Personal Challenges for Teemu Selanne Starting Season in Finland at LinesMaker

Personal Challenges for Teemu Selanne Starting Season in Finland

Start­ing the sea­son in Europe is cer­tainly a tough way to start the sea­son. Between adjust­ing to ridicu­lous time changes, lan­guage bar­ri­ers, and jet lag, it’s a dif­fi­cult way to kick start a new year. The good thing is that each team and just about every player faces the same set of chal­lenges over­seas as they try to pre­pare them­selves for the 82 game grind.

Then there’s some­one like Teemu Selanne. For Selanne, start­ing his (prob­a­ble) final sea­son in Fin­land would be like Wayne Gret­zky return­ing and start­ing the sea­son in Toronto—only if Gret­zky hadn’t played a sea­son there in twenty years. From the moment the NHL Pre­miere was announced and the Ducks found out they were headed to Helsinki, Selanne knew the 2011-12 sea­son was going to be unlike any­thing else he’s ever experienced.

Before the Ducks left for Europe, Selanne was asked about start­ing the sea­son in Fin­land for the first time in his career.

“I don’t really know what to expect,” Selanne said. “Obvi­ously, it was 2003 [World Cham­pi­onships] the last time we played there. It’s going to be fun. Obvi­ously, they sold out the game so quickly and peo­ple are telling me that’s what they’re really talk­ing about there. They’re pretty spoiled. This is the third or fourth time when an NHL team has started the sea­son there; so they’ve seen a lot of NHL games there. But I think this is going to be a lit­tle more special.

“I think it’s going to be a great expe­ri­ence,” Selanne con­tin­ued. “Obvi­ously, it’s a very spe­cial place for me. That’s my home­town and we’re going to play against my home team, so it’s going to be very excit­ing. It’s going to be like a zoo too. It’s going to be a lot of peo­ple, [peo­ple] try­ing to take a piece of that week. But I think it’s going to be a great expe­ri­ence, I’m very excited.”

Selanne also acknowl­edged that there would be chal­lenges for the team start­ing in Europe. Yet he saw the sil­ver lin­ing of the team trav­el­ing together as a bond­ing expe­ri­ence to start the season.

“Obvi­ously, the trip is going to be a lit­tle tough,” Selanne said. “We’re going there, 10 hours time dif­fer­ence, and com­ing back. But I really believe that’s going to be really good for our team to start the sea­son right away—with hang­ing around together for four or five days before the first game and get the team feel­ing again. I think that’s going to be very impor­tant process for us. I’m look­ing for­ward to going there. I know it’s going to be a great expe­ri­ence for my teammates.”

For Selanne per­son­ally, it’s going to be tougher for him than his team­mates. He’s revered in Fin­land and deal­ing with an entire new set of circumstances.

“Peo­ple need tick­ets and peo­ple ask if I can come there,” Selanne said. “Obvi­ously, I have to be tough with that. There’s no time to do too much. We are there to win the games and start focus­ing on the sea­son… Obvi­ously we need to stay focused there.

“It’s going to be tough. I already heard that my PR guy back home has 150 inter­views ready. I said, you know what, for­get it… They come here and they always expect you to have time. It’s just funny—it works though.”

The trip got off to a good start as the Ducks won their final pre­sea­son game against Jokerit in over­time. Now, the real heavy lift­ing gets started when the reg­u­lar sea­son kicks off against the Buf­falo Sabres on Fri­day in Helsinki. Selanne and the Ducks will try to nav­i­gate all of the exter­nal dis­trac­tions and put their best game on the ice—because at the end of the crazy cir­cus, there are two impor­tant reg­u­lar sea­son games to be played.

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