He must’ve seen the backhander that stunned Anton Khudobin. Or maybe it was the five-hole snap that fooled Devan Dubnyk. Just over a week into the NHL season, and there is already a buffet of Max Domi highlights to choose from.
“Who will win the rookie of the year?” tweeted 1993 Calder winner Teemu Selanne. “My pick is the Great Tie Domi’s son Max.”
What a year @NHL for rookies, exiting to follow this guys and who will win the rookie of the year, my pick is the Great Tie Domi’s son Max
— Teemu Sel8nne (@TeemuSel8nne) October 15, 2015
The 2015 freshman class is off to a roaring start, but none of the fresh-faced forwards have been more dangerous than the Arizona Coyotes‘ duo of Domi and Anthony Duclair. Each has six points through four games. The team’s offence, which ranked 29th overall in 2014-15, is now the league’s ninth most lethal.
Six rookies — Artemi Panarin, Oscar Lindberg, Mattias Janmark and Dylan Larkin the others — are scoring at a point-per-game-or-better pace, and that group doesn’t even include Calder favourites Jack Eichel and Connor McDavid.
Selanne’s endorsement of Domi has been 20 years in the making, as this thousand-word photograph from 1995 shows us:
When The Finnish Flash joined the Winnipeg Jets back in 1993, teammate and enforcer extraordinaire Tie Domi had Selanne’s back.
“You can’t go near Gretzky without getting a penalty,” Domi told the Associated Press at the time. “Meanwhile, they don’t give any respect to Teemu Selanne and that has to change.”
Domi Sr. and Selanne skated together on the Jets for three seasons before Domi was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Max was one month old at the time.
Gotta See It (Throwback): Teemu Selanne “fights” Tie Domi
(Baby Domi photo via @Impossimitch / Steve Dangle)
