Paul Kariya Olympic Bound?
Why Paul Kariya Should Make Canada's Olympic Hockey Team
The 2010 Winter Olympiad officially gets underway February 12th but, for many Canadians, the games don't really start until four days later. On February 16th, Team Canada begins its quest for its seventh gold medal when it opens preliminary round play against Norway.
Team Canada's Olympic Hockey Roster
For the past three years, fans across Canada have contemplated, discussed and created their ideal roster. In bars, living rooms, offices and cars, fans, partially out of excitement and partially to erase the bitter memories of a seventh-place finish in Torino, the Team Canada roster has been drawn up and dismantled millions of times.
For the most part, the roster is set. 46 players participated in an orientation camp in August and, from there, the the group was trimmed down. There were 23 forwards at that camp. Among them were incumbents, new faces, locks and longshots. Regardless of who ends up on the team, there is no question Canada will compete for a medal.
The great thing about having the Olympics in the middle of the NHL season is that there is always opportunity for players, previously under the radar, to play their way onto the team with a stellar first half.
Curiously absent from that list? Paul Kariya. Or perhaps not so curious given that Kariya was limited to just 11 games last year with a hip injury.
Paul Kariya's Health
Having played 82 games in just 7 of his 13 seasons and 5 of his past 6, Paul Kariya has proven to be durable during his illustrious career. Last season, Kariya roared out of the gate, collecting 15 points in 11 games. In that 11th game, however, he was hit awkwardly and his season came to a crashing halt. "My lower body was going one way and my upper body was going the other way and I felt a pop in my hip/quad area", Kariya recently told ESPN.com. "I didn't think anything of it".
The numbers wouldn't tell you, but, at the time, Kariya was already playing with a cracked bone in his foot. After the hit, he decided to take some time off to give both ailments a chance to heal. When he returned to practice a week later, he was still having trouble with his lower body strength. "I had basically zero strength in my hip in my left side", he recalls.
An MRI told the left-winger all he needed to know, revealing that 90 percent of his quad muscles had torn away from his hip bone. After weeks without any improvement, doctors told Kariya he needed surgery. "When the doctor says you're looking a at a hip replacement if you don't have it done, then it kind of wakes you up. I didn't have a choice" he told ESPN, adding "I couldn't play novice hockey, let alone an NHL game."
As it turns out, Kariya required not one but two separate operations to repair his hip. After a season of rehab and a summer of conditioning, Kariya's hip is fully recovered. "It's like having new legs", he quipped to ESPN. All things considered, the injury might have been a blessing in disguise. In the same interview, Blues bench boss Andy Murray figures the surgeries "probably added three years to his career".
Paul Kariya's Production
As Kariya sat on the shelf in 2009 and limped to a 16 goal, 65 point campaign the year before, he vanished from discussion of the game's elite. It's partly owing to the fact that his last two NHL stops have been in Nashville and St. Louis, hardly hockey hotbeds. The numbers, however, don't lie. Kariya has twice eclipsed the 100 point mark and has potted 40 or more three times. A career point-per-game player (953 points in 925 games), Kariya is confident he can continue to produce at a high clip and uses his point totals through the first 11 games of last year as evidence, adding "that was with some serious damage in my hips, so I know I still have the ability to produce offensively".
Just a month into this season, the proof is in the pudding. Kariya is second on the Blues with 7 points in 11 games.
Paul Kariya's Olympic Career
Kariya has twice donned the maple leaf at the Olympics, representing Canada in 1994 and 2002. He's put up decent numbers. In 14 games, he has 6 goals and 11 points. After being overlooked for the disaster in Torino, Kariya wants desperately to be part of a turnaround for his country, saying "..the Olympics would be something that I would love to do. If I'm playing well enough to get back on the radar that would be fantastic."
Kariya got an early audition as the Blue opened up the NHL season with back to back games against the Detroit Red Wings in Stockholm. Wings' coach Mike Babcock will be behind Canada's bench in February, so Kariya had an opportunity to show his stuff directly to the man who holds the key to his future. Kariya was masterful, scoring 2 goals and adding a pair of assists to lead the Blues to a 2-game sweep.
The passion burns, the points continue to mount and Paul Kariya feels like he's playing on a new set of legs.
Kariya and Mario Lemieux celebrate gold in 2002
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