Russian Nikita Serebryakov could be one of the last goalies from overseas to play in the CHL (Terry Wilson, OHL Images)

The Canadian Hockey League's decision, announced last week, that it would cease including goaltenders in its annual import draft beginning in 2014 raised many questions. One of which is whether it is technically legal to do so while forwards and defencemen from abroad are still fine and dandy. Fortunately, Fraser Mackinnon Blair (@fmblair) has taken a look into the matter.

Please note: the contents of this article are not to be construed as legal advice. The author of this article is a recent graduate of law school, but is not a lawyer.

Beginning in 2014, the Canadian Hockey League in conjunction with Hockey Canada will forbid its clubs from selecting European goaltenders in its annual two-round import draft. Clubs will still be permitted to draft European goaltenders in this year’s draft, but may only do so in the draft’s first round.

The ban is being justified as an attempt to increase the calibre of Canadian goaltending by increasing the number of Canadian goalies minding the 60 CHL creases. However, according to Buzzing the Net's Cam Charron, only 11 of the 68 CHL goalies who qualified for the games played threshold were from Europe, so it’s hard to view this as a pandemic. The CHL has not altered its policy regarding the eligibility of American-born goaltenders.

While we can debate whether the CHL’s decision will have any effect on the calibre of future Canadian goaltenders elsewhere, it is apparent that the decision raises issues relating to anti-competitive behaviour.

Competition law in Canada is structured under the Competition Act, the purpose of which is to "maintain and encourage competition in Canada." In general commercial matters, it tries to accomplish this purpose by, amongst other things, prohibiting restrictive trade practices, exclusive dealing, price maintenance, bid rigging and other cartel-like behaviour.

Adam Tambellini's brother and father each played in the NHL (Getty Images)Adam Tambellini, having committed to the longer but sometimes surer path to the NHL, is eager to see what he can do against stiffer competition.

Like his older brother Jeff Tambellini, who skated in 242 NHL games and now plays in Switzerland, the 6-foot-2¼, 169-pound centre opted to develop through the British Columbia Hockey League and U.S. college hockey. There were times this season when Adam Tambellini was simply able to outclass Junior A defenders with his confluence of size, skill and speed; after moving from the Vernon Vipers to the Surrey Eagles in a midseason trade, he averaged a point per game in the playoffs during Surrey's run to to the BCHL title. The lanky pivot knows he has a lot of gaps to fill in his game.

"Doing the college route gives me a little bit of time to develop," says Tambellini, whose father Steve Tambellini, also a former NHLer, was general manager of the Edmonton Oilers until being replaced in April. "The coach at North Dakota [Dave Hakstol] will be great for me. So hopefully I will go down there and learn a complete game and grow out my frame a little more.

JC Lipon is on the draft radar as a 19-year-old (Kelvin Harrison photo)After not a single NHL team felt he was worth investing a draft pick on in the last two NHL entry drafts, it seems the third time is the charm for Kamloops Blazers winger JC Lipon.

Lipon, who turns 20 in July, broke out into a gritty star in his fourth season in Kamloops following showing glimpses of his scoring potential last year. He notched 36 goals and 89 points in 61 games, while racking up 115 minutes in the sin bin.

The 6-foot, 189-pounder believes he is a classic late bloomer, but he also feels opportunity had a lot to do with his slow-and-steady development.

“My development has been slower than other players I’ve played with,” he said. “It took me a while to get going in the WHL. The first year I had to adjust to speed and just the overall talent of the league. But I also think I had to earn my ice time more than some other players. I was a smaller player when I came to Kamloops and I was undrafted, so I had to prove that I had the potential to be a first-line player. In my

Nicolas Roy (right) with Eagles coach-GM Marc-Andre Dumont on draft day (Danielle Bradette, The Canadian Press)Ten days ago, Nick Roy drew his line in the sand and he does not appear open to erasing it.

Prior to the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League draft on June 8, it was made crystal-clear that the desire was for first overall pick Nicolas Roy to play in his native Quebec instead of crossing over to the league's other solitude to join the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles. It's almost like a repeat of how another player advised by Pat Brisson, Nathan MacKinnon, balked at moving from Nova Scotia to play for the Baie-Comeau Drakkar in 2011.

