Anaheim Ducks head coach Bruce Boudreau may have taken the high road in response to Teemu Selanne's tell-all criticism, but Ryan Getzlaf isn't willing to have mud slung in his direction.
"I was pissed off, to tell you the truth," the Ducks' captain said Thursday on The Jim Rome Show. "It wasn't great. I thought it was kind of unnecessary for him to come out and say something like that."
Getzlaf defended his role as Anaheim's captain, explaining that he lobbied for the veteran Selanne many times behind closed doors.
"Teemu doesn't know everything that goes on," Getzlaf said. "He doesn't know how many times I had conversations about him in the last two years, to help him, to try and get him to where he wanted to be."
"I’m the captain of the hockey team, not of one player," Getzlaf added. "I have to kind of weigh in where my voice is going to be heard and where’s it’s not. There are times where I have to step away and just let our coaches and GM make the decisions and go with it."
The dissension in Anaheim's ranks remained quiet as the team skated to the Pacific Division crown last season, but based on Getzlaf's comments, the issues were very real.
"These last two years, dealing with some of that stuff was really hard," he said, "A Hall of Famer who has been around for a long time, someone who I looked up to when I was here, and to watch him kind of go through that, it was a little bit tough."