It's also my belief that St. Louis really thought they had Chicago over a barrel.
It's interesting that you mentioned this because I had a similar conversation this week with a former NHL GM that summers in Maine. I won't mention his name because he's still very active in the game, but we were foursome partners for a charity golf outing this week and we talked a lot about the AHL and where its moving toward in the future.
Not to bury the lede but teams like Chicago and Hershey should be extremely worried in the years ahead about maintaining their autonomy on the hockey operations side... According to my conversation, it appeared to be an ominous warning that independent teams in the AHL are about to lose that independence in terms of controlling the player movement within the AHL because as this former GM put it "NHL teams are investing millions into player development and they not going to waste that investment by allowing someone to play day trader with their money."
Apparently, there's a push by NHL clubs to essentially gain full control over the hockey operations of each club. Right now Andrews is really holding everything together as the status quo., but once he steps down, NHL teams are planning toward pushing their agenda full forward and controlling the hockey operations of every AHL club, which doesn't bode well for teams like Chicago and Hershey. Currently, there is a group of NHL team executives working on a "rules package" that would be implement by the AHL BoG once the current collective bargaining agreement expires. A couple of the ideas mentioned centered around further reducing veteran rule, changing it or eliminating it all together.
One desire/option is that all players had to be signed by an NHL club to eligible to play in the AHL. A second idea is that the veteran rule would be reduced from five to four and then eventually three, however the number of games that classified a veteran would be expanded from its current number to 325.
Another idea that was floating around was the creation of some sort of clearing house - still haven't figured out how that would work - that determine a players eligibility to play in the AHL.
And, the old standby is that NHL teams would demand/mandate control of the hockey operations departments in future affiliation agreements. If they are met with resistance they would simply not affiliate with said team forcing that team to either go it alone, play ball or fold... I believe we call that collusion, but try proving it.
When all else fails... NHL owned clubs form their own league (NHL2) and allow their NHL brethren to join them.
This doesn't even include overall changes to the league which include reduction in games. Bottomline is that NHL teams want full control over the hockey operation of their AHL affiliates and if this becomes contentious it could make for a bumpy ride in the league over the next several seasons.
P.S. Don't shoot the messenger.