Hockey 101

Through writing articles on the site I have found that I get some commonly asked questions from those that are either new to following Hockey or just never really dived that deep into the background of certain areas of it.

I am going to try cover these here as they come up in the hopes that I can try make things a little clearer, or at least so my articles might make a bit more sense!

Free Agency

What are the various free-agent statuses that players have at the conclusion of every season and what do they mean? What are the rules surrounding them?

I saw some confusion regarding this on Facebook and thought I would try do a helpful cheat-sheet here. At the conclusion of every season, certain players will be at the end of their contract length. Some players sign one-year deals – to last just the season, others sign two or three-year deals; so the numbers will vary. But there will always be a list of players at the end of their deals and either looking for a new contract with Ducks/Gulls or looking elsewhere.

Depending on how old these players are or when they first turned professional, they are assigned a certain status in terms of how free they are to go pursue other deals. Why? Well think of it this way. Let’s say a team that had been terrible for a good long while finally drafts a superstar like Sidney Crosby. Now think of how badly you would want a player like Crosby on your team, every GM in the league would want to sign him! But that’s not fair to the team who suffered for so long in the depths of the NHL so that they could have a chance to draft him – they should be given a certain amount of time to make use of his talents and keep him under a contract that fits within their budget. On the flip-side, the player; Crosby in this example – would want to start earning what he feels he is worth as soon as he can. His best chance at doing that is hitting what is referred to as the “open market” where other teams can make offers to him. Teams cannot do that until he becomes a UFA or “Unrestricted Free Agent”. It’s at this point I will break down each category or status of Free Agency.

UFA – Unrestricted Free Agent

This is the most common status for a player and one they reach after they have fulfilled certain criteria as dictated by the NHL. Generally these are players who have played through the necessary RFA years (more on that next), come to the conclusion of their existing UFA deal or in more rarer circumstances; been bought out of their existing contract or have come into the league at a certain age un-drafted.

RFA – Restricted Free Agent

This is what most players start out as. The most common scenario is; a player is drafted by an NHL club when they are 17 or 18 years old – from that point onward their “rights” are owned by that club for either two years if they play in Junior and four years if they play in Europe or College Hockey. If the NHL club does not sign them to what is called an “entry-level” contract after that time is up, they lose the rights to that player and if they are still under 20 years old, they re-enter the draft. If they are not selected in this draft, they become an unrestricted free agent. The most recent example of this for the Ducks was Kyle Olson who was selected in the fourth round of the 2017 entry draft but whom Anaheim elected to not qualify with an entry-level contract after two years. He went back to his Junior Club for one last year but will now become an unrestricted free agent as he is now too old to re-enter the draft or play Junior. Cap Friendly is the best resource for looking up free agency status, contracts, and the various rules for smaller detail that help to define a player’s contract status.

Once a player’s entry-level deal is up – depending on how many years or NHL games they have played. The younger they are when they sign their entry-level deal; the longer they have to wait to achieve UFA status. It currently breaks down like:

*One small detail – if a player is 18 or 19 years old they must play at least 10 games in a season for that year to be considered a “Professional Experience” year. The AHL does not count. If they do not play ten or more NHL games in a season, that year “slides”.

Isac Lundestrom is a good example of this – he played 15 games in his first year in the NHL as an 18 year old and another 15 last year. Both of these years count as “Professional Experience” so that he now only has one year left on his entry level contract. If the Ducks had returned him to the Gulls before he was able to play 10 games or more in any or both of those past two seasons, he might still have two more years left on his deal. As it is, this upcoming season is now the last year of his entry level deal.

So when do players with a free agent status of RFA finally become a UFA? The basic rule is once they hit 27 years old or have played in the NHL for a minimum of 7 years.

Qualifying Offers

Once a player with RFA status has a contract expire, their current team must extend a “qualifying offer” in order to retain negotiating rights with that player. If teams fail to do this – then those players can automatically become Unrestricted Free Agents. There have been a few instances where some teams were “late” or completely forgot to file the necessary paperwork resulting in what proved to be some very expensive and long-term cap headache-inducing mistakes (See 2009 Chicago Blackhawks and 2000 New Jersey Devils).

Players do not have to accept the qualifying offer, if they reject it – they remain a restricted free agent and remain in negotiations with their team; however – if they do not come to an agreement on a new deal before December 1st, the player is ineligible to play in the NHL for the remainder of the season.

Offer-Sheets

Opposing teams are able to “offer sheet” a Restricted Free Agent that has rejected his team’s qualifying offer. That is – they can present him with a contract for a certain amount of money and years, BUT the player’s original team has the right to match this offer. This rarely happens because NHL GM’s tend to have an unspoken agreement of “you don’t offer sheet my players and I won’t offer sheet yours” Every now and then though – a team might find itself stretched and an opposing GM with seemingly nothing to lose might offer-sheet a promising young RFA.

The San Jose Sharks did this with the Chicago Blackhawks Niklas Hjalmarsson in 2010, knowing the Hawks were in cap strife after their successful Cup run. It resulted in Chicago matching the offer but having to trade away Andrew Ladd, Dustin Byfuglien, Kris Versteeg and others just to make room. There have been other instances over the years but in all but one instance, the offer was matched. That one case where the original team let the player walk? The Anaheim Ducks. Again, coming off of a successful cup run the Ducks had stretched themselves thin on the cap and Oilers GM Kevin Lowe promptly offered Ducks burgeoning power forward Dustin Penner a five-year contract worth 21.25 million. Then Ducks GM Biran Burke refused to match and called Lowe “Gutless” in the move. This brings up an example of what happens if a team does not match the offer. Depending on the weight of the offer, the original team receives compensation in the form of draft picks.

In the case of Penner it was a first, second and third-round pick in the 2008 entry draft (the first became another first (Jake Gardiner) and two seconds (Nick Deschamps and Eric O’Dell) the second became Justin Schultz and the third became Brandon McMillan (and half a year of Marc-Andre Bergeron).

Officially the rules/tiers for compensation are as follows:

I think that about covers most of the main points of Free Agency. There is some more finer detail regarding Salary Arbritration and Arbritration rights but I can cover that at another time if there is interest.