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Last week, my Anaheim Ducks’ praisefest ended with a lamentation on the performance of Teemu Selanne. The Finnish Flash was among the least effective players against San Jose in the Ducks’ first round upset victory. Though the Helsinki native has lost a step of his legendary speed, he has mostly been hamstrung by relegation to Anaheim’s underwhelming third line. It’s a sad fate for the NHL’s 18th all-time leading goal scorer , a man who is right behind Jari Kurri as the greatest Finnish player ever. Hopefully, Selanne will still be given a chance to display his substantial remaining talents before he fades into the annals of history.
Though I couldn’t call myself a hockey insider of any sort prior to my association with Puck Prospectus, Teemu Selanne is one of the few cases where I can claim to have perspective on an NHL player that most folks don’t have. From 1989-1991, as a recent graduate of Clarkson University, I worked in the Product Marketing department of Nokia Telecommunications in the suburbs of Helsinki. While in “the Old Country” for that two year stint, I chose HIFK, the crosstown rivals of Selanne’s Jokerit (“Jokers”) as my team to root for; our department secretary Merja’s younger brother, Mika Kortelainen, happened to be HIFK’s exceptional first line mucker. The spirited clashes between the two Helsinki teams reminded me very much of the rivalries between the Rangers and Islanders, and the Rangers and Devils, contests with a lot of big city fan pride and team pride on the line.
Teemu Selanne was John Tavares in 1988-9, not in the sense that his rights were up for grabs in a draft, but that the SM-Liiga (“Finnish Championship League”) was waiting for this phenom to arrive, especially for a big market Helsinki team – Imagine if Sidney Crosby or Taveres had joined the Maple Leafs or Canadiens. After an injury shortened the 1989-90 campaign, Selanne exploded onto the scene in 1990-1, putting up 0.79 Goals per game and 1.38 Points per game as a 20 year old. For the recently promoted Jokerit (17-21-6), the speedy winger scored an astonishing 22 % of their 150 goals in addition to assisting on 16 % of them. As a 21 year old, Selanne upped his totals to heady levels of 0.89 Goals per game and 1.41 Points per game the following season (Jokerit won the league championship), his last campaign before jumping across the pond to the NHL:
SM-Liiga statistics, Teemu Selanne (pre-NHL)
Season Age Team GP G A P G/GP A/GP P/GP
1989-90 19 Jokerit 11 4 8 12 0.36 0.73 1.09
1990-91 20 Jokerit 42 33 25 58 0.79 0.60 1.38
1991-92 21 Jokerit 44 39 23 62 0.89 0.52 1.41
There was one game in particular that convinced me that I was watching a player of dominating talent. In one of those great Helsinki battles, my HIFK team was cruising over Jokerit 5-0. A one man wrecking crew, Selanne scored the next four goals and hit a post on what was nearly a fifth marker. HIFK held on to win, 5-4, but Selanne had almost singlehandedly willed an unfathomable comeback. While no one could claim to have predicted the heights of his success in his rookie season with the Winnipeg Jets, Teemu was a no-miss NHL contributor without a shadow of a doubt in my mind, and a likely All-Star.
By the numbers, what could have been expected of the Finnish Flash? Gabriel Desjardins published an article on league equivalencies in 2005, where he found a conversion factor of .54 between the NHL and the SM-Liiga, based on a sample size of 76 players. By that conversion rate, Selanne would have had the following above average, but not otherworldly, NHL equivalents for his seasons in Finland:
Season Age Team GP G A P G/GP A/GP P/GP
1989-90 19 NHL 19 4 8 11 0.20 0.39 0.59
1990-91 20 NHL 74 31 24 55 0.42 0.32 0.75
1991-92 21 NHL 77 37 22 59 0.48 0.28 0.76
In our correspondence, Gabe pointed out to me that Selanne was a 95th percentile case. This, of course makes sense, as it’s the exceptions that we most easily remember. Equivalencies are meant to be statistically accurate over a sample and are not necessarily accurate for each individual. What I would ask the statistical community, though, when it comes to league equivalencies, is that we remember that these relationships aren’t necessarily linear. When once in a generation talents can be pinpointed by unprecedented levels of Goals per game, Points per game or other meaningful statistics for a certain age, it may indicate that we’re deviating from the straight line of the relationship.
