Right Back Where We Started From

I said this at the beginning of the season, but now I'm serious: the Ducks should trade Teemu Selanne to the Winnipeg Jets. I won't ask you to hear me out (as all of you have fast forwarded to the comments to complain), but I'll keep typing as though you're reading.

In short, Teemu deserves better. He didn't come to training camp to go through this. Hell, Cam Fowler didn't come to training camp to go through this. And while Selanne may have an equal chance of missing the postseason with either the Ducks or the Jets, I can't imagine he could regret playing one more season in front of the good people of Winnipeg-- win or lose. Another discouraging season in Anaheim? I think he could do without that.

And make no mistake, this isn't trading him back to the Jets organization that betrayed him (i.e. the Coyotes). This is much purer than that. This is sending him home to his first love, the fans that witnessed 76 goals and the second coming of the Finnish Flash.

You could complain about what the Ducks would get (probably not much without the increasingly valuable Anaheim picks coming into play), or the value of making such a purely sentimental trade. But I would argue that Selanne avoided quite a few logical complaints in deciding to come back at age 41 following another knee surgery (not to mention each year before that). He never asked for anything more than the promise that this organization was not rebuilding. But as this squad turns in more and more beer league efforts, with no major changes to the team or higher-ups, the Ducks are getting dangerously close to breaking that promise. Maybe it's time they matched Selanne for sentimentality and offered him the best bang for his buck in his last NHL campagin.