Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Selanne rips Boudreau in book

San Jose Sharks v Anaheim Ducks

ANAHEIM, CA - APRIL 06: Teemu Selanne #8 of the Anaheim Ducks waits to face off against the San Jose Sharks at Honda Center on April 6, 2011 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

Getty Images

Teemu Selanne will go down as one of the greatest players of his generation, but his playing time declined significantly in the shortened 2013 campaign and even further last season. That could be written off as just a byproduct of the fact that he was 43 years old by the time he hung up his skates, but that doesn’t mean he took the reduced role lightly.

In a Finnish biography that Selanne collaborated on, the future Hall of Famer argued that Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau “was not appreciative of me one iota” and he felt humiliated by the decision to make him a healthy scratch for the fourth game of Anaheim’s 2014 first round series against the Dallas Stars, per the Los Angeles Times.

“It’s over. I don’t even want to talk about the whole thing,” Selanne said back in April after being scratched. “I told Bruce it’s a new day, the series starts now. There are no hard feelings.”

What we know now is that it was a different story in private. Selanne had been promised a larger role after leading Finland to a bronze medal in the Olympics, but that didn’t last long. He then confronted Boudreau after being scratched and that marked the last time the two spoke. It’s worth adding that Selanne considers their differences to be hockey-related rather than personal.

Los Angeles narrowly beat Anaheim in the second round and afterwards Kings Coach Darryl Sutter reached out to tell Selanne that, for Los Angeles’ sake, he was glad Selanne’s playing time was limited.

Some more interesting notes:

”You are as good as you your coach wants you to be. If we had any other coach, I’d still be playing.” -Teemu

— Juha Hiitelä (@jhiitela) September 18, 2014

Some harsh words to Carlyle too. He mentions too hard training camps: ”Team was already tired in the fall when should have collect pts.”

— Juha Hiitelä (@jhiitela) September 18, 2014

Since you all ask: Book’s writer Ari Mennader told me last week that English version is coming up in 2015.

— Juha Hiitelä (@jhiitela) September 18, 2014

Btw, in books release party Teemu just said ”it would be selfish to continue to play (in KHL). Family is in North America.”

— Juha Hiitelä (@jhiitela) September 18, 2014

Follow @RyanDadoun