Waiver Exemption Primer and 2015-2016 Canucks Prospects

In hockey there are
many forms of waivers – unconditional waivers, fans who participate in the wave at games and so on – but the key waivers are used when a team sends a more veteran player
down to the minor leagues.  These waivers prevent teams from hoarding talent and gives more veteran players that aren’t being used by their current team an opportunity to carve out an everyday job elsewhere in the league. Normally
prospects, for their first few years, are exempted from waivers, but as the player becomes older, usually
right before they are ready for full time NHL jobs, they are required to pass
through waivers should they be deemed unable to hold a position in the
NHL (yet).

There are a
few Canucks prospects who have been discussed in terms of their ability to earn an NHL job this
year. Let’s
dive deeper into their status to figure out their waiver-status. 

The place to start with waiver exemptions is from the source, the Collective Bargaining Agreement.  Jumping right to Article 13.4 (page 71) we can see the rules on who are exempt from playing.  The basic criteria is as follows:

In essence there are three factors that determine if a player is exempt from waivers or not: their age when they signed their first NHL contract, the number of professional seasons they’ve played, and the number of NHL games they’ve appeared in.

There are some caveats with each of these rules, which can cause some confusion.  Age is calculated for each of the players differently depending on if they are 18, 19 or 20 (and older).  

Professional seasons count if the prospect plays 1+ games (if they are 20+) in any league, or in the NHL as an under 20-year-old.  A season does not count, and slides like the ELC, if they play less than 11 games in the NHL and are U20 (or less than 6 in 2012-2013, pro-rated due to the shortened season). 

Another confusing point is that if a player older than 20-years-old is playing in any other non-NHL league, their season counts towards years of play, but their professional games played elsewhere do not count towards their games played.

In essence waiver-exemption allows you to call up your young developing prospects until they are 22-23 years of age.  By then, if they are truly good enough to be a regular in the NHL, your management should recognize it and they will have a full time-position.  If the prospect still needs a bit more time for development, management has to decide if they wish to risk losing their player to waivers and give a chance for all 29 other teams to claim the player.

There are 5 prospects in the pool whose names come up often in terms of earning an NHL regular roster position: Adam Clendening, Frank Corrado, Sven Bärtschi, Ronalds Kenins and Alex Grenier.  As the summer goes on it looks like it is becoming harder and harder for all players to have a position given the log jam of already established NHL regulars ahead of them.  

Using War-On-Ice’s league verified data we can check on the status of each of these five players, then we can apply these newly understood rules to understand why they waiver-exempt, or not, to see if they are going to be exposed to risk if they are sent back to Utica.

Frank Corrado is a tricky situation as he played in 3 regular and 4 play-off games in the NHL as an 18-year old.  That automatically put him over the threshold in the 2012-2013 lockout season and burned away two years of waiver-exemption bringing him down to 3 seasons ending in 2014-2015.  He is under his game limit, with 28 + 4 NHL games.  

It was interesting to see that Mike Gillis was quick to sign Frank Corrado.  He was drafted in June 2011 and as a fifth rounder he was signed to an Entry-Level Contract in September of that year.

Another interesting note, while the Canucks were willing to burn a year of his ELC, they also burned two years of waiver-exemption for 1 game over the threshold and a first-round playoff loss.  The fall out of that decision will be seen this Fall.

Adam Clendening is in a similar, but much less complex situation.  Clendening played in the NCAA for 2 seasons and signed his ELC as a 20 year-old in 2012-2013.  This gives him a limit of 3 professional season (until 2014-2015) and 160 NHL games.  Clendening has just passed the 3 year mark and despite only playing 21 NHL games he is now exposed to waivers.

Similar to Clendening, Bärtschi signed his ELC when he was 19 giving him 4 years and 160 games.  Those 4 years have expired this past season (2014-2015) and he will now be exposed to waivers despite playing less than 160 NHL games.  Bärtschi did play 5 games in the NHL as a 19 year-old but those games did not meet the threshold and essentially caused his ELC to slide.

Ronalds Kenins signed his ELC with the Canucks two summers ago as a 22 year-old leaving him with 3 professional seasons before exposure to wires is required.  Kenins played his first season in the NLA, which counts towards his professional years.  Since then Kenins played the last season half in the AHL and half in the NHL.  So far he has neither met the 3 seasons required or the 160 NHL games meaning Kenins has one more year of avoiding waivers.

Despite a one-way contract I would not be surprised to see Kenins start the year in Utica which would allow the Canucks to give Jake Virtanen a 9 game try-out.

Alex Grenier is a tricky case, but it is verified with the league that he is waivers exempted.  Grenier finished his season in the QMJHL.  He spent the next year half in Austria and then half in the ECHL.  He did play 4 games in the AHL (January and April) but this was before he signed his ELC with the Canucks in May of 2013. 

As Grenier signed as a 22 year-old he has 3 years of waiver-exemption.  He has not yet met his professional games played in the NHL (as he has 0) and he only has 2 years of professional-years played.  This means he is exempted from waivers and despite all the positive talk from Benning, I would not be surprised to see him start the year in Utica as well.