Gary Bettman put no-trade clauses on notice Thursday, and the NHL players who've turned them into trade leverage heard it loud and clear.
The commissioner didn't mince words. "I think we've gotten past the way no-trade clauses were originally intended," he said on the Fan Hockey Show.
His argument is simple. The clauses were built to protect a player who signs long-term in a city he actually wants to call home.
What they weren't built for? A player demanding a trade, then dictating exactly where he's willing to go.
And Bettman didn't stop at venting. He said that if this grows into a bigger problem, the league may have to take it up with the Players' Association.
Let's say his message is pretty much aimed at Dylan Larkin.
NHL general managers keep handing out the leverage
Here's the part the commissioner skipped. Nobody forces a GM to sign a no-trade clause.
Those protections get handed out at the bargaining table, usually to close a long-term deal a team badly wants done.
Look at the top of the cap chart. Leo Carlsson carries an $18,000,000 cap hit in Anaheim, and Kirill Kaprizov sits at $17,000,000 in Minnesota.
That's the tier of money where trade protection stops being a perk and becomes a bargaining chip.
It's a bit like a landlord who writes a renewal option into the lease, then gripes when the tenant actually reads the fine print.
Bettman has a point about intent. But blaming players for using leverage that the owners' own GMs signed off on is a tough sell in any locker room.
Think about what a fix would look like. Do you limit how many teams a player can list? Shorten how long the protection lasts?
Any version runs straight into the union. And players don't tend to hand back hard-won protections without getting something big in return.
Every GM in the league, from Don Sweeney in Boston to Steve Yzerman in Detroit, now has a fresh question hanging over his next big extension.
Does a player still push for full protection if the commissioner is openly hinting the rules could change down the road?
No timeline came with the warning. No proposal either.
The next star who asks out and hands over a short list of destinations won't just be negotiating with his team. He'll be negotiating with the league office.
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Should the NHL strip players of the right to dictate their trade destinations?
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