Bettman Medvedev secret meeting fails
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Thanks, Stephane.
Bettman and co. are just not getting it, and it amazes me again and again how daft they can be.
\"The bottom line, from our perspective, is that the player has a contract which our rules obligate him to respect,\"
Well, from the perspective of the Europeans, the same can be said of the many players who were taken by the NHL while still contracted to their European teams under previous transfer agreements.
\"Our rules don\'t recognize a player [or his new team] being able to \'buy\' the way out of an existing contract. It is not a scenario that our existing rules contemplate or allow.\"
While up to and including this year (Frogren) the NHL has used the existence of such ability under European rules to get European players out of their contracts and into the NHL.
It is precisely the fact that what the previous transfer agreements authorized was a dual system whereby different and unequal sets of rules and powers determined how the NHL had to conduct itself towards European teams and how European teams had to conduct themselves towards the NHL that is the reason the Europeans walked out of the transfer agreement. How Bettman and co. don\'t get this is beyond me.
And how they don\'t realize that reactions like this merely come off arrogant and bullish in the eyes of their supposed partners is also beyond me.
