Quote:
Originally Posted by Titan2
Do you have a link on this? I am curious to read it.
|
Unfortunately, I read it in print many years ago – possibly a print edition of the Hockey News. I believe it was back in the 1990s.
The league tried to hammer out a compromise where 18-year-olds would specifically have to opt into the draft, and then could only be taken in the first three rounds. Somebody or other threatened to sue them for age discrimination, citing precedent that a private business can't refuse to hire legal adults on the grounds of their age. The league folded, as I recall, without fighting the matter any further, and the draft age stayed at 18.
I do know that the grounds for the threatened suit were specifically about discrimination, and not based on either general labour law or anti-trust law. Those people who say that labour and anti-trust law don't forbid a higher draft age are simply looking in the wrong place.
I firmly believe that the NFL and NBA rules (X years out of high school before being eligible) are designed to limit the draft without mentioning a specific age and thus risking a suit for discrimination. If the NHL does try to raise the draft age, it will have to go about it in a similar way.