and his father did not understand that world of hockey. He did, however, understand responsibility.
    â€œWhat my parents taught me,” he says, “is that it doesn’t matter what you do in life. Whether you’re a businessman or a garbage man, you’ve got to be a good person.”
    And that, he believes, will have to be enough.
    Any assessment of Paul Kariya’s career would have to take bad luck into consideration. He left the Ducks before they won the Stanley Cup in 2007, playing for