Not sure where the 80 games comes from.
The CBA does not allow players with less than 3 years professional experience to be eligible for offer sheets:
Quote:
(c) Players With Fewer Than Three Years of Professional Experience.
Any Player with fewer than the required years of professional experience set forth
in Section 10.2 shall have no right to Free Agency except as provided in this section. Upon
expiration of such a Player's SPC, the Club to whom the Player was last under SPC shall be
entitled to make that Player a Qualifying Offer under the terms and conditions set forth in
Section 10.2(a)(ii) above. A Club which makes this Qualifying Offer will have the exclusive
right to negotiate with any such Player. In the event no such Qualifying Offer is made, the
Player shall immediately become an Unrestricted Free Agent pursuant to Section 10.2(a)(iv)
above.
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Where a professional season is defined in section 10.2 by:
Quote:
a Player aged 18 or 19 earns a
year of professional experience by playing ten (10) or more NHL Games
in a given NHL Season, and a Player aged 20 or older (or who turns 20
between September 16 and December 31 of the year in which he signs his
first SPC) earns a year of professional experience by playing ten (10) or
more Professional Games under an SPC in a given League Year.
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and Professional Games is defined in the CBA as:
Quote:
"Professional Games" includes the following: any NHL Games played, all minor
league regular season and playoff games and any other professional games played, including but
not limited to, games played in any European league or any other league outside North America,
by a Player pursuant to his SPC.
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There is nothing in the section of the CBA that governs free agents and offer sheets that says a skater must have played 80 NHL games to qualify for an offer sheet
edit: There is a rule that an RFA may become a group 6 UFA if the skater has not played 80 NHL games by the time he is 25 (e.g. Matthew Phillips) which is what might be confusing the issue.