Paul Kariya

Kariya's and the Mighty Ducks' best season may have been 1996-97. In that year, with the dynamic duo of Kariya on left wing and his good friend Teemu Selanne on right wing, as well as the inspiring coaching of Ron Wilson, the Mighty Ducks made it to the playoffs for the first time in the club's history. Selanne and Kariya were the second and third highest scorers, respectively, in the NHL that season, and although the team was knocked out in the second round of the playoffs, the future looked bright. "I've played with a lot of great players, guys like Eric Lindros, and we've had good chemistry," Kariya told Sports Illustrated reporter Austin Murphy at the time, "but not the kind of chemistry Teemu and I have. It's so much fun playing the game when you know exactly what the other person's going to do."

However, Kariya's career did not go smoothly after that. In 1997, he missed the first thirty-two games of the season because of a contract dispute. Then he suffered a major concussion on February 1, 1998, when Chicago Blackhawks player Gary Suter cross-checked him on the jaw. Kariya spent months recovering, missing the last twenty-eight games of the NHL season that year as well as the Nagano Olympics. For a while it looked as if Kariya's career might be over, but he was finally cleared to begin practicing again that August.

The Mighty Ducks, who performed miserably after losing their leading scorer, signed enforcer Stu Grimson, known as the "Grim Reaper," and assigned him with making opposing players think twice about taking cheap shots at Kariya. Kariya himself, painfully aware of how close he had been to losing his career after that concussion, said that he would be less hesitant to assert himself in on-ice conflicts. However, the rest of the Mighty Ducks lineup was coming apart. Coach Ron Wilson went to the Washington Capitals after the 1997 playoffs, and Selanne was traded to San Jose during the 2000-01 season. By the 2001-02 season, Kariya's $10 million per year contract was almost thirty percent of the Mighty Ducks' $35 million total payroll, and opposing teams had discovered that all they needed to do to beat the Mighty Ducks was to prevent Kariya from scoring.