Pizza
Registered User
- Sep 17, 2005
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Greg7 said:Okay, everyone needs to read this. A lot of people are confused about the rules about how contracts and sending guys down works for CHL players.
No player who has a contract with a CHL team can play anywhere other than the NHL until their overage year of junior. This means you can't send a guy to the AHL, ECHL, or anywhere else until he's a 20 year old by CHL standards (this is determined strictly by birthyear; for example, this year's "20 year olds" in the CHL are born in 1985, so even though some of them are still 19, and some of them will be 21 before the season ends, they are all considered "20 year olds"). CHL contracts have release clauses for the NHL only.
A player can be sent back to junior from the NHL any time the team wants to. Remember MA Fleury a couple year ago? Played half the season in Pittsburgh, went to the WJs, then went back down to junior.
If a player dresses in 10 or more regular season NHL games his contract starts ticking and years start coming off, but he can still be sent to junior.
If a player dresses for 40 or more regular season NHL games his RFA years start ticking (towards 7 years in the NHL until unrestricted free agency), but he can still be sent to junior.
All this adds up to mean that you can sign a prospect, play him in all your preseason games and up to 9 regular season games, send him back to junior, and no years will come off his contract or his RFA eligibility. You can play him for up to 39 games in the NHL, then send him back to junior, and a year comes off his contract but it doesn't count as the first of the seven years in the NHL to become a UFA. You can even play a guy for 50 or whatever games and send him back to junior if you want, but you lose a year of RFA eligibility towards the seven years and a year off the entry level contract.
In Marc Staal's case specifically, this means he can't play in the AHL for two years, so he will probably play those two years in junior.
Thank you for the clarification sir.
I'm pretty sure I all that. My guess is the Rangers want to take as much time as they possibly can to look at Staal, since he has surpassed even their expectations....and that is saying something