[Jiri Hrdina]

I also see this as another example of a growing trend of players exercising more control over where they go. NTC are part of it, but if you don't have a full one, you can still engineer outcomes by being clear where you will/won't sign. Carolina looked past that when they acquired Rantanen and it burned them (though they did a nice job of recouping assets by flipping him).

And this will start to happen more with prospects and even at the draft. Montreal didn't pass over Michkov as much as he passed over them. He didn't end up in Philly by fluke - he engineered it to happen.

So maybe it does require a different operating model for teams like the Flames. But this is going to increase the advantage that certain markets have who are destinations because players will exert control to end up there, which pushes the acquisition prices down for those teams.