When a player is drafted, he has three years of being the property of the team who drafted him in which to sign his entry level contract (ELC). The clock doesn't start on the ELC until a player has played a certain number of games in the NHL (ten, I believe), but that gets into a whole separate issue.
If a player is in college, the NHL team is be unable to sign him to an ELC per NCAA rules. However, since most drafted NCAA players don't spend the full four years in college, they will typically sign the ELC the spring or summer after the year they decide to leave college (Capitals prospect Riley Barber, for example, former captain of USA's WJC team, just left Miami University after his sophomore year and signed his Caps ELC).
Some players, like Justin Schultz and Kevin Hayes, are drafted by a team (the Ducks and Blackhawks, respectively), and for whatever reason decide they either want go to college for the full four years or that they do not wish to sign with the team that drafted them so stay in college for the full four years.
At the end of their schooling, they "deregister" with the university, making them eligible to sign an NHL contract. For the first 30 days, the team that drafted the player has exclusive rights to sign that player to an ELC. If the player isn't interested in the contract (ELC's have basic salary requirements that cannot be changed, but there can be other monetary considerations, like bonuses, built in, or if the player doesn't think his chances of actually playing in the NHL with that team are very good (as in Kevin Hayes's case), he can wait out the 30-day period and become a free agent, free to take his talents to whichever team he likes. In Justin Schultz's case, that caused a bit of a bidding war, and he wound up with the Oilers. Hayes went to the Rangers.
A college free agent is still signed to an ELC, with the maximum the same as any other player, but the ELC is only for two years, rather than three, due to the player's age.
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Re: Hockey questions
From: (Anonymous)Just to expand on the college free agent thing:
When a player is drafted, he has three years of being the property of the team who drafted him in which to sign his entry level contract (ELC). The clock doesn't start on the ELC until a player has played a certain number of games in the NHL (ten, I believe), but that gets into a whole separate issue.
If a player is in college, the NHL team is be unable to sign him to an ELC per NCAA rules. However, since most drafted NCAA players don't spend the full four years in college, they will typically sign the ELC the spring or summer after the year they decide to leave college (Capitals prospect Riley Barber, for example, former captain of USA's WJC team, just left Miami University after his sophomore year and signed his Caps ELC).
Some players, like Justin Schultz and Kevin Hayes, are drafted by a team (the Ducks and Blackhawks, respectively), and for whatever reason decide they either want go to college for the full four years or that they do not wish to sign with the team that drafted them so stay in college for the full four years.
At the end of their schooling, they "deregister" with the university, making them eligible to sign an NHL contract. For the first 30 days, the team that drafted the player has exclusive rights to sign that player to an ELC. If the player isn't interested in the contract (ELC's have basic salary requirements that cannot be changed, but there can be other monetary considerations, like bonuses, built in, or if the player doesn't think his chances of actually playing in the NHL with that team are very good (as in Kevin Hayes's case), he can wait out the 30-day period and become a free agent, free to take his talents to whichever team he likes. In Justin Schultz's case, that caused a bit of a bidding war, and he wound up with the Oilers. Hayes went to the Rangers.
A college free agent is still signed to an ELC, with the maximum the same as any other player, but the ELC is only for two years, rather than three, due to the player's age.