ElQuapo
Registered User
- May 11, 2010
- 16
- 0
Are you sure about those rules? I'm pretty sure it depends on where you played when you were drafted. If you played in the CHL, you have to abide by the CHL/NHL agreement. But if you were playing in Europe and moved to the CHL the season after being drafted, you can still move the AHL, despite being under 20. Maybe they changed it with the new CBA, but these are rules I'm familiar with.
I'm pretty sure it depends on rights being owned or not - not where players are drafted from.
That is why sometimes a CHL team will take a chance and draft a top european prospect in the CHL-Import-draft, even though the player has expressed no desire to play junior hockey.
When the player is then drafted to the NHL, the CHL team which drafted him in the Import-draft might get lucky, that the NHL team signs the player and sends them down to the junior team.
Also, because CHL teams can only have two import players, they might actually release a players rights in order to bring in someone else. In that case, the player who's rights are released can play in the AHL even though he is under 20.