I agree that Kariya didn't get much of a chance in the playoffs (since he spent most of his prime on weak teams, lacking depth). I also agree that Kariya (and the 2nd line as a whole) is being underrated in this thread.
But I've always been critical of Kariya's performance in the 2003 playoffs. He wasn't quite at his peak anymore, but he still had a very strong regular season (2nd team all-star, 13th in scoring). He led the Ducks in scoring by 22 points in the regular season, but in the spring, he was (narrowly) outscored by Petr Sykora and a geriatric Adam Oates. He barely outscored Mike Leclerc (a scrappy utility winger with a career high of 44 points).
Kariya had a streak of 7 points in 17 games, which is ridiculously bad for a HOF player in his prime. 4 points in 7 games in the SC Finals isn't great (even against the suffocating Devils), but it's even worse when you consider that three of those were in one game (he had 1 point in the other 6 games).
I view 2003 as a missed opportunity for Kariya. Giguere was historic, but Kariya finally had a chance to carry his team on a deep playoff run. I know he had that memorable goal (which he scored in the finals after Stevens flattened him earlier in the game), but I found him completely underwhelming that spring. (I get that the opponents tried to shut him down because he was the Ducks' best skater, but you'd still expect more for someone who was being compared to Jagr, Selanne and Bure only a few years earlier).
The 2003 run is a bit off-topic for this thread, as Kariya was several years past his peak by that time, but an interesting case study in the dynamics of the DPE.
I don’t recall being surprised by Kariya’s performance in that run. Yes he was Anaheim’s top scorer by a lot, but not because he scored a ton — 81 pts was good for 13th that season, about average for a team leader. The gap was due to Anaheim being
that low-scoring of a team. One of the worst in the league offensively, largely because it really was a lineup of glue guys plus an a post-Suter version of Kariya. A team construction comparable to if last year’s Blue Jackets had more mid-range support players and made it into the playoffs. Going into the playoffs it’s natural to look at that construction and think, “this won’t end well for them”. But then Giguere happened.
What’s really easy to forget is that New Jersey was actually they
worst defense they faced in that run — 15th in GA, compared to Dallas (1st), Minnesota (4th) and Detroit (9th). So just to get to experience the wide-open firewagon style of the Dead Puck Era Devils, they had to go through three teams that were chasing records for not allowing any offense at all, particularly Minnesota.
So putting that all together: the Ducks had no business winning anything that year, especially against the teams they faced. They put up 1.93 G/60 which is auto-loss territory. All their opponents needed to do was shadow Kariya and score two goals. But then Giguere goes and posts an incomprehensible 1.65, so a quiet first-round out turns into that extended run to within a game of the Cup.
I agree that it was a missed opportunity of sorts, in the sense that it was his second and final chance to build a legacy in a long playoff run. But what I see there is the impact of him being singularly targeted and smothered by the kind of defense you’d expect from 4 of the league’s top defensive units in the 2003 playoffs (of all times). A predictable stat line would be 4 games, 2-0-2 and nobody remembers it. Instead, Gigurere did his thing and it became a 21-game slog. Other than the obvious concussion from Stevens, I don’t recall him facing injuries or anything. It was just rodeo-style defense for 2 months against a guy who couldn’t just power through it like a Jagr or Forsberg.
One other thought on this: Kariya’s goal scoring dropped in the playoffs, but what really killed his numbers was a lack of assists. If he maintained his usual 1:2 ratio he’d have had 18 points for a huge lead over the rest of the team. Instead his ratio was exactly 1g:1a, an indicator of just how much he was being targeted and prevented from creating anything for his linemates. Giguere getting that team as far as he did was a miracle, and I still have reservations that it might have actually been the best goalie hot streak of all time.
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