The delicate situation of asking someone who has a no-trade clause to waive it
NHL Network: Elliotte Friedman, when asked how tedious no-trade clauses are and how difficult they are to navigate.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Mike Rupp: “Yeah, so Elliotte, I just want to one quick follow-up here, because I just find, for the viewers out there, it just how, in your experience, maybe not even talking about this situation, but just when you have no-move clauses, how tedious and delicate are those situations?
Because as players like, if a team’s coming to me and saying, ‘Will you, will you, you lift your no-move clause,’ and then it doesn’t go down. Like, how do you move forward? It’s not so easy. I think a lot of fans want to treat it like a video game and just say, ‘Hey, is he willing to move? Is he willing to move? Is he willing to move? It’s not like that.
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Friedman: “No, it’s not like that. I’m getting a likely fraud call on my phone, so I’m not I’m not going to answer it.
You know what I would say is this. First of all, when things are going well, Michael, you almost never, that almost never happens. When things are going well for a player or a team, this is never an issue. I think it usually becomes an issue when things aren’t going well or a great player comes up.
Now, Kelly Hrudy, my co-worker, he believes very strongly that if a player has no trade clause, that nobody should even be allowed to go to him. Now, I don’t think that is really feasible, but I understand how Kelly feels.
I think in most situations, a lot of GMs have told me that what will happen is they might get a call from someone, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, that player has a no-trade clause. I’m not even going to them unless you give me a reason to. You have to give me a deal that I can’t say no to for me to even approach someone.’
I, we spoke today, Michael, and you told me you’re going to ask this, so I did a bit of a research. And I one GM, he said, you can’t use the player, but I’ll tell you a situation from a couple years ago. There was a really good player on another team I wanted. And I spoke to, I spoke to a team about him, and they said they want this guy who was on my team who had a no-move clause.
And he said, what I did was I called and I trusted the agent, and I said, there’s a chance this, I’m something, I’m going to ask you. I have to trust you. It’s going to go no farther than the two of us. And the agent said, ‘You have my word.’ And he said, ‘If I could get this player, they want your guy, would he waive to go to that situation?’ And the agent said, ‘I’m not even going to ask the player, because I know the answer will be no.’
And so I think. And it never went anywhere. He said he never went to the player, and the agent never went to the player. It never got to the player.
So I think a lot of times here, the relationship between a manager and an agent can be very important. Because as you guys know, particularly you Michael and Michael, is that if a player finds out and gets asked and they’re upset, you know, you have to have a really thin skin to say, ‘You know what? That’s going to go behind me. And I’m not going to be bothered by that.’ because some guys will take that very personally. It’s never the same.
And the worst, as you know, guys, is if it gets out. Like this player was asked. Like, you know, earlier this year, I reported that Andrei Svechnikov had said, when he was playing on the fourth line, that he, or sorry Evgeni Svechnikov (Andrei was the correct Svechnikov). He was playing on the fourth line would be willing to waive his no, sorry, not even waive, willing to accept a trade.
And it got out, and he was upset about it. And you know, I think anytime that gets out, it’s really delicate, Michael. So I think a lot of it depends on the relationship between team and player and team and agent.
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Host: “I also think an important part too is the relationship between player and agent too, right? Because the agent may think that he’s speaking for his client, but sometimes he may not know what the answer is. So it is a delicate situation, you’re right. but that’s just my two cents.
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