Maybe the NHL should have known that Selanne was going to be even better than suggested by his 10th overall selection in the draft. In any case, it would have been impossible to predict that he would blow the doors off of even the most aggressive projections, setting rookie records with 76 Goals and 132 Points in his first campaign with the Winnipeg Jets:
Teemu Selanne – NHL career regular season statistics
Season Age Team GP G A P G/GP A/GP P/GP PPG S%
1992-93 22 WIN 84 76 56 132 0.90 0.67 1.57 24 19.6
1993-94 23 WIN 51 25 29 54 0.49 0.57 1.06 11 13.1
1994-95 24 WIN 45 22 26 48 0.49 0.58 1.07 8 13.2
1995-96 25 WIN/MDA 79 40 68 108 0.51 0.86 1.37 9 15.0
1996-97 26 MDA 78 51 58 109 0.65 0.74 1.40 11 18.7
1997-98 27 MDA 73 52 34 86 0.71 0.47 1.18 10 19.4
1998-99 28 MDA 75 47 60 107 0.63 0.80 1.43 25 16.7
1999-00 29 MDA 79 33 52 85 0.42 0.66 1.08 8 14.0
2000-01 30 MDA/SJS 73 33 39 72 0.45 0.53 0.99 12 14.2
2001-02 31 SJS 82 29 25 54 0.35 0.30 0.66 9 14.4
2002-03 32 SJS 82 28 36 64 0.34 0.44 0.78 7 11.1
2003-04 33 COL 78 16 16 32 0.21 0.21 0.41 6 8.8
2005-06 35 MDA 80 40 50 90 0.50 0.63 1.13 18 15.0
2006-07 36 ANA 82 48 46 94 0.59 0.56 1.15 25 18.7
2007-08 37 ANA 26 12 11 23 0.46 0.42 0.88 7 13.8
2008-09 38 ANA 65 27 27 54 0.42 0.42 0.83 16 14.5
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TOTAL 16 Seasons 1132 579 633 1212 0.51 0.56 1.07 206 15.5
One of the points to note when looking at Teemu Selanne’s career statistics in the table above is his excellent contributions to the Anaheim Ducks since the lockout, particularly with Points per game levels of 1.13 in 2005-6 and 1.15 in the championship season of 2006-7. Playing with a better mix of teammates than with San Jose and Colorado likely contributed to the improvement.
To study how Selanne’s skills may still remain very valuable to Anaheim, let’s look at both his career and current PPG and S% for some perspective:
Career leaders in PPG - Ranked by PPG/Gm
Rank Player PPG GP PPG/GP
1 Mario Lemieux 236 915 0.258
2 Brett Hull 265 1269 0.209
3 Phil Esposito 249 1282 0.194
4 Dino Ciccarelli 232 1232 0.188
5 Keith Tkachuk* 207 1134 0.183
6 Teemu Selanne* 206 1132 0.182
7 Marcel Dionne 234 1348 0.174
8 Luc Robitaille 247 1431 0.173
9 Joe Nieuwendyk 215 1257 0.171
10 Dave Andreychuk 274 1639 0.167
11 Brendan Shanahan* 237 1524 0.156
12 Mike Gartner 217 1432 0.152
13 Joe Sakic* 205 1378 0.149
14 Wayne Gretzky 204 1487 0.137
15 Steve Yzerman 202 1514 0.133
*Active players
What you see in the table above are the 15 top Power Play Goal scorers of all time, ranked by number of PPG per Game played. Selanne’s career level of 0.182 PPG/GP, 6th place on this list, ahead of the likes of Luc Robitaille, all-time PPG leader Dave Andreychuk and all time scoring leader Wayne Gretzky, underlines the fact that Selanne was and is a pure scorer. If Selanne was showing his nearly 39 years of age in even strength play, he didn’t show a lick of it on the power play this season. On the man advantage, his quick hands and great hockey mind allowed him to score 16 PPG in only 65 games this season, good for an outstanding 0.246 PPG per game clip. In fact, over the past four seasons with Anaheim, Selanne has scored at an equally outstanding 0.261 PPG/GP rate (66 PPG in 253 GP). Take a look at the list above: That’s in the stratosphere of Mario Lemieux’s career rate. For this postseason, Selanne has tallied 2 PPG in 11 Games, 0.182 PPG/GP, more comparable to his still excellent career production level. The obvious conclusion? Coach, make sure you get Teemu out on your best power play unit as much as possible.
