Contrast that with their top three – all well under thirty and with exceptional performances in every year together thus far. Betting your captain or your star goal-scorer in a trade that would doubtless favour the other team because of their poor production and your desperate trading position is stupid. These guys are going to rebound once the team as a whole improves – and let’s face it, the Ducks have a pretty bad roster once you get past the names of their top six forwards and the occasionally-spectacular Lubomir Visnovsky. Better to scrap this season, trade Selanne and get useful pieces back in return that can be used to turn the team into something more resembling an NHL roster.

More generally, though, it’s going to be hard to see lasting improvement in Anaheim as long as they’re forced to work on a ridiculous internal budget. If every other team has more to work with than they do and their cheap-ass owners treat the franchise like a profit-turning investment without caring if it can actually win games or not, new ownership is needed to salvage things. Ownership of an NHL team is a responsibility, not a way to pad your bank account. It CAN be that too, but trying to run a team on as close to NHL minimum wage as possible and expecting it to win anything is just irresponsible, ignorant and selfish.