Teemu Selanne was 47 goals into his rookie season with the Winnipeg Jets, closing on a record that had stood since 1978, when general manager Mike Smith summoned him to the office.
Smith wasn’t calling him in to say well done.
“Mike Smith called me in his office, and he said ‘what are you doing?’ And I said ‘what do you mean?’ ‘You haven’t scored in two games,'” Selanne said on Spittin’ Chiclets. “I said, ‘yeah, I did have some chances, but no.’ ‘You got to start scoring, otherwise I’ll have to send you to Moncton, the farm team.’ I’m like, I’ve got 47 goals.”
That might have been the end of it, except Smith had one more move. Selanne got home to find his girlfriend, now his wife, had already had a conversation of her own.
“She came home and said you have no idea what happened. I’m in the mall, your GM Mike came there, and he didn’t even say anything, he came to me and asked, ‘do you know where Moncton is?'” Selanne recalled.
His reaction was about what you’d expect.
“I can’t believe this,” he said.
What is Teemu Selanne’s rookie record?
Mike Bossy had scored 53 goals as a rookie for the New York Islanders in 1977-78, and nobody had come close in the 15 years since. Selanne went into the final two games before a five-game road trip needing seven to beat it.
He got four of them against the Minnesota North Stars, becoming only the third rookie in league history to reach 50. Two nights later, on March 2, 1993, the Jets hosted the Quebec Nordiques and Selanne completed a hat trick with his 54th, then celebrated by throwing his glove in the air and shooting it down like a clay pigeon.
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He finished the season with 76 goals and 132 points in 84 games, both of which remain NHL rookie records more than three decades later. The goal total tied Alexander Mogilny for the league lead that year.
Selanne, for his part, has a theory about how his general manager viewed all this afterwards.
“So then Mike Smith probably thinks that it was because of him, you know?” he said.
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