Teemu moved on, so should city

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/01/2015 (4095 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The video is grainy by today’s standards, but the scene it shows is so vivid and living, the visual fuzz doesn’t flatten the power of the goal.

Altogether now — we all know this part: “Domi, flips it high. Selanne, goes after it. Teemu Selanne breaks it. He SCORES.”

Oh man. For 22 years, that scene has tickled our necks with a million chills, one for every time it’s been rewatched, relived and retold. Even now, the oral history is dutifully passed from Winnipeg parent to Winnipeg child, like a bedtime story written by a Finnish kid who left this city with a stick plated in gold.

“I was there when he broke Mike Bossy’s record. The whole place exploded. I remember that sign.”

Well, the Anaheim Ducks retired Selanne’s jersey last Sunday, in a long and elegant show. This being a province that holds its heroes long and close, it isn’t surprising that we are still spitballing ideas for a tribute uniquely our own. I’ve heard a few: maybe the Jets could retire his jersey, too, though of course he never actually played for this franchise. Or maybe there could be a ring of honour, of some sort.

Or, we could build a statue for Teemu.

My colleague Gary Lawless floated that idea in the Free Press on Monday, though it wasn’t the first time someone has mused about casting the Finnish Flash in bronze. In most imaginations, the statue would catch Selanne mid-flight, glove thrown, stick raised to take perpetual aim at his 54th rookie goal.

It would be a motionless testimony to speed, a physical manifestation of how his career made us feel. One of the most vivid and living moments in local sports history, sealed in one static pose.

Where would he go? We could plop him in front of the MTS Centre, which didn’t exist in his heyday, or have him stand guard at Portage and Main. Perhaps he could be staked at the corner of 1430 Maroons Rd, skates planted above some flake of arena rubble that was ground into the earth below. Or maybe he could hold court on Campbell Street, frozen in place, which is not the way River Heights kids remember him from their old road hockey games.

Mulling all this over, my mind rolls back and forth: I love it. I don’t like it. I’m not sure. I don’t know.

The uncertainty isn’t out of any lack of admiration for Selanne, an affirmative response to whom has become one of the de facto Winnipeg citizenship test answers. Yes, I’ve eaten a Nip. You’re darn right I know what a meat shoulder is. I have a few good Burton stories too — and of course, I love Teemu.

This civic fervour for Selanne has long bordered on religious, a love felt as much on faith as on fact. When hockey fans from away remind of his less electrifying stats, Winnipeggers shrug: sure, after that stunning debut season, he only played 147 more tilts for the Jets. His goal production settled in at a less astonishing rate, though he was still good for one roughly every two games.

But it isn’t on statistics or length of service alone legends are made.

It occurs to me the relationship between Selanne and Winnipeg was about motion: a young star, a battered city, met in the process of becoming.

Selanne was 22 when he came here, cheeks still soft with youth. He was soft-spoken and gracious, but confident, too. In retrospect, it’s remarkable how comfortably he shouldered the weight of a hungry city’s attention. “Consider the cultural context,” Bartley Kives wrote on Twitter, explaining Teemumania to someone too young to remember. “This city was in the midst of steep decline… he was a symbol… so we latched on to him and never let go.”

Winnipeg showed Selanne what he could be, as an NHL star. In return, he showed us how to love being right where we are.

In the 15 years that passed between the Jets leaving and a different Jets coming back, Winnipeg grew up. Selanne did too. He is more chiselled now, his face worn where it moves and bronzed by the California sun. He raised a family, opened a steakhouse, collected sports cars and settled down. Winnipeg, meanwhile, recovered from the icy economic blasts of the 1990s, started polishing its rough spots, started filling in the gaps.

We are no longer a city so hungry for something to love about where we are. These days, we’re more likely to know.

So if we want to pay a uniquely Winnipeg tribute to Teemu? Maybe it is to let him go. To keep moving forward, with the understanding that — like fond old flames — we shared something once that can’t quite be captured again. City and player grew up together, until our paths split. Both left the better for it, but have since made their peace and said their goodbyes.

Yeah, a statue would be pretty cool, no doubt. Still, it wouldn’t quite capture a story that was shaped by its time.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca