Officials from the National Hockey League, the National Hockey League Players' Association the International Ice Hockey Federation and various European hockey federations met for five hours in New York yesterday to begin discussions on a new NHL-IIHF transfer agreement.
In addition to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly and IIHF president Rene Fasel, the meeting included NHLPA director Paul Kelly and representatives from the Russian Ice Hockey Federation, the Svenska Ishockey Förbundet (Sweden), Suomen Jääkiekkoliitto (Finland), the Czech and Slovak Hockey Federations.
The overriding issues raised during the meeting were not player transfer fees, but rather the problem of too many young European players coming to play in North America long before they're ready physically or mentally. For example, of the 59 European players that signed entry-level NHL contracts for the 2007-08 season, only six are currentlying play in the NHL. Forty six are in the AHL or ECHL and seven have gone back to Europe.
Ultimately, this situation benefits no one. The NHL teams spend money on players who aren't ready to help their teams. The European teams lose young players they've invested in developing before reaping any benefits from it on their pro teams. The late transfer deadline also affects the Euro clubs' ability to prepare for the next season (which typically start about a month earlier than the NHL regular season).
Players don't really benefit much, either, except in the very short term.
In many cases, the players' development stagnates and they end up potentially making less money -- and having lesser on-ice careers-- than if they'd seen their development through before coming over. Additionally, the situation hurts the ability of late-blooming North American prospects to gain AHL roster spots.
One key step in alleviating the problem will be to extend the current two-year signing window for European league affiliated draftees. The most encouraging sign to come out of the meeting was that all parties seem to be agreed that a change is needed in this area.
But accomplishing this step will require an amendment to the NHL-NHLPA collective bargaining agreement, which is a time-consuming processs.
The attendees discussed some short-term alternatives to this issue, and plan to pick up discussions again next month.
The transfer window is one of two huge issues to be resolved. The other is transfer fees.
Currently, NHL clubs pay the European federations (and, by extension, the Euro teams)$200,000 for each transfer, whether the player makes the NHL or not.
The NHL feels the fee is too high. The European federations feel it is much too low to release young players of star-caliber talent (e.g., Alexander Ovechkin, Nicklas Bäckström) from their club-team contracts.
The Euro teams have said they want either much higher flat fees or more of a free market system. For instance, Dynamo Moscow recently paid Finnish team JyP Jyväskylä a record fee (reportedly over $1 million U.S.) to acquire former Hershey Bears goaltender Sinuhe Wallinheimo -- a very good Euro league goalie to be sure, but hardly a superstar.
At the behest of the Russian Super League club owners, the Russian Hockey Federation has consistently been the most aggressive in regard to the transfer fees, which are at the root of Russia's refusal to participate in the last two transfer agreements.
While the other European federations also want higher fees, they are more likely to compromise if the signing window problem is resolved favorably.
*******
Following is the IIHF's press release about the meeting:
The IIHF, together with representatives from its top five talent producing members, met with the National Hockey League and the NHL Player's Association in New York on Wednesday, January 16th. The present national associations (Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Slovakia and Sweden) develop almost 90 percent of the NHL's European player contingent.
The meeting was headed by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, IIHF President René Fasel, NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly and NHLPA Executive Director Paul Kelly.
During the five hour meeting, the IIHF and its members addressed the most pressing issues pertaining to the re-opened Player Transfer Agreement. The current IIHF-NHL deal is a four-year agreement that begun last season, but both sides decided to re-open it before January 1, 2008.
"It was a very good and constructive meeting", said IIHF President René Fasel. "It presented the top five European exporters of player talent to the NHL with a timely opportunity to express their views and concerns to both the NHL and the NHLPA. We were satisfied that both the league and their player's association share the same concern with too many young European players coming over to North America before they are NHL ready."
"As we share the concern, we still have different opinions about which are the correct measures to address this problem," said René Fasel. "But one major issue which we agreed upon is to increase the age by which a player who does not make the NHL team's roster, must be first offered back to his European team."
Under the re-opened agreement, a player who is still under contract with an IIHF team and has not reached his 20th birthday must be offered back to his team in Europe. The new proposal sees the age limit to be increased by two years. This provision does not refer to players who where selected in the first round of the NHL draft.
The IIHF, NHL and the NHLPA are considering a possible short-term interim framework agreement for the 2008-2009 season which - if approved - would regulate transfers of European players who sign NHL-contracts for the 2008-2009 season.
"This way we are buying ourselves some time to be able to fully evaluate the effects on the movement of players from Europe to North America and to use those results when trying to reach a new long-term agreement for 2009 and beyond," said Fasel.
*******
In the last few years, several NHL teams -- most notably the New York Islanders and San Jose Sharks -- have taken a keen interest in the development of hockey in China. European hockey entrepreneurs have also given it a try, without much success so far.
Chinese hockey is in a state of crisis, but has enormous untapped potential if a viable infrastructure is built to develop the game. Islanders owner Charles Wang wants to make a Chinese hockey development system his legacy.
Another country with huge growth potential is South Korea.
While there have been some efforts to build the game in South Korea, particularly by the Czechs, there seems to be much less interest in developing Korean hockey -- despite the fact the Koreans have a stronger and more self-sufficient hockey system in place as compared to China.
In fact, if I owned an NHL team and was interested in participating in overseas development projects, I might focus on strengthening and building on the foundation in South Korea rather than trying to essentially reconstruct Chinese hockey and build it from the ground floor up.
In South Korea at least, there's a promising foundation that has been set down largely on its own. Consider these facts:
* Last April, South Korea went undefeated at the IIHF Division II World Championships (held in Seoul) to earn their first promotion to the Division I level in 2008. While they are likely to go winless at the Division I Worlds in Innsbruck and be relegated back to Division II, there has been progress at every level of South Korean hockey.
* The South Koreans came within 20 minutes of being promoted to the Division I level in the Under-18 division. They led Lithuania after two periods in the championship game, but went on to lose, as the Lithuanians earned the promotion.
* The Koreans were one of the stronger teams in the recent Division II Under-20 Worlds, giving tournament host (and champion) Team Italy all it could handle, and easily defeating the likes of Belgium, Romania and tournament weak-sister Iceland.
* In the last couple years, a pair of Korean born and trained players have gone to play in European minor leagues and have done well.
Left winger Tae-An Kwon has had a successful season with Swedish Division I team Borlänge HC. Playing on a line with Anders Lövdal and Daniel Eklund (son of longtime NHLer Pelle Eklund), Kwon is tied for second on the team with 11 goals and is fifth on the club with 20 points in 25 games.
Defenseman Woo-Jae Kim played at the Mestis (highest minor league) level in Finland last year and more or less held his own. He's back home this year in the Asia League.
While South Korea has yet to produce a native-born and trained player who can play as a regular in a European elite league or North American minor league -- much less the NHL -- their progress is nothing to scoff at.
* This season, for the first time, a South Korean team is in first place in the Asia League. Previously the circuit had been dominated by Japanese teams.
The club (High1 Chuncheon City) has largely been led by its imported talent, including Bud Smith, Tim Smith, former ECHL and AHL player Alex Kim (a Korean-American), Korean-Canadian forward Chi-Young Benedict Song, veteran Japanese defenseman Tomohito Okubo and former NHLer Steve McKenna. Even so, there are several Korean-born and trained players on the team who are doing very well this year.
If you are interested in learning more about hockey in South Korea, please check out my newest
article on IIHF.com or explore the
Asia League site , which is published in English.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
Join the Discussion:
»