Teemu Selanne (Murillo Pyramid Rank = #43)
Adjusted Stats
1992-1993 Wpg 82 GP 63 goals 46 assists 109 points 1.33 PPG
1993-1994 Wpg 50 GP 23 goals 27 assists 50 points 1.00 PPG
1994-1995 Wpg 77 GP 39 goals 46 assists 84 points 1.10 PPG
1995-1996 Wpg/Ana 79 GP 39 goals 66 assists 106 points 1.34 PPG
1996-1997 Ana 78 GP 54 goals 61 assists 115 points 1.47 PPG
1997-1998 Ana 73 GP 61 goals 40 assists 100 points 1.37 PPG
1998-1999 Ana 75 GP 55 goals 70 assists 125 points 1.66 PPG
1999-2000 Ana 79 GP 37 goals 58 assists 95 points 1.21 PPG
2000-2001 Ana/SJ 73 GP 37 goals 44 assists 80 points 1.10 PPG
2001-2002 SJ 82 GP 34 goals 29 assists 63 points 0.77 PPG
2002-2003 SJ 82 GP 32 goals 42 assists 74 points 0.90 PPG
2003-2004 Col 78 GP 19 goals 19 assists 38 points 0.49 PPG
2005-2006 Ana 80 GP 41 goals 51 assists 91 points 1.14 PPG
2006-2007 Ana* 82 GP 51 goals 49 assists 100 points 1.22 PPG
2007-2008 Ana 26 GP 14 goals 12 assists 26 points 1.00 PPG
2008-2009 Ana 65 GP 29 goals 29 assists 58 points 0.90 PPG
2009-2010 Ana 54 GP 30 goals 23 assists 53 points 0.97 PPG
2010-2011 Ana 73 GP 35 goals 55 assists 90 points 1.23 PPG
Adjusted Playoff Stats
1992-1993 Wpg 6 GP 3 goals 2 assists 5 points 0.82 PPG
1996-1997 Ana 11 GP 7 goals 3 assists 11 points 0.95 PPG
1998-1999 Ana 4 GP 2 goals 2 assists 4 points 1.10 PPG
2000-2001 SJ 6 GP 0 goals 2 assists 2 points 0.39 PPG
2001-2002 SJ 12 GP 6 goals 4 assists 10 points 0.79 PPG
2003-2004 Col 10 GP 0 goals 4 assists 4 points 0.38 PPG
2005-2006 Ana 16 GP 6 goals 8 assists 14 points 0.87 PPG
2006-2007 Ana* 21 GP 6 goals 11 assists 17 points 0.81 PPG
2007-2008 Ana 6 GP 2 goals 2 assists 4 points 0.70 PPG
2008-2009 Ana 13 GP 4 goals 2 assists 6 points 0.47 PPG
2010-2011 Ana 6 GP 6 goals 1 assist 7 points 1.17 PPG
Career - 1288 GP, 693 goals, 767 assists, 1457 points, 1.13 PPG
Career-Highs - 63 goals (92-93); 70 assists (98-99); 125 points (98-99); 1.66 PPG (98-99)
Avg. (18 seasons) - 72 GP, 39 goals, 43 assists, 81 points, 1.13 PPG
Peak Avg. (92-00) - 74 GP, 46 goals, 52 assists, 98 points, 1.32 PPG, 0 Cups
Playoff Career - 111 GP, 42 goals, 41 assists, 84 points, 0.76 PPG
Playoff-Highs - 7 goals (96-97); 11 assists (06-07); 17 points (06-07); 1.17 PPG (10-11)
Accolades - 1 Richard, Calder
All-Star Teams - 2-time 1st-team, 2-time 2nd-team
1-time Stanley Cup Champion
Teemu Selanne is beloved by hockey fans everywhere, appreciated as a sure Hall of Famer, and generally thought of as a great ambassador for the game. And yet, when The Hockey News recently named him the 10th best right-winger of all-time, I'll bet a few people were a little bit surprised. When Selanne's name comes up in discussion of the greats, there's always that slight "Really? Oh, yeah, I suppose so" hesitation. But I would say that if anything, Selanne deserves to be slightly higher on the list...ahead of Charlie Conacher, for sure, and possibly even close to Brett Hull and Bernie Geoffrion.
Selanne, like Sakic, Jagr, Forsberg, and the young stars of today (Crosby, Ovechkin, etc.) benefits from the adjusted-stats system, and damned if he shouldn't. His 600+ career goals are impressive enough, but they morph into 650+ and a place in the top ten all-time when you factor that he was playing during the trap era and still putting up seasons of forty or fifty goals. Throw in six 100+ adjusted-point seasons as a right-winger and you see that Selanne's numbers, which look similar to the career of (my favourite whipping boys) Dino Ciccarelli and Mike Gartner, are clearly far superior.
For the first years of Selanne's career, his teams enjoyed no postseason success, and for some reason, Selanne generally escaped criticism for this (maybe it was because he was tucked away in Anaheim or San Jose). In fact, Selanne's underperforming in the playoffs is one of the biggest blemishes of his career: his postseason adjusted PPG is 0.37 lower than his regular-season output. The bottom of Selanne's career came right before the lockout when, after a few substandard years with the Sharks, Selanne signed with the Colorado Avalanche and reunited with former Ducks' teammate Paul Kariya in a quest to win a Cup. The experiment was a disaster...it is the one outlier in Selanne's career, a truly awful season.
If Selanne had retired and not come back post-lockout, his career would be more in the area of Pavel Bure. But instead, Selanne has excelled since returning, playing at about a point-a-game pace with the Ducks and finally getting a championship ring (in a season in which he potted, in adj. numbers, 50 goals and 100 points). If Selanne were a baseball player, there'd be whispers of steroids...you just don't tend to see wingers put up such good numbers in their late thirties (sometimes you see it with defencemen, but rarely wingers). In fact, as of this writing, at forty years of age, Selanne is having another great season with the Ducks, averaging more than a point a game.
Selanne may have never been a dominant force in the playoffs (the reason why, in the end, he has to defer to Kurri as the greatest Finn ever), but his clutch abilities have been well on display in the international scene, where he always seems to have Finland playing above their heads, getting silvers when they shouldn't medal, or winning the World Championship. And while Selanne was always overshadowed and bested by Jagr for the mantle of league's best right-winger, his consistency as one of the top five at the position lands him a spot on my list of surely the top fifty players of all-time, and maybe a little bit higher. The Finnish Flash has used his blazing speed to burn many a defenceman, and it seems he's also used it on hockey fans as well...his career has sped by us with such effortless grace, we haven't really noticed how great it's been.
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