Heisenberg wrote:
Question: if you get drafted but refuse to report, I know you can re-enter the draft the following year. But is there any path to becoming a free agent once you’ve been drafted? Wait two years? Just curious.
Can't speak for the NFL but the NHL rules are thus:
If you're drafted out of major-junior or an overseas league, the drafting team holds your rights for two years, during which time only they can sign you to an entry-level contract. If you're unsigned after two years, you're eligible to be drafted again. If you're drafted out of high school, Junior A, or the USHL with a commitment to play in the NCAA, the drafting team holds your rights for four years, and if you're not signed to a contract, you're eligible for free agency, but only on entry-level terms. If you graduate from college undrafted or use up your major-junior eligibility without being drafted, you're granted free agency, but not necessarily bound to a three-year, two-tiered entry-level contract.
The most famous case of being a bitch about the NHL draft is of course Eric Lindros, who refused to sign with the Quebec Nordiques because Quebec City was too small, too cold, and too French for that delicate hothouse flower and his blood-sucking mom and dad. He sat out an entire year while Quebec refused to trade him until finally they sent him to Philadelphia for Peter Forsberg and a bunch of pieces that helped win two championships for the team -- once it moved to Denver, having been put on the ropes by a Canadian recession and finished off by the perception that it was the most undesirable hellhole on any sports map.
Baseball's draft is super-easy get around. I feel like half the North Americans in the bigs were drafted by one team, wouldn't sign there, then got drafted again by a team they were amenable to, i.e., not Oakland or Kansas City.
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Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
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