Career leaders in Goals - Ranked by S%
Rank Player G S%
1 Mike Bossy 573 21.2
2 Jari Kurri 601 19.1
3 Mario Lemieux 690 19.0
4 Wayne Gretzky 894 17.6
5 Luc Robitaille 668 16.9
6 Mark Messier 694 16.4
7 Dino Ciccarelli 608 16.4
8 Teemu Selanne* 579 15.5
9 Brett Hull 741 15.2
10 Steve Yzerman 692 15.0
11 Jaromir Jagr 646 14.1
12 Phil Esposito 717 14.0
13 Dave Andreychuk 640 14.0
14 Mats Sundin* 564 14.0
15 Mike Gartner 708 13.9
16 Marcel Dionne 731 13.6
17 Joe Sakic* 625 13.5
18 Gordie Howe** 801 13.3
19 Bobby Hull** 610 13.2
20 Brendan Shanahan* 656 12.9
*Active players
**Partial-career only. Statistics for S% were not kept before 1967-8.
Another characteristic of the Finnish Flash is his excellent shooting percentage, even when placed alongside some of the NHL’s all-time goal scoring greats. When sorting the top 20 goal scorers of all time by S%, Selanne's 15.5% career rate places him comfortably in the top half of this elite list. This skill has not eroded much – the Finn’s shooting percentage for this season remained a very respectable 14.5%. Unfortunately, his SOG per game dropped to 2.86, by far the lowest during this tour with the Ducks (3.34, 3.13, 3.35 in the previous 3 seasons). In the playoffs, his SOG per game has dropped further to 2.18:
Player GP G A P PPG SOG S% SOG/GP PPG/GP
Teemu Selanne 11 3 1 4 2 24 12.5 2.18 0.181
There is some good news for Selanne. Matched up proportionately more with Ryan Carter than Andrew Ebbett, he has posted 14 SOG in 5 games (2.8 SOG/GP) against Detroit versus 10 SOG in 6 games (1.7 SOG/GP) against San Jose. Further, Coach Randy Carlyle was juggling lines in the middle of Game 5 in a desperate attempt to generate offense. That was the right idea, at least generally speaking. Selanne was paired on one hand with Ducks’ top scorer and assist king Ryan Getzlaf, but on the other hand with third line body Erik Christensen. While Getzlaf exhibited marginally better vision and passes, his illness-or-injury malaise continued to get the best of him. In addition, opportunities like Selanne’s pass to Christensen in front of the crease were either foiled by Chris Osgood’s superior goaltending or by Anaheim’s inferior finishing, depending on your point of view.
The puzzle is a difficult one for Randy Carlyle, but juggling the lines is a must to get past the status quo of Red Wings’ dominance. Pairing the still gifted and hockey-saavy Selanne with forwards that can get him the puck would seem to be a basic part of the solution. The Ducks should keep heart by remembering Detroit’s one key inefficiency: That behind Chris Osgood’s awesome looking GAA, trumpeted by the rank-and-file of hockey announcers and analysts, is a relatively pedestrian save percentage. More shots on goal by the best Anaheim sharpshooters, like Teemu Selanne, the Finnish Flash, could possibly turn the series.
Timo Seppa is an author of Hockey Prospectus.
You can contact Timo by clicking here or click here to see Timo's other articles.
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