The Detroit Red Wings hired a group of attorneys to read through the minutae of HC Dynamo Pardubice’s loan of Filip Zadina to the CHL’s Halifax Mooseheads after the Wings drafted Zadina as they hope to be able to assign the Czech sniper to the AHL if he doesn’t make the team out of training camp…
But the Halifax Chronicle-Herald’s Wily Pavlov reports that the QMHL’s Halifax Mooseheads, who own Zadina’s Canadian Hockey League rights, aren’t quite ready to give up on their quest to have Zadina play for a Memorial Cup-hosting team if he can’t make the Wings:
I took a preliminary dive into the uncertainty around Filip Zadina’s status for the 2018-19 season this past week and can report back that I cleared up exactly nothing.
For those who missed it, the Detroit Red Wings, Zadina’s agent and the Mooseheads all have differing opinions about where he would be eligible to play next season. Traditionally, players drafted out of the Canadian Hockey League who are still teenagers can play in the NHL or be sent back to junior. They cannot play minor pro while their CHL team’s season or playoff is still going.
But Zadina’s camp made the case he could circumvent that eligibility rule and play in the American Hockey League in 2018-19 — if that’s what the Wings want for him — because of a loophole related to his status from his pro season in the Czech Republic back in 2016-17. It’s far too convoluted to explain in any detail here and it is also very much unresolved, but the bottom line is it probably won’t matter anyway.
Everyone connected to Zadina seems to agree it is extremely unlikely he is playing anywhere but Detroit this season. The Wings are desperate for goals and are quite thin on the wings so there likely won’t be any need to cross that eligibility bridge in the long run.
Pavlov continues, and I expect Zadina and Michael Rasmussen to battle their way onto the Wings’ roster come October, but if he’s not playing in the NHL, the Red Wings are going to fight very hard to keep Zadina under their control as an AHL player…
But I can’t blame the Halifax Mooseheads for trying to continue to battle for Zadina’s should-he-not-make-the-team services. Having Filip on their roster when they host the Memorial Cup would be quite the bonus for one of the CHL’s best-run teams.
Just give him the Winged Wheel and we don’t have to worry about this stuff anymore.
Can the Red Wings buy their way out any problem Halifax is threatening to create–pay them something to go away?
My understanding is that it’s a legal issue as opposed to a money issue. Halifax is interpreting the player loan one way and the Wings are interpreting it another way.