Dylan B. Breaks it Down
I haven’t kept up on the Colin Reddin situation like I probably should have. Obviously the folks at USA Hockey are ticked and they should be. Whats the deal they want from the WHL? Who knows? Cash, I suspect.
Anyway, Dylan has an excellent post this evening that I think does a pretty even-handed job of explaining things. Money quote:
How is this different from Blake Robson, 2000-2001? He didn’t want to play here anymore. In servicing that request, we tried to help ourselves (and did quite well, Joey Hope and Willy Glover, if memory serves.) It’s slightly different because your talking separate competitions, but what people are expecting of USA Hockey would be like us giving Robson away for free to the first team that asked. [There has to be a more recent example than Robson that works, but my memory is failing.] Not going to happen.
I’m with Dylan. People need to get over the “what’s best for the kid” stuff. USA Hockey is right to make both Reddin and the Hawks sweat this one.
What you aren’t looking at is the other end of the spectrum. Reddin had signed a WHL Agreement prior to signing with the US National Team.
The US Team was not required to get a release from Portland for him to play there. Why should the US Team now require that he be released to play for Portland, or to demand compensation (whatever that should be)?
I do believe this is new territory…as far as I know there hasn’t been any other player that had already signed the WHL agreement prior to joining the US program. I could fully understand the US Team’s demands if that agreement hadn’t been in place prior to him being part of the US program.
Just because he signed to play for the US team, it shouldn’t make the agreement that Reddin signed to played in the WHL not a valid agreement…one that should allow him to play in the WHL now, not after the US program decides to release him.