Morning Flurries: The end of an era (Matt Duchene returns to Ontario)

When Matt Duchene was drafted by the Colorado Avalanche in 2009, his childhood dream came true.

The Avalanche superfan from Haliburton, Ontario wanted nothing more than to play for Colorado - but nearly 600 games and over 400 regular season points later, he couldn’t wait to get out.

The Avalanche struggled to make that happen in a way that earned them the right return, but things finally clicked on Sunday afternoon when they managed a three-way swap with the Nashville Predators and the Ottawa Senators.

Oh... and did we mention they traded their former biggest fan in the middle of the game?

While the game was still being played, Duchene left the arena in street clothes - likely to go get things sorted so he could 1) move his life to Ottawa to join the Senators, and 2) get ready to head to Sweden with the Senators, where they’ll play a series for an international crowd mid-season next weekend.

(Did we also mention that those games will take place against the Colorado Avalanche? You can’t write fiction wilder than this.)

Here’s a full breakdown of the trade, including the flurry of pieces headed back to Colorado. [Mile High Hockey]

We should mention, of course, that Colorado - unsurprisingly - lost that game. After starting the contest dressing 11 forwards as it was, losing Duchene mid-game (and Comeau, who was helped off while Duchene was sneaking out) during the second leg of a back-to-back didn’t help things much. [MHH]

Want a closer look at the prospects headed to Colorado? We’ve got you covered. [MHH]

Of course, the confusion of the deal rolling out made for some hilarity on social media:

And finally, Nashville gets a pretty nice player out of the whole deal, to boot. Here’s a great story on Kyle Turris as the final piece of Sunday’s deal:

We will return to our regularly scheduled link-dumping Tuesday morning.