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Saturday, March 10, 2001
Friesen freefalls down the California coast
By George Johnson
Special to ESPN.com
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As the late-afternoon flight began its descent into the heart of the Silicon Valley, the finality, the irreversibility, of what had happened knotted in the pit of Jeff Friesen's stomach.
"The whole day was just ... weird," murmured Friesen. "We're coming down into the city and you see the mountains and you think 'This is home.' But it's not. Not anymore. I just had a hard time believing it."
Friesen, a member of the Sharks since they selected him 11th overall in the 1994 draft, had just been traded.
"Seven years in a city. I'd grown up there, in a way. I'd transformed my game. I was trying to be more of a leader, a team player, a gritty player. Not just a scorer. I'd gone from being one of the kids to trying to help the younger players like Patty (Marleau) and (Marco) Sturm.
"I wasn't flying into the airport with 20 other guys I knew and liked. I was flying in alone. To pack some stuff and then leave again."
Compounding the Rod Serling-ish twist to an understandably disorienting 24 hours, Teemu Selanne -- the player Friesen had been traded to Anaheim for -- was on the same plane, heading to his new home. Then, later as Friesen gathered a few things in a suitcase, he watched the only NHL team he's ever known, the San Jose Sharks, on TV for the first time as merely a casual observer.
"I'm still kind of ... stunned," he said.
Wednesday night, Friesen puts on an Anaheim jersey for the first time, as the dreadful Ducks host the Montreal Canadiens. The second phase of his NHL career is underway.
If Mario's astonishing comeback qualifies as the unrivalled feel-good yarn of the season, Monday's big trade in California is the Teal-good story. At least, for one of the principals involved.
Selanne, a stealth sniper, a media darling and the consensus winner of the Genuine Nice Guy Award, has finally been sprung from the posh purgatory of The Pond and thrust into a situation in which he at least has a fighting chance of accomplishing something which seemed impossible in Anaheim:
Winning.
As a trade, the deal concocted by Sharks' general manager Dean Lombardi and Pierre Gauthier of the Ducks looks on the surface to have benefited both clubs. Selanne provides the Sharks with another lethal offensive threat; Steve Shields solidifies a confused Anaheim goaltending equation and Jeff Friesen ... well, Jeff Friesen adds overdrive and grit and try. So everybody wins, right?
Not exactly.
Selanne wins because he goes to a stronger team. Shields wins because in San Jose he'd been unceremoniously elbowed out of the crease by rookie Evgeni Nabokov. The Ducks win because they're deeper, if not flashier, than before. The Sharks win because they've got the added weapon in their arsenal.
Friesen?
"I'm mad, but I'm not mad, ya'know?" he says, trying to explain. "I don't have a problem with the Sharks. They felt that in adding an offensive player like Teemu, they'd be that much closer to a Stanley Cup. I understand that. Hey, he could turn out to be the one piece of the puzzle they need.
"It's just disappointing that I won't get to be a part of it."
San Jose will miss him, too. Before that burst of unbridled enthusiasm in acquiring a bonafide gamebreaker in Selanne, there was a momentary pause of hurt; a quick, sharp pang of regret, all around the Bay Area. For Jeff Friesen, more than anyone, had come to symbolize the franchise that has just published it's 10-year anniversary book, Decade of Teal.
He lived in the community year round. Everybody knew "Freeze." He was arguably the most popular athlete in town. He'd paid his dues during the bad times and was ready to cash in on the good. He was the franchise's all-time leader in games played, assists and points. He seemed destined to be a Shark for life.
"Then, boom!" he said softly. "I'm traded."
Already he's dreading Anaheim's visit to The Shark Tank on March 29. That, he knows, will be an emotionally draining evening. He went through so much in San Jose, after all. Friesen's first season in Silicon Valley, the Sharks finished five games under .500, but engineered an astounding upset of the heavily-favored Calgary Flames in the first round of playoffs. The next year they were 35 games under .500, the following season they were 20. Bad went to worse. He survived that whole bleak period when San Jose management flooded the dressing room with the wrong sort of veterans, their egos and insecurities poisoning the confidence of the young players. Players like Jeff Friesen.
But nothing, it seemed, could sour Friesen. Nothing, it seemed, could pry him out of San Jose.
Nothing short of a Teemu Selanne, that is.
"The only thing that kind of bugs me was that I'd been in a scoring slump the last while and my entire game was perceived as being dictated by that. As if I couldn't do anything else. I figured I'd gone beyond that as a player. You'd read the papers: one goal in 17 games, none in nine. I wasn't happy with it -- I'd missed something like nine breakaways during that time -- but I thought I was still working hard and contributing in other ways.
"Darryl (Sutter) was great to me. Must've been four or five times he'd say in team meetings or individually, not to press, that the goals would come, and that I was still helping the team."
But when Gauthier came calling, dangling the Finnish Flash as bait, Lombardi hesitated, then bit. The biggest part of the pricetag was Friesen.
"It's like your own baby," Lombardi told the San Jose Mercury News. "He's been the identity of the growth of the franchise. He's been through all the turmoil. He's given it his all."
No wonder Jeff Friesen remains dumbfounded about the tumultuous last few days. Oh, sure, he still gets to live in California. No one is docking as much as a penny off his salary. He still has wealth and notoriety. So how bad can it be, right?
Well, as the Sharks set about trying to fine tune, he's been transported back in time almost to where he started seven years ago, on a floundering team trying to establish an identity, looking to build something. Somehow, it just doesn't seem fair.
And if Friesen thinks the last few days have been torture, wait until mid-April, when he's at home, the Ducks' season over, and his old buddies are gearing up for a spirited Stanley Cup push.
"The fans there deserve a winning team," he says. "The players there work their butts off. I left a lot of good friends. They deserve success. (Owner) George Gund is willing to do what it takes to build a championship. It's a good situation there, for sure.
"It'll be tough to watch them. If they go a long ways into the playoffs ... well, I don't know right now how I'd react.
"I was really looking forward to the playoffs this year. We all were. I wanted to show that I had the type of game, that I was the type of player, who could play a big role at the most important time of the year, in a long playoff run.
"Well, I guess I'll just have to wait a little longer for that chance."
Longer than he can probably bring himself to admit.
George Johnson of the Calgary Herald is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
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