Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Daly Confirms Broad Examination of Contracts & Talks Hossa, Pronger

Earlier today, NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly confirmed that the contracts of Marian Hossa, Chris Pronger, Roberto Luongo and Marc Savard are under investigation by the NHL, and could be subject to penalties, including the de-registration of contracts should a finding of circumvention be made.

"If there was a determination that there was circumvention there are a whole host of alternatives in terms of how we approach it and a whole host of remedies in terms of what can be ordered. De-registration of the contract is one potential remedy, but it's not the only one. I don't want to get into hypotheticals. The investigations aren't complete, and we haven't made any determinations as to how we proceed with respect to those."

For a review of this issue, you can read my blog entry Uh-Oh: NHL Could Move to Challenge Hossa, Luongo & Others.

Daly also confirmed that while the deal taking Koovalchuk to the age of 44 was an important factor, it was not by itself determinative. The key was considering why the contract was structured the way it was, and that you need to look to all the circumstances of a contract to figure that out.

"...it doesn't necessarily come down to term limits because it wasn't the 17-year contract per se that was an issue. It was the 17-year contract, how it was structured, the player's age -- a whole host of circumstances".

To review the types of circumstances that would be relevant in determining whether a circumvention has occurred, you can read my blog entry below, How To Structure An NHL Contract Post-Kovalchuk.

To read the NHL.com story reporting Daly's comments, please click here.


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