Quote:
Originally Posted by Systemfel
There could still be loopholes. An NHL club could possibly "loan" a player to a team here, or an NHL player might sign with an SEL club "for the whole season" and "agree to terminate the contract due to [whatever]" when the lockout is over. The loan option seems the most appealing to me. I'm sure if Erik Karlsson asked nicely, Ottawa would have no problem "assigning" him to Frölunda.
Personally, I hope that some teams do find a way around the ban. The lockout is projected to just span over a couple of months, rights? A couple of months. A short lockout wouldn't really hurt the precious "development of Swedish hockey" a whole lot, me thinks.
Also, the teams who think they already have a "good product" can if they wish just not sign any NHLers, and let teams that do want to strengthen their roster a bit do that. Problem solved. The "good product" thing is just spy-talk for, "Well, we don't have any good NHLers to bring home so we're going to try to screw over teams like Modo and Frölunda."
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I don't think they agreed to this to "screw over" certain clubs. Most clubs would be able to get some good players to their team and the Sedins already said that they wouldn't play in Modo if it was just a short lockout.
It's quite obvious that they did this so teams wouldn't sign expensive short-term contracts that then would force other teams to sign expensive short-term contracts to be able to keep up.
My guess is that this decision is 100% about not putting the teams long term finances in jeopardy because of players that would just spend a few months in the teams. It could be a scenario that for example Erik Karlsson, since you mentioned him, would sign a deal with Frölunda where he plays almost for free/for free. Then some other teams are forced to spend a lot money to get an equivalent of Karlsson if they want to keep up with Frölunda, this could very well be the case for teams like AIK, Växjö and Rögle that could end up fighting for the last playoff spots together with Frölunda. How would that be fair? At least it is the same for everyone as it is now and that's why I think that this is the right decision by the league - even though I would have loved to get Omark, Nilsson and maybe even Justin Williams back to Luleå.