However, last week Larry Brooks at the New York Post dropped this little nugget on us…
“An interesting note on Duclair’s contract: Ordinarily, the contract would slide for a second straight season if Duclair returns to juniors, thus leaving him with the full three-year Entry Level deal to fulfill. But because Duclair did not sign his first contract until Jan. 6, 2014, thus missing the Dec. 31, 2013 cutoff date, the Rangers got only one “slide year†out of it.
Thus, even if Duclair returns to Quebec, the winger will have just two years remaining on his contract and would become eligible for restricted free agency in 2017.â€
... reader @Kevin11 questioned why everyone continued with the assumption that Duclair was subject to the nine game rule despite the fact that he’d already be burning the initial year of his entry level contract anyway. As @Kevin11 understood it, the Rangers should be able to return Duclair to his junior team whenever they felt like it since they’re already being penalized.
After initially dismissing his notion, I asked fellow TheNYRBloggers Adam and Neill if what @Kevin11 was stating is in fact true. And after some back and forth, we came to the conclusion that it is. Because the Rangers are already losing a year of Duclair’s contract this season they’re basically able to take advantage of a loophole that would allow them to extend the young phenom’s tryout indefinitely without being imposed an additional penalty if they eventually decided to return him to juniors. Which obviously comes in especially handy with Stepan’s injury.
