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CHL tweak to import rule holding up Gatineau Olympiques, Charlottetown Islanders trade

Neate Sager

When Vaclav Karabacek is drafted next month, the NHL will introduce him as a Gatineau Olympiques player, but it's really not that simple.

The Quebec League has a long-standing custom of two-part trades — pay a premium up front in January to load up for a playoff run, then have the bill come due before the entry draft by making a second deal with the same deal. Often it involves a high draft choice being sent one way and then sent right back. It has served the teams' interests well enough, or otherwise the practice would have been curbed. Now the practice is butting up against the one-year-old Canadian Hockey League rule that proscribes trading import players for a year after they have been selected.

Back on deadline day, the Olympiques anted up their 2014 and '15 first-round picks and 16-year-old wing Curtis Scales to the Charlottetown Islanders for 17-year-old wing Alexis Pépin. The understanding is the Islanders would return a first-rounder after the season in exchange for Karabacek, but that is forbidden under the new rule.

From Jean-François Plante (@jfplante_Droit), translated:

According to the regulation, the Olympics do not have the right to exchange a European player during his first year in North America. This first year will end after the CHL import draft on July 3.

... In the worst-case scenario, the Olympics will exchange Karabacek the Islanders on July 4, but in the meantime, they will have missed their window to take another European player.

According to [Islanders GM] Grant Sonier, the Board of Governors of the QMJHL unanimously passed a motion to ask the CHL to accept a special measure to allow the Gatineau-Charlottetown trade to proceed, but the CHL rejected this proposal .

"The transaction was entered into in good faith between [Gatineau coach-GM] Benoît Groulx and I. We were not aware of the rule ... This is a first in the CHL." (Le Droit)

The confusion, speaking as a detached observer, owes to the working definition of when a season begins and ends. As far as QMJHL teams are concerned, the season begins unofficially as soon as the playoffs end and begins in earnest at the draft in late May or early June. It's understandable that this might conflict with the separate rules that govern imports, who enter the league through a separate draft (and in the QMJHL's case, are even covered by separate rules for trades).

Banning teams from trading import picks before the draft was controversial enough, since it prevents a small-market team from trading down, adding assets and still getting a serviceable player. The purpose for a one-year no-trade period was ostensibly intended to encourage the smaller-market teams to draft a prospect who was bent on coming to North America without fear he would only play for one of the usual suspects. Having it hold up a trade is definitely an unintended consequence.

This will probably get resolved in time. Charlottetown, which is hopeful of contending next season, is certainly within its rights in believing it's owed a veteran player. That is how it's always been done.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.