Book blast: A bad chapter for beloved Ducks icon Teemu Selanne

ANAHEIM, Calif. — One person looked bad in Teemu Selanne’s blasting of Bruce Boudreau, and it wasn’t Bruce Boudreau.

Selanne is beloved. He is beloved for the class he showed throughout his stellar NHL career. He is beloved so much that #TeemuForever became a popular hashtag on Twitter.

But nothing lasts forever.

Selanne retired after last season. In his authorized biography “Teemu,” he complained about playing time and detailed an incident with Boudreau in the playoffs. He said he would still be playing if the Anaheim Ducks had “any other coach.” He even said “it would have been wrong if we had won the Stanley Cup with a coach like that.”

The book came out Thursday. While Selanne was signing copies in Helsinki, the Ducks were at the Honda Center going through physicals and preparing for training camp.

Selanne came off like a star player who couldn’t see himself for what he was late in his career. He seemed not to understand that a few pointed comments about his old coach would overshadow his life story. He left his former team answering questions about him instead of, say, the addition of Ryan Kesler.

“T’s left a pretty big legacy here – in hockey, for that matter – and the last thing you want to do is put a burn on that,” said Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf. “It is what it is. T’s an emotional guy. He’s a passionate player. I’m not surprised at the words he said, because I heard a lot of them before, but I didn’t really expect them to come out in a book.”

Boudreau took the high road.

“Hey, listen, he was one of my favorite guys,” Boudreau said. “I’ve always liked him and admired him. I don’t think anybody here has ever heard me say a bad word about him – ever – and that’ll continue.”

The context matters here. Selanne is proud. He is competitive. He has always been hot-headed behind the scenes, even though he is known for his smiling face in public. He had let it be known he wanted a greater role. He had just never gone off like this.

“That’s why he was such a great hockey player,” said Ducks general manager Bob Murray. “That’s why he was who he was. He wanted to play. He wanted to be on the power play. He wanted all these things.”

Selanne had been working on the book with journalist Ari Mennander for years. But he apparently made the controversial comments over dinner the night of May 16 – right after the Ducks had suffered a 6-2 loss, right after they had been eliminated in the second round by the Los Angeles Kings, right after his career had ended.

Emotions, obviously, were raw.

“I understand the frustration,” Boudreau said. “You have to understand when he said those things. It was right after Game 7, and I could see the frustration [in] everybody. If you had talked to me at that time, I would have been frustrated about certain things as well. …

“I understand where it comes from. I didn’t like to hear that in a book, but I understand. And I’m sure it was in frustration more than anything else.”

Selanne released a statement via the Ducks on Thursday night: "In frustration, I made several comments following our Game 7 loss to the Kings that I shouldn’t have said. As I’ve said many times, Bruce is a nice guy, but we simply had a different view on my role with the Ducks.

"I’m sorry if I hurt Bruce or anyone else, that was not my intent."

Selanne might not have realized what he said. He might not have realized the impact his words would have. He might want to take them back if he could.

But he said them, didn’t take them back before the book was published and can’t take them back now.

And then there’s this: The Ducks finished with 116 points, most in the Western Conference, the stronger of the conferences. They were one point behind the Boston Bruins, winners of the Presidents’ Trophy as the top regular-season team. They blew a 3-2 series lead to the Kings and got blown out in Game 7, but they did take the eventual Stanley Cup champs to seven games. They were deep at forward, with young players pushing.

Selanne was a future Hall of Famer, but he was a 43-year-old future Hall of Famer on a team succeeding with him in a reduced role.

To say he disagreed with Boudreau? That’s fine. To say he would still be playing if the Ducks had a different coach? That’s delusional. To say “it would have been wrong” to win the Cup with a coach like Boudreau? That’s petty. That’s bitter. That’s crossing the line.

Selanne said Boudreau promised him about 15 minutes per night and power-play time. He ended up averaging 14:07 and falling off the top unit. “Everything started well, but then my ice time got smaller, just like the previous year,” Selanne said. “Anything Boudreau had said wasn’t true.”

