Selanne interviewed about Bruce Boudreau

[Singin the BLUES]

Teemu Selanne, officially, is retired. Apparently, that's because of Bruce Boudreau.

That's at least what Selanne is saying in his new book, via some choice quotes tweeted by Finnish journalist Juha Hiitela and Chris Johnston's story at Sportsnet. Selanne, at 43, was frustrated last season by a perceived lack in power-play time.

”You are as good as your coach wants you to be," Selanne said, according to Hiitela. "If we had any other coach, I’d still be playing."

Selanne had nine goals and 18 assists in his last NHL season in about 14 minutes per game. An average of 2:24 of that came on the power play, but that dropped during the postseason.

The issues between the two crescendoed when Boudreau scratched Selanne in a Round 1 game against the Dallas Stars. Selanne's solution to that was walking up to Boudreau and yelling "right to his face" what was on his mind.

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 we not his alone and it was a group decision. I ask which group and he said GM and scouts. I yelled (at) him 'wow, what kind of a coach you are if you don’t even decide lineup!' He tried to skate away but I just yelled 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.' It felt really good.

It probably did feel pretty good; screaming at people can be fun.

This is something to remember when you're judging players harshly for disagreeing with their coaches, though — Teemu Selanne (Saint Teemu! Teemu Forever!) did it himself. Athletes, particularly great ones, are wired differently than most people and thus behave in ways that would get most people in trouble. Maybe that's cool with you and maybe it isn't, but it's generally a fact.

And, sometimes, coaches get things wrong. Who knows. At minimum, it's going to be fun to watch a certain segment of the hockey community rectify concrete beliefs like "Players criticizing coaches is wrong" and "egos are bad" with "Teemu Selanne is the best."

The best part: “He is actually a nice man," Selanne said of Boudreau.

(As an aside, ex-Ducks/current Leafs coach Randy Carlyle got it, too. Selanne said his teams work out too hard in the fall, which leads to tired legs and too-short playoff runs: We just had these very old school bag skates when we should have been resting.")

The book, "Teemu," has been released in Finland.

http://www.sportingnews.com/nhl/story/2 ... net_269433

[SharksGM]

Meh. He retired because he got old and bad. Blaming the coach is pretty lame, but whatever, he's a multimillionaire with a Cup ring and a bunch of silver medals so what does he care?