Fear the Fin · Nov 7, 2021
Making sense of William Eklund’s re-assignment
Photo by Kevin Sousa/NHLI via Getty ImagesAccording to the NHL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), players on entry-level contracts can appear in a maximum of nine NHL games before their contract kicks in. For this reason, it certainly isn’t uncommon for NHL teams to return a player on the first year of his entry-level contract to his junior league team after playing nine games, because the contract would “slide” to next year — that is to say, his contract would begin the next season.