Selanne, a former Duck great, still plays key role in Winnipeg's hockey tradition

In 1992, Anaheim Ducks TV analyst Brian Hayward was in Winnipeg for a preseason game against Jets. Back then, Hayward was a goaltender for the San Jose Sharks and, his coach, George Kingston, had a message he needed to deliver to his team about a particular player in the other dressing room.

No too much was known about this new player. Kingston didn't even know how to say his name. But Kingston knew one thing, and he needed his defensemen to know it as well: This new kid was fast.

"George Kingston came in the room and said, 'There's a young man in the other locker room that you guys don't know anything about," Hayward said. "His name is Tee-moe Sal-any, and he's the fastest human being on skates."

That's Hayward's story about his first experience with Teemu Selanne, a player who links the two teams who just completed a series in the first round of the 2015 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Just like in Anaheim, everyone in Winnipeg has a story, too.

Selanne represents hockey's past in Winnipeg, a once-proud hockey town that has been rejuvenated by a new team with the same old name, as well as he represents the popularization of hockey in Orange County, an area thought of more for surf and Disney more than frozen ponds.

Each team and its surrounding towns likes to claim the Finnish Flash as their own. Sure, Winnipeg is not the original franchise that drafted him. That team is down in the desert. But Selanne's legend in Winnipeg is more than just numbers and stats on a record book page. If that was it, there wouldn't have been fans waiting outside of the airport in Winnipeg on a cold, snowy night, eager to see if he would return to his early NHL roots.

"What do I remember about him? The hype he brought to this city," Kevin Rusnak, a lifelong Winnipeg resident and a fan of both the Jets and the Ducks, said. "I met him a couple of times at the Jets Wives Carnival. I was standing around for hours waiting to see him."

And in typical Selanne fashion, he did not disappoint, shaking every single hand and signing every single autograph.

Rusnak went on to describe another encounter, this one on Selanne and Keith Tkachuk, a former Jets winger who stayed with the original franchise after its move to Phoenix. Rusnak had him sign several pieces of memorabilia and was recalling the interaction, when suddenly he stopped.

"Is Teemu here this week?" he asked. "I bet he's here."

His wife, Sheila, intervened, sarcastically retorting, "I bet he drove up here in that yellow Ferrari."

As for whether or not Selanne went Winnipeg to see the city's first playoff game since the last one he played here is unconfirmed. Multiple interview requests were denied before the series even began. Through a team spokesperson, he said he wanted to stay out of the spotlight and keep the focus on the teams. So if you're wondering which team Selanne is rooting for, it's anyone's guess.

But if you ask anyone here in Winnipeg, they'll say he's rooting for their city.

"Everyone in this city still claims him as their own," said Winnipeg resident Hugh Swandel. "Every time we talk about the series, someone always says, 'Wouldn't it have been great if Teemu was still there and we were playing against him?'"

Swandel describes himself as a modest hockey fan, but a big Selanne fan. He and his wife, who used to work on hockey broadcasts for CBC, wanted their daughter and their son, a high school hockey player, to know about the legacy of Selanne. The Swandel family, like so many others in Winnipeg, watched his jersey retirement ceremony earlier this year.

"His impact on the community was just extraordinary," Swandel said. "He is what he appears to be. He would look out his window, see kids playing hockey on the street, and he would just go out and play with them. You hear those stories all the time."

When Selanne left town, so did the team. And everything changed in Winnipeg.

"It was depressing," Rusnak said. "So long whiteout, it went into a black hole."

The CFL team, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, became the only show in town for a while. But Winnipeg, the Rusnaks insist, is a hockey town. An AHL team and the MTS Centre helped revitalize the downtown area and lift the spirits of the hockey fans in town. Locals and true hockey fans both enjoyed the AHL team and appreciated having a team that young hockey players could look up to, but it wasn't the same as an NHL team.

The West Coast media came in to Manitoba joking that Winnipeg might be the one city in the league that Gary Bettman could come to without being booed, but residents said this city shares the same sentiment as the rest of the NHL towns. For a town steeped in hockey tradition, having it all wiped out and sent down south seemed cruel.

"It wasn't good," Rusnak said. "In the streets, everybody was so down and not happy. Very bad feelings towards the NHL and Gary Bettman."

But Mark Chipman, the chairman of True North Sports and Entertainment, was determined to bring the NHL back to Winnipeg. He went about it the right way, making inroads with the league and completing each step needed in order to obtain a team. True North built the MTS Iceplex, which serves as the Jets' practice facility and a four-sheet rink that is home to local junior and high school programs, while bolstered the local hockey community and had fans optimistic about the future.

The community knew that another NHL team was near, and when it finally arrived, the celebration was so big, they had to close down the intersection of Portage and Main.

"People were dancing in the streets," Rusnak said.

Throughout the last week, an entire province people bled white, hot passion for a team, a sport and town that hasn't seen NHL playoff hockey in 19 years. It's a new generation of hockey fans, some of which have no connection to Selanne, but for many, that passion started with the player who is still one of the most iconic athletes in both Winnipeg and Anaheim.

"I grew up in the same neighborhood that he lived in and everybody that we knew had some meeting with him," Swandel said. "And can you imagine how many times somebody would go up to a guy like that? He was the same every time. He was genuinely and sincerely appreciative of their interest. And he appreciated how much his talent was embraced around here and he really gave it back.

"I don't know what he'll do in his retirement, but he could certainly come back here and he would have numerous job offers."