ES said:
He was born on January 21, 1981. He was drafted in 2000, despite because of his age he would have been available in the previous year. Did he opt out in purpose or what was the reason behind that?
To remain eligible to play in the NCAA, players had opt out of their first year of eligibility. Look at most NCAA players drafted before 2003, and you'll see they'll be a year older as well.
You can look at Rick DiPietro as an example of a player who choose to enter the draft in his first year of eligibility and so was unable to continue playing college hockey.
The rules have changed a bit since then though. Now, players can enter the draft in their first year of eligibility and retain their NCAA eligibility as long as they're not currently playing in the NCAA. So, under these rules Rick DiPietro (Boston University) would have still been unable to enter the draft in 2000, but Dany Heatley (AJHL) could have entered in 1999 if he wished.
To make things more confusing, the NCAA gave an exception last year to players to enter the 2004 Draft even if they fell under the same criteria as DiPietro and were playing college hockey in their first year of eligiblity. But to my knowledge, this was a one-time thing.
