Anaheim, Calif. – The other morning in the Mighty Ducks’ dressing room, Teemu Selanne let us in on the secret. He said the Finn wearing a Colorado Avalanche sweater in 2003-04 was his twin brother, Panu, who racked up all of 16 goals, and then went back to his regular job – as a schoolteacher.
Teemu really does have a twin brother, but he was kidding, of course.
I’m pretty sure, anyway.
Panu was a one-time goaltender who gave up the game at age 16, after several years of having his twin take shots on him. “I stole his confidence,” Teemu said Saturday, with another grin.
Fact is, though, the guy with “SELANNE” on his back two years ago didn’t much look like the player the Avalanche hoped it was getting when it signed Teemu and Paul Kariya to the buddy-act deal.
Now Selanne does, after reconstructive knee surgery following the 2003-04 season and the rehabilitation time the lockout gave him.
“Right now, it’s not good to see,” Avalanche captain Joe Sakic said Saturday after Colorado’s practice. “But it was nice to see him bounce back.”
Selanne’s second-period goal Friday in the Mighty Ducks’ 5-0 rout of the Avalanche in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals was further affirmation of his renaissance – not so much because he scored, but how he scored. With a burst of speed, he cleared mobile Avalanche defenseman Brett Clark and lifted a shot past Colorado goalie Jose Theodore.
Didn’t that look familiar?
Of course it didn’t, at least if the comparison is limited to Selanne’s single season with the Avalanche.
At age 35 and in his second tenure with Anaheim, Selanne again deserves to be called the Finnish Flash.
“The whole season seems to be like a snowball going downhill,” Selanne said Saturday. He had 40 goals in the regular season and now has four in the playoffs, all of which prompts another question: If that wasn’t Panu playing for Colorado two years ago, then what was the deal with Teemu?
The Avalanche’s Kariya-Selanne coup stunned the league. The thinking was the Avs would put them on a line with Sakic and watch them put up numbers that in the clogged-up NHL of 2003-04 would seem to be, well, an avalanche.
Instead, Kariya was hurt much of the season, and listless when he played. Selanne looked overweight and suddenly over-the-hill, with dead legs and stone hands. He and Avalanche coach Tony Granato weren’t members of a mutual admiration society, despite – or perhaps because of – their status as former teammates. Even when Kariya was healthy, Granato didn’t give a Kariya-
Sakic-Selanne enough of a chance.
“There were many reasons, but the knee obviously was the biggest one,” Selanne said of his terrible season. “It could have been a dream come true. But life goes on.”
It wasn’t any secret Selanne’s knee was giving him problems in Colorado, but in retrospect, it was amazing he made it through the season, playing 78 games. The knee repair helped rediscover his touch, given the intertwined nature of hockey skills.
“The best challenge for an athlete when you start to get to the mid-30s and played the number of games he’s played at world championships and Olympics and whatnot, is to be able to refresh your body and your soul,” said Anaheim coach Randy Carlyle, Selanne’s Winnipeg Jets teammate when Selanne had 76 goals as a rookie in 1992-93. “The lockout was an exclamation point for him to make a decision on whether he wanted to play. He made a huge commitment as far as reconstructing his knee and the workout regime that he took upon himself.”
His goal against the Avalanche on Friday came on a night when Colorado reverted to disorganized and sloppy play in its own end in front of Theodore, who certainly wasn’t the problem.
“It’s going to be harder, that’s for sure,” Selanne said Saturday, looking ahead to this afternoon’s Game 2. “I don’t think they played even close to how they can play. But we have to keep playing the same way.”
The Avs can’t be as bad as they were in Game 1, unless this was a sign evil twins have kidnapped their siblings and stepped into their Colorado sweaters.
Terry Frei can be reached at 303-820-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
