Teemu Selanne certainly remains a huge part of the chemistry of the Anaheim Ducks, but he has seen his time on ice slow significantly with the return from injury of younger teammates
The Anaheim Ducks‘ Teemu Selanne is in his swan song season in the NHL, and so far his farewell hasn’t gone as he had planned since announcing his return for his final season on August 30th.
The “Finnish Flash” clearly has passion for this game and is enjoying his final tour, but his numbers and ice time are dramatically down.
This steady decline dates back to last season as he saw his role beginning to be reduced slightly with the Ducks. He played a career playoff-low 12:55 minutes in game 7 of Western Conference Quarterfinals, and didn’t score a goal in the final six games of the series. Despite a disappointing second half of last season, Selanne was poised for one last shot with a Ducks team full of good, young players and unfinished business.
The league-leading Ducks are finding ways to win, building that special run into the playoffs. As much as the 43-year-old is having a blast during his final run, he wishes it were better from a production perspective.
Head coach Bruce Boudreau planned to give Selanne not only days, but games off in order to conserve his energy over a hectic 82-game slate, mainly resting the oldest active player on the back end of back-to-back games.
Last season’s lockout led to a shortened schedule, which was difficult because Anaheim played 23 games in a 41-day stretch. That’s exceptionally tough on a 42-year-old’s body. And with a longer season, he’s gaining extra rest to keep himself healthy for the playoffs.
Even with fresher legs due to extra games off, the Finnish winger isn’t scoring goals at the impressive rate he used to – he’s 15th all-time in points (1,444) and 11th all-time in goals (680).
But the puck isn’t finding the back of the net. He has recorded five goals and 14 points in 36 games this season, falling short of his offensive contributions in the past. This poor production forced Boudreau to demote the right winger to fourth line duty and a lesser-used second power-play unit.
Selanne’s reduced time is also attributed to the competition with young, talented, and speedy forwards such as Andrew Cogliano and Kyle Palmieri. Plus, with the success of the second line of Daniel Winnik, Cogliano and Saku Koivu, Selanne has found himself with a lesser role.
Selanne still skates on power plays and regular shifts. Any game the Ducks fail to be on power play in a game, it’s difficult for Selanne to log enough ice time because he doesn’t spend time on the penalty-kill unit nor four-on-four.
Teemu has seen his ice time dip below 15 minutes in 6 out of his last 7 games, including a season-low 9:42 in a Jan. 5 win against the Vancouver Canucks.
No matter if Selanne is playing nine minutes or 18 minutes, he still has fight in him.
Despite a lack of production, the oldest-active player still shows glimpses of his usual speed and pristine goal-scoring skill.
In fact, the Flash is starting to heat up offensively since his season-low ice time. In his last two games, Selanne has a goal and 3 points, including the winning goal in the Ducks’ 4-3 victory over the Predators Thursday night in Nashville. That snapped an 8-game scoring drought. And on Jan. 7 against the Boston Bruins, after being named to team Finland, Selanne sparked the Ducks with 2 assists, which snapped a 5-game pointless streak.
Prior to this late offensive contribution, Selanne only tallied 1 goal and 4 points during the months of November and December (he failed to record a single point in November).
Perhaps the latest surge can give Selanne more confidence. If Selanne wants to increase his ice time, he must find his goal-scoring acumen once again. There’s so much competition on this team that everyone has to earn the ice time and the power play.
There’s plenty of games remaining for Selanne to turn around his disappointing season before his playing career is officially over.
Copyright 2013 SportSpeak LLC, all rights reserved. For more coverage, follow @SportSpeakLA and @SportSpeakOC on Twitter.