Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze2
Exactly. Sucks for the fan but in the real world you can't just force people to work for you, unless you are Abraham Lincoln.
The draft is the way the league has decided to orderly and fairly distribute young up and coming talent amongst the teams while honoring basic legal rights and decency. Its not for nerd fans to fill their little pools with. Real people with actual rights.
That you can be blackballed for not wanting to go work somewhere on their terms is brutal.
He should just follow the cliche of an idiot 18 yr olds who wants that new truck with their signing bonus. He dared to actually follow the rules to advocate for himself against (sometimes) piece of crap billionaires who are shrewd negotiators.
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He did what he did according to the rules. He wasn't required to sign with the Flames, and at least he was honest with them about that (although more clarity at pre-draft interviews would have been helpful). However, my view of "forcing" someone to work where they don't want to is different. If you're hired by a company for a position in a particular locale, you're not then entitled to say that you want the position, but you demand to be placed in a different locale of your choice. Likewise, the NHL can and should include a clause in the next CBA that states that no drafted player can play in the NHL if they are offered an entry-level deal and reject it. Nobody is entitled to play in the NHL, it's a privilege, and the cost of that privilege is to spend part of your career with the team that drafted and developed you, which is, as you pointed out, one mechanism that the league uses to try to more evenly distribute talent. If you don't want to sign with the team the NHL assigns you to, you can always find an employer of your choice outside of the NHL.
Failure to put into place a mechanism to prevent players from opting out of signing with the teams that drafted them will eventually lead to a league in which the teams who have less favourable locations/local tax structures will not be able to build a competitive team, even through the draft, because players will simply refuse to sign so that they can go where they most want to play, which in most cases will be the same teams, such as those in Florida, California, and New York.