The following article appeared in the Boston Globe Friday, March 26,
1993 and was written by Allen Lessels.
 
MAINE ATTRACTION
Only a freshman, Paul Kariya has bedazzled fans, foes, pros
 
ORONO, MAINE - The University of Maine had just torched Northeastern for
eight goals in 13 power-play chances during their first-round Hockey East
playoff series.
   What gives with that Maine power play?
   "It's a sky-is-falling type of thing," said Huskies coach Ben Smith.
"They put so much pressure on you, you feel like you're really being
buried."
   And how do they do that?
   "They've got a No. 9," Smith said.  "I don't know if you've noticed him.
He gets everyone all stirred up.  He gives them the confidence to play the
way they play."
   No. 9 is, of course, Paul Kariya.
   Kid Kariya.
   He rode into Orono and Hockey East last fall, a freshman from Vancouver
with a huge advance billing, being compared to Wayne Gretzky.  Now, on the
eve of the NCAA national tournament, it looks as if his arrival was perhaps
underplayed.
   "He's the best player who's ever played college hockey," Maine coach
Shawn Walsh said yesterday.  "If not that, he's right there with the best
two or three who have ever played the game.  What makes me feel he might be
the best is the age at which he's done it."
   Kariya turns 19 in October.
   Excuse Walsh his biases.
   Boston University's Jack Parker, the one coach to beat the Black Bears
this year, had seen enough by the fourth meeting.  Against only two players
in his 20 years, Parker said, had he assigned someone to shadow an opponent.
Kariya made it three.
   Bruins scout Gordie Clark says Kariya has "Adam Oates' kind of vision.
He'll look one way and all of a sudden fire it the other way onto somebody's
stick.  He knows where it's going before he gets the puck."
   Tomorrow Kariya leads Maine, the No. 1-ranked team in the country, into
the NCAA quarterfinals against the winner of tonight's Clarkson-Minnesota
game.  A couple of weeks after the season ends, he will join Canada's
entry in the world championships.  Then it's on to the NHL entry draft in
Quebec, where some say he won't last past the fifth pick.  Next fall,
Walsh hopes, Kariya will be at Maine, perhaps leave for the Olympics after
the first semester, then come back.
   Last weekend Kariya said he "definitely" planned to play again at Maine.
   There will be plenty of time to debate that after the season ends.
Maine hopes that will be with a celebratory skate around the Bradley Center
ice in Milwaukee a week from tomorrow.
   Last fall Walsh said Maine, picked No. 1 in the preseason, was way
overrated.  Don't expect a record to match last year's 31-4-2, he cautioned.
   Maine is 39-1-2 and was undefeated until late February.
   The Black Bears have maybe the nation's best two goaltenders in Garth
Snow and Mike Dunham - Walsh says he won't announce his starter until
shortly before the game - high-powered forwards, and a solid, experienced
defense.
   And the Kid.
   Check the numbers.  Kariya has 24 goals and leads the nation in assists
(69) and points (93).
   Backers of one highly rated ECAC team recently questioned the number of
assists.  Someone must be hallucinating, they suggested.
   Check the tape, said Maine sports information director Matt Bourque.
And, he bets, on most of the assists, Kariya made the last, deciding pass.
   What a Kariya Year it's been.
   "It seems like yesterday when I was on my recruiting visit," Kariya
said.  "Time flies when you're having fun, and we're having a ball here."
   Run that tape.
   Watch the shot Kariya blasts past UMass-Lowell's Dwayne Roloson.  Watch
him circle behind the net and swing back out, stop and fire a pass to Jim
Montgomery beside the net for an easy goal at New Hampshire.  Watch him set
up maybe 25 of Cal Ingraham's 44 goals.
   "Not too many guys have that kind of sixth sense," Ingraham said.  "He
gets you the puck."
   Said Montgomery, "Sometimes you sit back on the ice and watch when you
should be moving.  In many ways, he's like Magic Johnson or Larry Bird.
The no-look passes.  A lot of the stuff, a lot of people would think he's
hot-dogging.  But he's not.  It's his way of getting it done."
   Then look for the smaller details.  A burst of speed and Kariya has
drawn another penalty.  He glances quickly at the clock, with seconds left
in a period against Northeastern, and hurries play into the Huskies' end
for one more shot on goal.  Late in a period against Lowell, he signals
a Maine defenseman to stay back and kill the clock.
   "It's his mental skills combined with his physical skills that make him
so good," Walsh said.  "He thinks like a coach while operating at top
speed.  Very, very few players can do that."
   Once this season, Walsh said, he lit into Kariya on the bench.
   "He made a weak play mentally," Walsh said.  "He was reading off the
offense when he should have been reading off the defense."
   Walsh said he needed to show that Kariya wasn't getting star treatment.
   "Instead of getting flustered," Walsh said, "he looked straight ahead,
exhaled and got refocused for his next shift.  He put it behind him.  I
admired how he handled it.  That's what makes him tick."
   Last weekend, Walsh said, a BU player was in Kariya's face after one
play and Kariya skated away as if no one was there.
   He owns the spotlight and no one seems to mind.  Ingraham scores more
than 40 goals and is left off the Hockey East All-Star teams, apparently
because selectors figure Kariya did all the work.  No big deal, says
Ingraham.  The Ferraros, Chris and Peter, are two of the highest-scoring
freshmen in the country - but distant second runners-up on their own team.
Mike Latendresse, another of the potent Maine forwards, gives up a spot
on the power play when he knows Kariya is ready to double-shift.
Montgomery says everyone should have the honor of playing alongside
someone so talented.  Recently, Montgomery and Kariya quietly visited a
hospital on their own.
   No, Walsh said, he can't think of anything Kariya can't do.
   NHL people talk about Kariya being one of the top five picks in the
draft, Clark said.  Of the top forwards, he is the only one under 6 feet -
the Maine media guide says he is 5-11, 175 pounds, and that may be pushing
it - and it will be interesting to see if size costs him spots in the draft.
   It hasn't been a problem yet.
   "You always hear about how much size counts," said Sharon Kariya, Paul's
mother, back in North Vancouver.  "Paul was always small, and he was
always playing with older kids.  It really didn't seem to matter."
   Didn't matter when he traded the figure skates he started with at age 4 -
"we felt it was real important to have good edge control for the things he
was going to be doing on skates," his mother said - for hockey skates a
couple of years later.  Didn't matter when he left home for junior hockey
three years ago.  He captained the Penticton Panthers, a Tier Two team, the
last two years and last season had 45 goals and 87 assists in 41 games.
   And it certainly didn't matter wthis year after he passed up BU and
Harvard and landed in Orono.
   Playing in the Olympics, said Kariya, has long been a dream, and he
eventually wants to play in the NHL.  But not before his time.
   "Right now I don't see me playing in the NHL next year," he said.  "I've
got a lot to do, not only in strength but skillwise.  I never want to be in
a situation where I have to struggle to play."
   Now that is hard to imagine.
(end)
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Mike Machnik    [log in to unmask]   Color Voice of the Merrimack Warriors
alternate address days: [log in to unmask]             *HMN*  11/13/93
(Any opinions expressed above are strictly those of the poster.)