End Your Workday With Some Paul Kariya Highlights
Paul Kariya had his jersey retired in Anaheim last night. I would never go around calling Paul Kariya “underrated” because the man is in the Hockey Hall of Fame for Gretzky’s sake. But as far as superstars in the league’s history go, I feel like Kariya often goes overlooked. That’s for a variety of different reasons. Unfortunately he was never able to win a Cup. And then he also had plenty of issues with injuries and concussions that cut his career relatively short. He ended his career 11 games shy of 1000 career GP. But in those 989 career games, he put up a matching 989 career points. An undersized kid from British Columbia who then took his talents to the University of Maine, ending up a perfect point per game player in the NHL for damn near 1000 games. 402 career goals. 587 career assists, plenty of them to his buddy Teemu. The career of Paul Kariya may not be as illustrious as some other greats of the game, but I will pay however much money Paul Kariya made throughout the entirety of his career to anybody who can say a bad word about the guy and actually mean it. Everybody loved Paul Kariya and it’s just a shame that he was playing during the 90s and early 2000s because I think if Paul Kariya came into the league today, he’d have an even better career and more importantly he’d have an even healthier career.
But either way. Paul Kariya earned the shit out of that jersey retirement last night in Anaheim. So to keep it rolling for here, let’s end the workday with some of the best moments from the career of Paul Kariya.