VANCOUVER – There’s no blond in his clean-cut, jet black hair.

And he doesn’t look particularly tanned. But Paul Kariya, one of the most exciting hockey players to ever come out of B.C and a 2015 inductee into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame, is a fully invested California surfer dude these days.

“Yeah, four or five days a week,” the North Vancouver native said Wednesday of his days riding the surf with friends and former NHL teammates like Scott Niedermayer.

Word is that Kariya is pretty good, too.

“For someone who isn’t a lifelong surfer, I would find it hard to believe someone could be better,” Niedermayer said a couple of years ago.

Teemu Selanne, another ex-Anaheim Ducks teammate, says Kariya reads all the how-to-books and watches surfing videos. “He wants to be as good as he can be.”

“Very exaggerated. I can barely stand up,” said a laughing Kariya after taking part in a formal unveiling of his Hall of Fame plaque.

“My friend says the best surfer in the water is the guy who’s having the most fun. So under those conditions, I’m a good surfer. But under normal conditions, not really.”

Kariya picked up the sport during the NHL lockout several years ago. It was a good way to stay active and healthy.

“And now there’s a lot of retired players that live in the area and you get a chance to kind of be in the hockey community, stay in shape and you get that camaraderie that you get playing hockey.”

Some would suggest he’s only barely part of the hockey community these days. He hasn’t played any pickup or old timers hockey since playing his last NHL game with St. Louis in the spring of 2010.

“I skated with my niece once. I do a little bit of roller blading, but I haven’t played hockey since I retired.”

He’s also rarely seen at the rink or around the Ducks franchise with which he starred – he missed Selanne’s jersey retirement in January to go on a family ski trip – and has often been referred to as reclusive and mysterious.

Selanne said two years ago that he senses Kariya is “bitter” about the way his career ended at age 36 as a result of too many concussions.

Kariya insists he hasn’t been “divorced from hockey."

“Some players when they’re done playing they almost have a career path into coaching or scouting or being a general manager. My love was for playing. If I could still play, I’d still be playing out there.”

Picked fourth overall in the 1993 NHL draft, the swift, skilled Kariya recorded 989 points (402 goals) in 989 NHL regular season games with the Ducks (nine seasons), the Avalanche (one), the Predators (two) and the Blues (three). He was a three-time first-team all-star and a two-time winner of the Lady Byng trophy.

But the big hits he took – pole-axed by Chicago’s Gary Suter in 1998, the head shot from Scott Stevens in Game 6 of the 2003 Stanley Cup finals and a 2009 elbow to head from Buffalo’s Patrick Kaleta -- took a toll.

After sitting out the 2010-2011 season to try to recover from the effects of the multiple concussions, he announced his retirement.

At the time, he was sharply critical of the league for not doing enough to eliminate head shots. He called for 10-game suspensions for first-time offenders and fines to owners and coaches.

“We’re still talking about it, so I think there’s still an issue there. To me, targetted head shots have no place in the game and the players that take those type of actions have no place in the game.”

Kariya, who played in the BCHL with Penticton and at the University of Maine, went to a Stanley Cup finals with the Ducks and won Olympic gold with Canada in 2002. But he says his most memorable hockey moment was playing with the Canadian Olympic team as a teenager in 1994 and winning silver at Lillehammer.

“That was the last time amateurs represented our country. Growing up as a kid, a lot of people said I was too small to play in the NHL, but maybe the big, Olympic sheet might be a better fit for me.

“To achieve that . . . I can remember it like it was yesterday, walking into the arena for the opening ceremonies with the figure skaters, the bobsledders, the speed skaters and just being part of a bigger team. It was just an incredible experience. To me that ranks at the top.”

At Thursday night’s formal Hall of Fame banquet, he is being inducted alongside four-time Olympic speedskating medalist Denny Morrison, field hockey player Shelley Winter Andrews and wheelchair rugby’s Garrett Hickling among others.

“It’s just an incredible honor to be amongst so many great athletes that have meant so much to our province,” said Kariya. “I still get chills about it. It’s just incredible . . . a humbling experience.”

FUNDING PARTNER NEEDED

The irony isn’t lost on wheelchair rugby pioneer Duncan Campbell.

Just as he’s formally inducted into the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame as one of the sport’s inventors and for his recruitment of people with a disability into wheelchair sport, Campbell is fighting to keep alive a crucial program that does just that.

He is the national co-ordinator for Bridging the Gap, a 20-year-old program which works with provincial and national sport organizations to employ recruitment co-ordinators in the provinces.

But funding cuts and a re-direction of funding to high-performance programs means BTG, which has an annual budget of about $300,000, could be shut down if a funding partner is not found by June 30.

“The program is the first, and sometimes, the only contact that people with disabilities have with wheelchair sports,” Campbell said in a release. “We visit rehab hospitals, conduct Have a Go days in the community, loan out equipment and do basically whatever it takes to get a person with a disability connected to a sport that could change his or her life.

“They get some confidence. Before long, they have a job or they’re living independently.”

Cathy Cadieux, executive director of the Canadian Wheelchair Sports Association, which governs wheelchair rugby, said Campbell “has been a busy beaver trying to access grants, applying everywhere.” But he has come up empty.

Cadieux says she will go to the Canadian Paralympic Committee “for an ask. But their strategic plan has shifted more to the high-performance level and that’s where they should be focused.

“They’ve been generous to us in rugby, but it’s a bit of a tough ask to say ‘you’re doing great work here, but can you do this, too?’ I’m not confident in what the response will be.”

Cadieux and Campbell are appealing to corporate Canada, but Cadieux acknowledged it’s “definitely sexier” to be involved with a national Paralympic team than to be part of “a photo op with an individual sitting in a sport chair for the first time.”

Both Cadieux and Campbell say it’s clear the program works.

“We just need a funding partner to come on board,” said Campbell.

Said Cadieux: “What we really need is a fairy godmother.”

gkingston@vancouversun.com

gkingston@vancouversun.com