Why Must The NHL Always Try To Screw The Blues?

Ever since the Blues had the audacity to make a perfectly legitimate free agent bid for Brendan Shanahan the powers that be in the NHL have had it in for the organization. A Blues GM couldn't burp without the league taking away a first round draft pick and giving it to New Jersey as punishment.

Well that sort of shit coninues. Bid for curb on 'rentals' is angering Davidson

NHL general managers began two days of meetings Monday in Naples, Fla., and one topic on the agenda was "rental" players. With the league's trading deadline of Feb. 26 approaching, some teams will trade for players to bolster their playoff chances and then lose them to free agency in July.

What some GMs are apparently upset about is the idea of a team trading a player at the deadline and then re-signing that player the following summer, as the Blues have done twice in the last two years with Doug Weight and Keith Tkachuk.

The Blues traded Weight to Carolina in February 2006 and re-signed him in July 2006. They dealt Tkachuk to Atlanta last February, and then after requiring his negotiating rights, re-signed him last July.

Some are calling the legislation to curb this practice the "Weight rule" or the "Tkachuk rule." Reports say they want the NHL to ban players from re-signing with their former team for at least one year.

The subject continues to infuriate Blues President John Davidson, who repeated Monday that the team "never broke a rule." There are, in fact, no rules prohibiting players from re-signing with their former team.

"My question would be, 'You're going to let the player go to 29 other teams and not the 30th?'" Davidson said. "The player has the right to go wherever he wants to go. If he wants to go back (to his former team), that's fine. If he wants to go to another team, that's fine. Change the (collective-bargaining agreement). It's an asinine discussion."

Davidson is right. It is asinine but also typical of the NHL, which is the prototype of an "old boys club" if ever there was one. The Blues make a couple of good deals, one of which helped Carolina win a Stanley Cup btw, and the next thing you know they want to change the rules so the Blues cannot do it again. What a joke.