Eagles coach-GM Marc-André Dumont called their bluff/set himself up for a trade windfall by drafting Roy anyway, as you know. The latest indication is that the Roy camp has dug in.

His parents, both teachers, said their son would not do well studying by correspondence and they worry about his academic performance.

“For us it's better to go to the U.S.A. because we are about two hours from U.S.A. The school is better, the program is better. They have six or ten students by teacher,” said his father Nick Roy.

Pennsylvania native Jimmy Lodge moved to Toronto for his last 3 years of minor hockey (Terry Wilson, OHL Images)

Jimmy Lodge is not the first Pittsburgher to make an impact for the Saginaw Spirit — he's merely the first who took a detour through the centre of the universe.

When he was 13, the reedy right-shot centre's parents, Dory and James Sr., moved him up from Downington, Pa., to Toronto to attend the PEAC school for elite athletes and play minor hockey while billeting with his Toronto Titans coach Tony Comparelli ("his family's like a second family to me," Lodge says). The investment paid off this season with the 6-foot-2, 165-pound pivot becoming a point-a-game scorer in Saginaw with hints of being a potential top-six forward in thev NHL.

"Toronto's kind of similar to an American city, I feel," says Lodge, who was 21st in NHL Central Scouting's final North American skaters ranking. "It was hard coming up alone and being away from my parents and not really seeing them. I got used to it, though. It was a relatively easy change aside from that.

"Some people think I have an accent when I go back," Lodge adds. "But I don't think I've got one."

Such is Canada's intractable fetish for hockey violence and poor sportsmanship that when a honest-to-goodness assault occurs on the ice, those who could do something about it put all the focus on the victim.

In January, during a game that had got out of hand, a Woodstock, Ont., midget hockey player named Nick Major had the effrontery to stop in front of the Brantford, Ont., team's goalie, sending ice shavings in his general direction. After Major was cross-checked to the ice — some retribution was inevitable — he was pulled to his feet and punched repeatedly by one of the Brantford players, who kept whaling on him even after he was down and in distress.

You can guess which breach of hockey etiquette stood out to the police when Major's parents, Julie and Wes, showed their video to law enforcement. It wasn't the continuing to hit a player who was already down. The Majors are now pressing their case with the CBC:

"The police, the parents say, essentially told them 'well, this is a chargeable offence; however, this is part of the game' and essentially that Nick had asked for this because he 'snowed the goalie.'

"Now the police tell us they are still investigating this five months later despite the video evidence and the league admits that several mistakes were made." (CBC.ca)

Latvian State Police have confirmed the death of Kristians Pelss, according to multiple=

Just over a year ago, Edmonton Oilers' prospect Kristians Pelss was playing in the Memorial Cup with the Edmonton Oil Kings. He was coming off a strong 19-year-old season as a player who could grind, kill penalties, and also pop in a regular goal.

Pelss went missing on Monday, and there were then unconfirmed reports that his body was found in the Daugava, the river that runs through Riga, Latvia. Those have been confirmed:

Delfi News, Diena and Apollo - all Latvian news papers- say Pelss’s body was found in the Daugava River late Friday night.

Pelss disappeared Tuesday, and local media reported that the 20-year-old hockey player jumped off a bridge in his home town of Riga.

Former NHLer Trevor Letowski (centre) has been a Sarnia asst. coach for 3 seasons (Sarnia Sting photo)

Stability and Sting are not that far apart in the dictionary, but have often tended to be light-years apart where the Sarnia OHL franchise is concerned.

Fortunately for the Sting, which promoted alumnus and former NHLer Trevor Letowski from assistant to head coach on Friday morning, it did not overthink the first step of the post-Jacques Beaulieu era. While their former coach and GM might have come across as a bit bull-in-a-china-shop by times, it's best to have some continuity for the Sting's younger cohort, which includes 11 players who are moving into their 17- and 18-year-old seasons. So promoting Letowski, while trying to retain Alex Galchenyuk Sr. as a de facto skills coach, probably makes the most sense for a franchise that found out two years after the fact that no, the ends did not justify the means with Beaulieu. Especially when the ends were successive first-round playoff exits and the embarrassment, by association, of a coach facing assault charges.