I think the term hostage was used because Frank Seravailli has no real journalistic integrity and likes to over dramatize everything for clicks and views.
Was Hanifin providing the Flames with the a huge list of team's he'd re-sign with? Nope, but even based on his answer today "East Coast, Closer to Family" I feel like the initial lists that were going around of Boston, Tampa, and Florida made sense.
Doesn't seem like Boston or Florida had much interest in trading for him in the end, so it ended up being Tampa that had the inside track.
Now there was the other Frank report that said "He was telling teams he didn't want to be a rental" but in the end he had no real power to enforce that with a 8 team NTC.
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