The Finn is finished.
That's what people around the NHL were saying about Teemu Selanne after the 2003-04 season when he scored just 16 goals for the Colorado Avalanche in the regular season and none in 10 Stanley Cup Playoff games.
Now, as he faces his former teammates in the second round of the playoffs, "The Flash" is back for Selanne, who scored 40 goals for the fifth time in his career -- but for the first time since 1998-99.
"Two years ago, if you had asked me how much NHL hockey I have left in my body, I would have told you that I'm pretty much finished," Selanne said after scoring the first goal in a 3-0 Anaheim victory over the Calgary Flames in Game 7 of the first round of the playoffs. "If I have to be really honest, I can say that I should have played for free the two previous years. It felt like that even though I did do my best. But ..."
You could see a grimace on Selanne's face and feel the frustration over not being able to be the "Finnish Flash" that broke into the NHL with a record 76 goals with the Winnipeg Jets back in 1992-93 and three times lead the League in goals.
Larry Wigge has covered the NHL since 1969. The longtime NHL columnist for The Sporting News, Wigge is now an NHL.com columnist and a frequent contributor to the website.
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Shooting is one thing. Scoring is another altogether. The best scorers have a definite plan in mind when they're bearing down on a goalie. It's a knack, an innate ability to see a play develop before it happens and having the patience to cash in on that opportunity.
Release ... accuracy ... skating speed. Those are the physical components of goal scoring, and while the mind was still willing, the body wasn't for Selanne the past few seasons.
"I knew every day when I went to practices that every stride was going to hurt," he said, still grimacing at the thought of how bad his left knee felt. "My leg had no power. I couldn't use my speed. I couldn't play at the level I wanted to play. And worst of all, I had lost the passion to play the game. The fun was gone."
His knee was so bad, he struggled to get to openings.
Selanne contemplated retirement. His countrymen talked him into joining Finland in the 2004 World Cup of Hockey in Canada. The Finns reached the final against the host Canadians, but Selanne scored just once in six games.
During the NHL lockout, Selanne elected to have what amounted to career-saving reconstructive surgery that he had been avoiding for two years -- fixing his left knee, which had grown so debilitated that the muscles in his thigh were three inches smaller than the muscles in his right thigh.
As part of his rehabilitation, Selanne says he skated hard every day last summer in an effort to get his game back to where it was during his first 10 years in the NHL.
"I couldn't play on one leg any longer, I was wasting my time," Selanne told me earlier this season. "I'd rather play golf."
One of the most graceful goal-scorers in NHL history, a combination of grace and poetry in motion ... speed ... power ... all punctuated by those great hands and wrists. Done? Perish the thought.
"He's Ken Griffey on skates," one-time Mighty Ducks coach Pierre Page once told me. "What makes that Griffey comparison so apt is that Teemu never wastes a goal, it always seems like it's a home run. If you look at Griffey's home runs, I think you will see they almost always come early in the game to give his team a lead or late when the game is on the line. Same with Teemu."
And even though Griffey's career has also been slowed down by debilitating injuries, the gist of the comparison still works for Selanne. At least it has so far this season and with his four goals and five assists in the first nine games of the playoffs.
"Now ... I feel like I can't find a reason why I shouldn't play as long as I'm enjoying it," Selanne said with that wide-eyed, pie-in-the-sky, happy-go-lucky look on his face that we have come to enjoy for so many years.
At $1 million, Selanne is one of the NHL's great bargains. You can bet the Mighty Ducks would welcome the 35-year-old winger back for another.
"He felt -- and we felt -- he could play at a higher level than he did in Colorado," Mighty Ducks coach Randy Carlyle said. "It would be the understatement of the season to say that he has kept up his end of the bargain. He's had that jump right from the first day of training camp. It's clear he has something to prove."
To himself ... and the rest of the hockey world.
Selanne on his health/ability:
"My biggest motivation to come back was I knew when I'm healthy what I can do. Skating is my game ... I didn't know how good my knee could be, but everything has worked out wonderfully. I'm excited because I'm back with the same wheels that I had in the first 11 years in the League."
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"My biggest motivation to come back was I knew when I'm healthy what I can do," Selanne told me. "Skating is my game and if I can't do that, I'll do something else. I didn't know how good my knee could be, but everything has worked out wonderfully.
"I'm excited because I'm back with the same wheels that I had in the first 11 years in the League."
Combining Selanne's health with the new NHL rules interpretations, where speed and skill once again flourish, Teemu presents not only the comeback player of the year, but a feel good story that makes us all smile.
"If somebody has more talent or faster than you, you should be rewarded with a chance to score. Too often, players would do whatever it took to slow that guy down," Selanne said, always outspoken on the side of skill and speed in the game. "If you are not as fast as another guy, then you have to play smarter. Or you have to be stronger. Or you have to be good in other areas of the game. If you are not, that's your bad luck.
"In the past, too often third- and fourth-liners were more valuable than first-liners."
"When playing against Selanne, you have to come up with a team strategy to try to control him -- keep him out of situations where he's comfortable: skating in the open, handling the puck, alone near the net," Florida Panthers General Manager Mike Keenan once told me. "The most critical thing is to take away his time and space."
To be a successful goal scorer, you've got to be selfish. You've got to want the puck In fact, a goal scorer has to have a little Tiger Woods in him: He's got to be able to think the shot through, picturing it all the way to the hole -- or, in this case, the net -- and then execute the shot with supreme confidence.
Five-hole. Low stick side. High short side. Make a quick fake and force the goalie to go from side to side. All of these tactics can work, just as a slap shot, a snap shot, a wrist shot or a backhander will work in the right situation.
Pay attention to the true goal scorers, and you'll see how they work the corners -- much like a Greg Maddux or a Curt Schilling do the strike zone -- probing to find the weaknesses of a goalie.
That the mental side of a goal-scorer's mindset -- and that's where the mystery resides in the ability to get open ... timing ... a sense of the situation ... instinct ... hunger.
After using defenseman Jordan Leopold as a partial screen, Teemu Selanne was able to pick a corner against his Finnish countryman Miikka Kiprusoff to win Game 7 in Calgary.
Afterward Selanne said, "It's a reaction to certain situations and an ability to play the shot in your mind in that split second you have before you have to shoot."
And that's something you just can't teach.
"Finnished"? No way.
It's more appropriate to say that Teemu Selanne is still one of the best "Finnishers" in hockey.
