NHL Rumors: The Idea of Being Able to Send 19-Year-Olds to the AHL

Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman on Saturday Headlines said there are GM meeting this week, and although there is nothing major expected, they will be talking about being able to send a 19-year-old player to a development league, like the AHL, instead of back to junior.

** NHLRumors transcription

“Okay, so this week, the GM meetings are in Toronto at the day after the Hall of Fame inductions, and not expecting anything huge necessarily out of them. This is usually the setup for the meeting, the bigger meeting in March.

But you know, one of the things I’ve kind of been hearing is, as part of the new CBA between the league and the Players Association, there will be the opportunity, providing it can be negotiated with the Canadian Hockey League, to send one player, one 19-year-old, to the American Hockey League as soon as next season.

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Now, in September, the coaches and the GMs met, and the CHL was there, and the CHL spoke a lot about, you know, ‘Please don’t hurt our game. We’re still one of the most important feeder leagues in the developmental system for the NHL, which a lot of people do agree with. And we want you to understand that, you know, we need those 19-year-olds. They’re important to us.’

That said, I think that there are some managers out there who want to know, can they even have more flexibility? Is there a possibility that it could be like if, say, you have two or three of multiple first round picks, how many years do we see a team get two or three first round picks because they have players that the contenders want. Or maybe you have more than one 19-year-old who is physically mature?

I don’t know where it’s going to go, Ron. I don’t know if that’s going to be allowed to happen. The PA would have a say in that, too. But one thing I’m definitely hearing is teams, especially now we’re in the wild west phase of development of junior hockey in North America. Players are all over the place. They have more control and more say than ever, which is no problem. But I think the teams with their 19-year-olds, they want to feel that they can have more control over saying, if we want them in the AHL, we can get them there. So we’ll see if it goes anywhere.”

Ron MacLean: “I should mention Elliotte, you and Kyle on 32 Thoughts, the most recent podcast, talk a lot about the story that broke this week about potential USHL absorption into the CHL or the Quebec League. So that’s good listen if you want to hear that.”

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Friedman: “And I think, I think one thing too about that is, it’s very clear one of the things the CHL team said to me this week, it’s very clear the NHL considers the health of the USHL to be important. And I think there’s some people worried about it, and so I think the NHL feels very strongly that the USHL needs to be protected.”

MacLean: “And Zane Parekh at Calgary is an example as part of that conversation, and he got hurt last night.”

Friedman: “Yeah, so he can’t go back. He can’t go to the American Hockey League, and they don’t want to send him back to juniors. They say he’s too good.”

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