Birds of a Feather

SAN JOSE -- Teemu Selanne was like a kid on a long car trip, clamoring from the back seat, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

The San Jose Sharks were rumored to be negotiating with Ron Wilson to take over as coach. Three days went by after Darryl Sutter was fired and each morning Selanne would corner one of the Sharks’ media relations employees and ask, “Any news yet? Any news yet? Any news yet?”

When it finally was announced that Wilson was a Left Coast coach again, his favorite kid was beyond giddy.

“Oh yeah, I was happy,” Selanne said. “Are you kidding?”

The two were close during the little more than one season they were together with the Mighty Ducks. They reached the second round of the playoffs -- the first and only time Anaheim has advanced that far -- in 1996-97.

After that season, Wilson was fired by then-team president Tony Tavares, ushering in a mighty decay of the Ducks. Selanne was shipped north in 2000-01, in a trade to San Jose. Those moves were bookends of the Ducks’ decline.

Now Wilson and Selanne are together again and the ties still bind. The Ducks get a look at this reunion tour today, when they play the Sharks in San Jose.

“The first day he walked into practice, he yelled, ‘Ali’ at me.” Selanne said, with his constant smirk. “I yelled back, ‘Tyson.’ When we were with the Ducks, he told me Muhammad Ali in his prime could beat Mike Tyson in his prime. There is no way. We picked up that argument five years later.

“I have so much respect for Ron, and I know how good he can be. I’m so excited to be playing for him again.”

Whether it works out for the better this time remains to be seen. Wilson wasn’t brought in for mutual-admiration banter with Selanne. He’s behind the bench, management hopes, to get the Sharks back on track.

“That’s what drives me,” Wilson said. “I’d rather have my name on the Stanley Cup than on a headstone somewhere trying to get there.”

Sutter had nurtured the Sharks along, improving the team’s record each of the past five seasons. They reached the conference semifinals last season, losing to Colorado in seven games, which merely led to higher expectations. One hockey publication picked the Sharks to win the Stanley Cup.

A couple of key holdouts and a poor start left Sutter as the fall guy and cast Wilson in the role of savior. Wilson had, after all, guided Washington to the Stanley Cup finals in 1997-98.

“Well, there is no doubt that this team is built, but I wouldn’t be coaching the team if there wasn’t something wrong,” said Wilson, who was fired by the Capitals after last season. “I don’t know what the best word is for it, ‘underachieving’? I’m just trying to get a feel for how these players play and try to mesh that in with my philosophies.”

There is a key element in that equation: Selanne.

“Teemu understands my personality and may be able, I suppose, to forewarn guys about what I don’t like and about my personality, whatever my personality is,” Wilson said. “Teemu knows me really well.”

But is the Bay Area ready for this version of Butch and Sundance?

“I think it’s going to be a happy reunion,” the Ducks’ Paul Kariya said.

So far, it has been. The Sharks, 9-12-2-2 when Sutter was fired, are 4-3-1-1 since Wilson took over.

It was hard to blame Sutter. Evgeni Nabokov, one of the NHL’s top goalies, and Brad Stuart, a staunch defenseman, were holdouts when the season began, which severely affected the team. That was General Manager Dean Lombardi’s area. But Lombardi wasn’t going to fire himself, and he couldn’t trade 23 players.

Wilson was living life at a leisurely pace in Hilton Head, S.C., enjoying rounds of golf between television assignments as a hockey commentator, when the call came.

“I’m not sure how I felt,” Wilson said. “I was, I guess, hoping I could get back into the game quickly, but I wanted to make sure the situation was going to be right for me. On the other hand, not to be flippant, but as some would say, beggars can’t be choosers.”

So Wilson flew to San Jose, where there were eager faces waiting.

“I don’t know if it is a fresh start, because we have put ourselves in such a hole,” center Patrick Marleau said. “But it’s a kick in the pants to get things going.”

As for it being a welcome change, well, Shark-speak was as about as cryptic as pig Latin.

“It’s hard for me to compare Ron and Darryl without saying something bad about somebody,” Marleau said.

Sutter and Selanne butted heads at times last season. After one game early last season, Sutter told Selanne that he could “get in your Porsche and drive back to Anaheim.”

Selanne’s reply? “The Porsche is in Finland.”

They later smoothed out their differences, but Selanne is a happier camper these days, no matter how diplomatic he tries to be. He is averaging more than 20 minutes a game and has four goals and 11 points in nine games since Wilson took over.

“Their styles are totally different,” Selanne said. “Darryl is more about the system and you stick with that. Ron tries to create more, using your imagination and using your speed. Both coaches have had some success. So it’ll be interesting how good we can be here.”

Selanne has been through coaching changes before, and none was more difficult than when Wilson was canned by the Ducks.

The Ducks had just completed the climb from expansion team to respectable organization, having reached the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Then Tavares got involved and ordered Wilson fired.

The backlash was immediate, although Tavares wasn’t there to take the initial heat. He skipped the news conference, then explained later that he was not hiding, adding: “I was not eating Snickers bars and soaking my feet in Ron’s blood.”

“Some people in the organization thought Teemu and Paul [Kariya] were being used too much at the expense of other players,” Wilson said. “So they made a change. That was fine. I didn’t agree with it. In the end, some people found out they were wrong. Not so much in the coaching part, but in the philosophy of the type of team they had.”

The reasons for the firing mean little now. According to sources who were in the organization, it was Tavares vs. Wilson ... and continued to be even with a continent between them.

Wilson landed in Washington and took the Capitals to the Stanley Cup final his first season. The Ducks, who played without Kariya much of the season, finished next to last in the Western Conference.

A few days after the Capitals had reached the Eastern Conference final, the Ducks fired all their assistant coaches. A few days after the Capitals had reached the Stanley Cup finals, the Ducks fired Pierre Page, who had replaced Wilson.

Selanne had a rink-side seat through it all.

“I couldn’t believe Ron got fired,” Selanne said. “He did an extremely good job. The playoff run we had, it was perfect. We were close to being a very good team. All of a sudden they fire Ron. Then there were eight guys from that playoff team left the next training camp. I said, ‘Where’d everybody disappear? I thought we had a good run going here?’ ”

Selanne’s turn came in March 2001. By then, the Ducks had long gone from promising franchise to league punch line. Pierre Gauthier, the general manager at the time, said he would not trade Selanne, then did.

“It was frustrating,” Selanne said. “You look at management, they were not doing anything to make it to the next level.”

It is a different Duck team that the Sharks will see today. Tavares and Gauthier are gone. Only five players on the Anaheim roster played under Wilson. Only nine who played with Selanne remain.

The change has been for the better. The Ducks, unlike the Sharks, are currently in a playoff spot.

“I haven’t seen Paul more excited about a season for three or four years,” Selanne said. “I was skating with him before the season and it was the first time I saw the fire in his eyes in a long time. He deserves that.”

Of course, what Selanne thinks he deserves, he has ... Wilson.

“I think with Ron, we got to take off,” Selanne said. “It’s time.”