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Teemu Selanne retirement semi-update: Bob Murray says ‘He feels fine’

Teemu Selanne

With Nicklas Lidstrom, Mark Recchi and (surprise) Brian Rafalski announcing their retirement decisions nice and early, the focus is on two other big-name veterans: Mike Modano and Teemu Selanne. Of course, there’s a fairly big difference between them: Modano probably won’t draw much more than marginal interest if he decides to come back while the Anaheim Ducks are yearning for one more go with the Finnish Flash.

While Ducks GM Bob Murray expressed his belief that Selanne is leaning toward playing for one more year when asked in late June, off-season knee surgery threw off Selanne’s decision-making process at least a bit. It’s far too early to know whether Selanne will be back for sure or not, but Murray provided a marginal update about the still-relevant winger’s off-season during the conference call to discuss the team’s trade for Andrew Cogliano.

Eric Stephens shares the brief mention of Selanne for the OC Register’s Ducks Blog.

Ducks GM Bob Murray, in a conference call discussing the trade for center Andrew Cogliano, said that Teemu Selanne is skating in his native Finland after speaking to the winger Monday.

(snip)

“His kids are at camp and he’s out there skating with them,” Murray said. “He feels fine. He said, ‘Ok, let’s talk next week like we always planned.

“He says he feels fine. He feels good. We’ll talk next week.”


There are some nostalgic types who dream of Selanne putting on a Winnipeg Jets sweater once more (and maybe doing another machine gun goal celebration?), but the Finnish sniper indicated that he’ll either play another season for the Ducks or retire. Selanne has been fantastic since the lockout ended, scoring 389 points in 380 regular season games (including a stunning 80 points in 73 games in 2010-11).

Those numbers indicate that Selanne might be in something close to win-win situation. If he retires, he’ll go out with another point per game season on his staggering NHL resume. On the other hand, his last season was impressive enough that he wouldn’t receive many accusations of hanging around too long if he decided to play for another season.

I’d love to see one more season of the Finnish Flash, but there’s nothing wrong with him bowing out gracefully, either.