This Guy Is Good, for Goodness’ Sake

At least once a month--even more frequently during these confusing early days of Dennis Rodman the Laker--somebody asks:

Who is the nicest athlete in town?

I have always answered with the name of the guy sitting across from me in a meeting room at the Mighty Ducks’ practice facility Monday, preparing for a national media conference call.

The phone rings.

“Call for Teemu Salami,” says the voice on the other end.

“That’s Selanne,” he says politely into the speaker.

Five bystanders laugh. Selanne starts laughing with them, then suddenly stops, and stares at the black phone as if wondering.

What if that operator heard them? What if that operator was given the name incorrectly? What if it wasn’t the operator’s fault, and now the poor guy feels like an idiot?

Selanne leans back toward the speaker.

And he, well, he sort of apologizes.

For correcting his own name.

“‘Just kidding,” he says to the operator.

That’s right. If it will make you feel better, Teemu Selanne will let you call him anything you want.

“Life is so much easier if you just look at the positive things,” he says, shrugging.

And so a sports team aligned with “the happiest place on earth” has been blessed by one of the happiest athletes on earth.

“He’s right up there,” says teammate Paul Kariya, shaking his head.

Teemu (tay-MOO) Selanne is the hottest player on the NHL’s hottest club. He is third in the league in scoring and goals. He recently reached his 300th goal faster than all but five players in NHL history.

He could be moody, aloof, careful, protective, all the things that today’s great athletes use as shields.

Yet he smiles. All the time, he smiles.

“Every day, Teemu finds something to be happy about,” Kariya says.

And he recognizes you. All of you. Pass him in a hallway or the mall or in the parking lot, catch his eye, and he will either say hello or nod.

He seemingly knows no strangers. He seemingly has no enemies.

“In every town on the road, he has good friends,” said teammate Marty McInnis. “I mean, every town.”

Everyone raves about the Ducks’ scoring combination of Selanne and Kariya.

A combination more rare--and nearly as important to the team--is Selanne’s ability and his personality.

“That is unique,” says Coach Craig Hartsburg. “To be such a good guy while playing at such a high skill level . . . that’s rare.”

Bodyguards? When Selanne was a Winnipeg rookie fresh from Finland in 1992, he refused to even use translators.

He stumbled through interview after interview, enduring laughs about his broken English, particularly the time he told everyone he was going “shopping for funerals.”

Today, he is one of the best and most willing talkers of any athlete in town.

“The only way I was going to learn the language was to keep talking,” he says. “Everybody makes mistakes.”

Charge for autographs? Selanne may be the only athlete around here who solicits them.

One Duck official remembers walking with him through a hallway at Nassau Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum on Long Island when they spotted two young boys nervously eyeing the star.

Selanne stopped suddenly and asked a question they were afraid to ask:

“You want my autograph?”

When signing for dozens of fans in a roped-off area on the road, he does a similar thing, calling for young fans in the back to be moved to the front.

“People complain about autographs . . . that’s the easiest thing a professional athlete does,” he says. “How hard is signing a piece of paper?”

Even for the 30 or so fans who gather around his distinctive black Dodge Viper after practices?

“Two minutes,” he says. “I can sign for that many in two minutes.”

Then there are special appearances. When the Ducks take a bus to a local hospital for a team visit, they save a seat in one of their accompanying official cars.

That’s because Selanne inevitably stays about an hour later than anyone else, misses the bus, and needs a ride home.

You’re sick, and you’ve made a wish to meet Paul Kariya? Well, uh, sorry, but this deal only comes two-for-one.

Seemingly every time Kariya is ushered into a back room to meet an ailing fan, Selanne follows him there.

“I’ve always had a special relationship with the people,” he says. “They are so good with me. I want to be good with them.”

And for what? He has no local endorsements. He has not been asked to appear in any commercials.

In an age when some athletes get as rich off their personalities as their play, Teemu Selanne is being nice for nothing.

He’s being nice because, well, that’s just him.

“Not a phony bone in his body,” said Mike Smith, former general manager of the former Winnipeg Jets.

Take the common hockey question about fighting. He proudly says he is 2-0 in fights in his seven-year career.

But when asked who he’s defeated, he’s not telling.

“One of the fights was in the fifth game of my rookie year, and it would embarrass the guy if everybody read that a rookie beat him,” he says.

Don’t judge an athlete by what he does off the playing surface? Selanne has a different philosophy.

“Just because you are a good athlete doesn’t mean you don’t also have to be a good person,” he says.

And just because you have a bad game, or month, or season, he says, doesn’t make it right to take out your anger at referees, teammates or fans.

“When you get sad, it just makes everything worse,” he says. “Why not try to make the best of everything you have?”

So while every athlete on the Disney teams receives a free pass to the park . . . Selanne may be the only one who has used his more than 20 times.

He is certainly the only one who has, in his possession, four photos of him with Mickey Mouse.

“I like Disneyland because everybody there is happy,” says the father of two toddlers. “Even when I don’t want to go, I go, because I know that once I am there, I will be happy.”

Teemu Selanne might also become the league’s first leading scorer who was once a . . . kindergarten teacher?

Believe it. While beginning his professional career in Finland, he taught kindergarten four hours a day to help make ends meet.

“I love it because kids are so honest, so happy,” he says.

Then kids grow up. And some of them become professional athletes.

And sometimes they forget that they are still part of the human race, still one of us.

And sometimes, they don’t.

Tonight

KINGS at MIGHTY DUCKS

7:30, Channel 9

Radio:

XTRA (690),

KRLA (1110)