1) As has been rumoured for the past 6 months or more, the Anaheim Ducks resigned unrestricted free agent forward Teemu Selanne. The Finn superstar has signed a one-year contract and will join the team for the rest of this season. The new deal is reportedly worth $600K for the rest of this season.
2) After months of speculation, Teemu is back. Of course its far from surprising since it was expected he’d return to the Ducks when Scott Niedermayer made his decision to return in late November. There are some HUGE differences between the two that we need to remind our readers! Teemu was an UFA. He was under no obligation to say when/if he was going to come back. That in stark contrast to Niedermayer. Scott had another 2 years remaining on a contract he signed before last year. Who as team captain should have felt obliged to honor this contract and not leave the team hanging. We have written about this few times before. (see story link)http://newfaux.blogspot.com/2007/09/niedermayerdead.html. Not withstanding the obvious positive difference he has made for the team since his return, we still hold considerable disdain for Scott's selfishness
3) As for Selanne, what will be interesting to see over the next few weeks is how long will it take for him to get back into playing shape. He's no spring chicken at age 37. It remains to be seen if the renaissance his career enjoyed the past 2 seasons in Anaheim can continue. Teemu had consecutive 90+point seasons. The Ducks would welcome a return of that kind of offensive contribution. If the Finnish Flash starts to resemble last season, the Ducks would immediately be placed along side Detroit and possibly SJ as the favourites to win the Cup!
4) As an aside, what we hope does NOT occur from these two mid season additions is that this kind of situation, of veteran players taking significant time off becomes a trend. Ala a Roger Clemens situation. We give much credit to Brian Burke for staying quiet about these two, especially Niedermayer. Our sources tell us Brian was privately quite miffed at Scott, but knew a public feud would make a return of the former Norris/Conn Smythe Trophy winner less likely.
5 comments:
I hope, but fear, this could become a trend too...Call it the Clemens/Favre factor.
1) We almost used the Favre name as well. We don't recall Brett missing any of the season BUT what he does to Green Bay is worse than what Clemens does. Its much easier to replace a starting pitcher in a salary cap free world than to replace a starting QB with a hard cap league!
2) Its time for BOTH of those 2 to retire and go away
Hey my friend. I thought you guys would like to know theres some dude out there saying you got the Teemu rumor wrong. On a site called hockeynut or something. said in december 19 you said teemu aint going to play. He's lying. i went and you guys said he was coming back to us by late january.
Just thought you would want to know other peeps are talking and lying bout ya!
1) Zulu: Thanks for the heads up but its a non-story to us here. The site you mention is completely irrelevant. It was discredited LONG ago so we ignore/don't go there (and few read it anyway)
2) If you notice we made no big issue over being correct about Selanne's return. Why? It wasn't a huge surprise to almost anyone. It wasn't a rumor we alone broke, so why trumpet it?
3) Thanks anyway for the heads up. Likely the near psycho who runs that site will soon be returning here (under God-knows what screen name) to try to (again) disrupt this blog. No worries though!
4) BTW Zulu: How are the fans responding to the return out there? We've been critical of Niedermayer choices, but we can't say he hasn't earned his pay cheque since he got back!
I'm not gonna trash the kids for taking some time off. I just wish they would have stayed retired for the sake of my team. I didn't fear nobody else out here until they got both of those fellas back. I still think we're better but not as much now
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