Ducks, Kilger Have Incentive to Reach a Deal : Hockey: Bonuses are holding up contract talks. But keeping rookie off the ice will hurt both sides.

ANAHEIM — As long as the Mighty Ducks complete the final strokes on a contract with Chad Kilger by late tonight, he’ll soon be following in Paul Kariya’s footsteps . . . right down the hall to Kariya’s old room.

At 18, Kilger has decided he’ll board with the same family Kariya lived with last season so he won’t be striking out on his own for the first time as he tries to adjust to the NHL.

But no matter what the Ducks’ ultimate contract offer to Kilger is, one thing is certain: He won’t be able to follow Kariya in that regard. Both players were selected fourth overall in the NHL draft, Kariya in 1993 and Kilger in July. But while Kariya signed a three-year deal for a guaranteed $6.5 million, Kilger will be guaranteed only $2.55 million because of the NHL’s new entry-level salary cap, the major concession won by management in last season’s labor dispute.

“I don’t look at it that way. He got what he did because that was how the market was then,” Kilger said. “I’m happy with what I’ll be getting. That was a different time.”

The final hang-ups in negotiations are about performance bonuses, the only remaining avenue for first-year players to make anything resembling the megabuck salaries won by rookies of the past.

What Duck General Manager Jack Ferreira and agent Larry Kelly are quibbling about as they stare down each other with the 11th hour approaching is not so much money as principle. But when both sides have such an enormous amount to lose by not reaching a deal, it’s more than probable that someone’s resolve will dissolve by the NHL deadline of 11:59 p.m. tonight. (And given the NHL’s history, it’s also possible the deadline isn’t hard and fast.)

Ferreira took an appropriate step when he upped his offer to $850,000 a year, the maximum allowable under the cap, after Kilger finished as the Ducks’ second-leading scorer in the preseason. But he hasn’t been willing to agree to bonuses because, he said, they “have never been given before,” and it’s not fair to other players.

Ferreira said the bonuses Kelly is seeking are less than $100,000 for each milestone, and Kelly said Kilger and his family “are not looking for multimillion” bonuses, suggesting they were more along the lines of $20,000 increments. The NHL mandates minimum standards for bonuses starting at 20 goals and 35 assists.

“We just think we’ve been more than reasonable on the bonuses,” Kelly said. “The bottom line is if he becomes a 30-goal scorer, which is more than they ever expected, then why shouldn’t he be compensated?”

In the end, the guaranteed $850,000 is more compensation than Kilger could have imagined last season, when he got $40 a week spending money as an Ontario Hockey League junior player, boarding or “billeted” with a family in Kingston, Ontario.

His comfort with such an arrangement is one reason he sought out Gary and Teri Frederick of Orange, the couple who rented their grown son’s room to Kariya last season. A few days ago, Kariya and Kilger joined the Frederick family for dinner.

“I’m 18 years old and I’m not ready to live on my own and do all the things that need to be done,” Kilger said. “It will help my adjustment so I can concentrate on hockey without worrying about laundry, dishes and cooking. Scratch that one, I hear I have to do my own laundry.”