July 20th ramblings - Medvedev interview

On the issue of compensation - and I say this because i've heard Doug McLean rile about it for most of last week, though i figured he should have known better.


In North America the developmental system regarding children playing hockey is completely separate from the professional clubs. That is the opposite of the situation in Europe. There, the developmental teams for kids under 18 are operated by the professional clubs themselves. As a result, it is the professional clubs who bear all the costs of teaching and developing kids into hockey players. The idea that a club deserves compensation when a kid they have developed goes to play for another club stems from this fact, and is standard practice in Europe, and not just in hockey.
So, with the demand for proper compensation Medvedev is neither coming out of nowhere nor is he coming up with something new or unique to Russia - this is in fact one of the concerns of the other countries that withdrew from the transfer agreement.


This is not to say I agree with Medvedev on everything he's doing. I don't at all. It's just important to bear in mind where the Europeans are coming from in this issue, which is so alien to how we do things in North America.

Being European, and knowing that the system works like you mention, I actually think the compensation should be much higher than it's been earlier. Just look at how soccer transfers work. I'll give you an example.

Let's say player X started playing soccer with club A when he was 8 years old. He became a good player and at 16 he transfered to club B's junior team, working his way up to the senior team. At 18 a high profile club, C, bought his rights. There are two kinds of money involved here. One is the salary paid to the player and another is the money paid to the original team as compensation. Out of that compensation money going to club B, a hefty part of it will by extension go to club A, since that's the club that stood for most of the player's development.

I think that's a very fair system and it's pretty much a joke that the clubs get $200k as compensation when they've paid so much more for that player + need to find a replacement for him. With European leagues growing stronger economically, they now don't have to bow to the NHL's will for nothing. They should get fair compensation.