Thank you. My misstake, I was almost sure that players born in 86 could be drafted this year, I should have done my homework better. I guess I will wait and sign him as a free agent down the line.
Well it looks like someone else should have done their homework better, Martin.
Harju is eligible...for the HFNHL.
The eligibility rule in the NHL is that European eligibility spans four years, birth years 1987-1990.
The eligibility, for some reason unknown to me, our eligibility for Euro's spans five years, from 1986-1990.
So while it doesn't make a whole lick of sense to me, for us to follow the NHL's draft eligibility on North American players, and not European players, I'm going to have to give you Harju.
Fixing this, is actually going to be fairly easy. Your last 7th rounder, Stefan Espelund was not on anyone else's draft list (at least not high enough to draft), and Harju was nowhere to be seen on anyone else's draft list (I suspect because they believed the same eligibility as myself) meaning Harju will replace Espelund as your 7th rounder. Sean, could you go ahead and remove Espelund from Tampa's prospect list and add Johan Harju.
So this brings me to a few things to consider. I vote that starting next year, we should be following the NHL's draft eligibility. After all, we emulate every other aspect of the NHL and its draft ideals, why would we have one thing so drastically different. So for any future drafts, draft eligibility for NA remains a span of three birth years, while Euro eligibility would be shifted to the NHL's four birth year span. Anyone else agree?
Also, Sean could you update the Entry Draft rules in our actual rulebook? They appear to be somewhat out of date, with a lot of important information missing. The rules and information listed on that draft instructions thing should really go in the official rulebook.