Tyler Seguin’s father says his son is like most 21-year-old males, only he’s often trapped in the celebrity spotlight.

Paul Seguin admits his son enjoys the bar scene and sometimes goes out until 2 or 3 a.m. As a hockey star who is recognized anywhere he goes, his public outings are frequently tweeted out.

Word, however, got back to the Bruins executive.

“Him having a good time occasionally, and it being in the media, this was something that the Bruins thought should never happen,” Seguin said. “Even if it happened once or twice or three times, the Bruins didn’t like this happening even once.”

Seguin, 48, said his unmarried son likes to socialize with people his age.

“Who do you turn to when your teammates are older and you are by yourself and your family is in Toronto?” his father told the Star.

“With all respect to David Krejci or Milan Lucic, when the game is over, they go out with their family and hang out in the back of a restaurant. They’re nice and quiet and no one tweets about it. Tyler looks to his friends for comfort and where do his friends go? They go to the local bar.”

However, Seguin says his son has always been a professional in his approach to the game and never stayed out late before a game. He would mostly go to bars after a Saturday game when the team had the Sunday off.

The Bruins began questioning Seguin’s lifestyle during the first-round series against the Leafs, said his father, who spent a week in Boston going to dinner and movies with his son during the playoffs.

“I started to hear little bits and pieces of it in the Toronto series,” he said. “They were unhappy with his performance, but they should have termed it their performance.”

He said the Bruins asked him, “Is there something going on? Are you staying out late? From that moment, they started to lose faith in him.”

The Bruins traded Seguin to the Dallas Stars on Thursday in a blockbuster seven-player deal, and on Friday the Boston Herald reported that Sequin’s trade came about because the Bruins were upset with his late-night drinking and partying.

The Herald story said the Bruins even ordered Seguin to live in a hotel where a guard made sure he stayed in his room.

Both Seguin’s parents dispute that story, saying all the Bruins were put up in a hotel in Boston during the Stanley Cup final. His father questions the rationale behind the trade but said he “respects” and “appreciates” everything Boston did for the family. “It was a great experience for him.”

The Star reached out to Tyler Seguin and his agent, but they did not respond to requests for comment.

Seguin’s mother, Jackie, reacted with shock when she heard about the Boston Herald story.

“Oh my god! That’s stupid stuff,” she said, her voice rising. “That’s very unfair to say that. He’s a professional. That makes me very angry.”

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Seguin was criticized as an underperformer in the playoffs as Chicago knocked off the Bruins in the Cup final. His mother, however, believes management is trying to justify the trade because her son was so popular with the fans. As the No. 2 overall pick in the 2010 draft, he was felt by many to be a future Bruins superstar.

“You know what is happening?” she said. “Boston is now trying to justify why they’re getting rid of Tyler. Obviously, they don’t want a fan backlash against (GM Peter) Chiarelli. Now they’re making up stories.”

Chiarelli, during a 20-minute conference call Thursday, said the trade was “not a strictly on-ice decision.”

Stephen Harris, the reporter who wrote the Herald story, said it was “generally assumed” that when the GM recently expressed concerns about Seguin’s professionalism and focus that he was talking about his reputed off-ice behaviour.

However, Chiarelli insisted that his comments were not directed at Seguin’s alleged partying.

“I don’t want to really play that up too much,” the GM told Harris, adding that “he liked to have fun like the rest of them. It was nothing about extracurricular activities. … Maybe some of it is true, but I know not all of it is true.”

Jackie Seguin said her son was not happy to be traded out of Boston but he is a “professional in capital letters.”

“I think he will thrive in Dallas, to be honest with you, because he will play his natural position (centre) and he will get more ice.”

Jackie told the Star that Boston’s intense media spotlight makes it a tough hockey city, especially when unsubstantiated stories leak out. In Dallas, her son is bound to flourish because he won’t be under the microscope.

“I don’t think the media (in Dallas) will be so hard. At the end of the day, I’m just the mom. I just want Tyler to be happy. For him to get away from Boston may not be such a bad thing. There must be something good about him if Dallas wants him.”