Murray said he told Selanne before the season started he wouldn’t play back-to-back games. “That was my agreement with Teemu,” Murray said.

Boudreau said he made no promises. “I said, ‘You’re going to start out as the No. 2 right winger, and I’m going to start you out on the first power-play unit, and we’re going to go for a little while and we’re going to see how that goes,’ ” Boudreau said. “I said, ‘T, we’re probably going to make a lot of changes. I go up and down the lineup a lot.’ ”

At times, Selanne played well. At times, he didn’t. “That’s why we didn’t play him on the back-to-backs,” Boudreau said. “We wanted to make sure he was well-rested for every game. As great of shape as he was in – and he was in great shape – he was still 43.”

Selanne said he told Getzlaf several times he should “take care of the situation as captain” and was surprised Getzlaf didn’t react “in any way.”

“I was disappointed to hear that, and obviously I’m going to have to talk to him about it as friends,” Getzlaf said. “But Teemu had numerous discussions with me last season – and the season before, for that matter – and as a captain, it’s my job to kind of weed through things that I can go to the coach with and talk to and things that I can’t.

“Teemu doesn’t know all the discussions that I’ve had about him in the last two years, and there’s been many times I’ve gone to bat for him. And there’s some times where I just have to step away and let the coach and the GM make their decision.”

Selanne said he blew up at Boudreau when he found out he would be scratched for Game 4 of the Ducks’ first-round series with the Dallas Stars. He waited until everyone else left the ice and skated up to Boudreau.

“I yelled at him right to his face with what I was thinking,” Selanne said. “I asked him what he has against me. I told him that since he became our coach, he has not respected me one bit. You never put me on ice when we play 5-on-3 or 4-on-4 or when we are one goal behind in the end of the game. Be honest for one time and answer.

“He just stammered that decisions were not his alone and it was a group decision. I asked which group and he said GM and scouts. I yelled at him, ‘Whoa, what kind of a coach are you if you don’t even decide the lineup?’ He tried to skate away but I just yelled that I wasn’t finished.

“I told Boudreau if you ever want to win something in a playoffs, you’re going to need me. Nobody else wants to win as much as me.”

Boudreau’s version: “It was a really tough thing. I don’t think any coach wants to sit out a superstar. So at the end, I was talking to him. He raised his voice a bit. All I did was tell him, ‘OK. Not so loud. Let’s talk like men.’ Then he stopped, and then he caught himself, because he’s an emotional, emotional guy. And then we just continued to talk, and then we went off the ice.”

Why did Boudreau tell Selanne that decisions were not his alone? Boudreau said that it was actually out of respect for Selanne. Had this been an average player, Boudreau just would have made his decision. But because it was someone “very iconic,” he wanted to make sure he was doing the right thing.

“The bigger the player, obviously it’s a tougher decision for him, and he’ll discuss it with me,” Murray said. “But you always back your coach. You have to back your coach. And we do.”

Selanne said for the first time in his career the players didn’t see the coach at the exit meetings. “He probably sensed that there was so many guys who would have just wanted to yell everything to him,” Selanne said.

Murray said it wasn’t that Boudreau didn’t show up. It was that he decided to do the exit interviews himself. “We all know Teemu,” Murray said. “He’s such a competitor, and he was frustrated. His last year didn’t go quite the way he wanted it to go, and we knew he was frustrated at the end of the year. It’s just Teemu being Teemu. We talked a little bit before he went to Finland about things. He was still frustrated then. We had a good talk.”

In the end, Selanne will still be beloved. The Ducks will still retire his No. 8 on Jan. 11 before they play the Winnipeg Jets.

This doesn’t alter his legacy or damage his reputation for class. “He’s always been a great ambassador for the game, and I’m sure he’ll make things right in some way or another and we’ll move on,” Getzlaf said.

This is only a small part of his story. “I’m sure the rest of the book has got a lot of other stuff in it, too,” Getzlaf said. “This is just one chapter in that.”

But right now, Selanne has made it hard to turn the page.

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