The Vancouver Canucks‘ front office team of Jim Rutherford and Patrik Allvin held a joint press conference this past Monday, one that definitely put a bit of a damper on what already promised to be a doubt-laden offseason.

But did it also put a bit of a tamper on it?

By now, you’ve certainly heard the accusations. Speaking somewhat off-the-cuff about Quinn Hughes’ future with the organization, Rutherford remarked that “[it] may not boil down to money with him. He’s said before he wants to play with his brothers, and that would be partly out of our control; in our control, if we brought his brothers here.”

Moments later, Rutherford seemingly caught himself, answering a follow-up question with “Well, we got to be careful with tampering here, so we’ll just leave it at that. I probably crossed the line anyways.”

And with that, the pitchforks were out.

Literally. The New Jersey Devils-centric blog, Pucks and Pitchforks, already has an article out entitled “Canucks should be forced to forfeit draft picks to Devils after tampering comments.” And they’re not the only ones thinking that.

But did Rutherford’s comments really cross the threshold into punishable tampering? That conclusion seems a little suspect at this point.

To be clear, tampering is a genuine offence that can be met with severe consequences. Strangely enough, the two most recent prominent examples both involved the Vancouver Canucks.

In 2016, the Canucks were fined $50,000 when it was found that GM Jim Benning’s comments about a desire to sign pending – but not yet – UFAs Steven Stamkos and Milan Lucic. His comments came in mid-June, about 10 days before free agency.

The idea behind the rule is simple enough. At that point, even if a player has already committed to hitting the open market, their current team still holds exclusive negotiating rights. Another team publicly stating its intention to make a contract offer in the near future obviously violates those exclusive negotiating rights.

The Canucks experienced the other side of this in June 2009, when Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Ron Wilson made comments about how he’d like to sign Henrik and Daniel Sedin if they made UFA status in July of that year.

This time, the fine was undisclosed, and it may have been less because Wilson was a coach, not a manager. In any case, the Sedins re-signed with the Canucks shortly after July 1 hit, anyway, and the incident was largely forgotten about.

There have been other close calls. The St. Louis Blues reportedly considered filing tampering charges against the Vegas Golden Knights when they signed unrestricted free agent (UFA) Alex Pietrangelo in October 2020, as free agency occurred at an unusual time that year. This time, the allegation involved back-channel negotiations rather than public statements, and it ultimately came to nothing, with the charges never being formally filed.

There are also ample historical cases, with the most famous being the 1994 Scott Stevens case, in which the New Jersey Devils (funny, eh?) were slapped with a $1.5 million fine and the forfeiture of a first-round draft pick. But, hey, at least they got Scott Stevens out of it.

So, are Rutherford and the Canucks in danger of incurring a hefty fine here? Or, even worse, the potential loss of a draft pick?

No, we don’t think so.

While making an exception for the usual possibility that the NHL might deviate from its own precedent in order to specifically punish the Canucks, the threshold established for tampering in the NHL definitely requires the player being tampered with to be signable in the immediate future. But neither Jack nor Luke Hughes are.

Especially not Jack, who is signed until 2030 on a bargain deal with a cap hit of just $8 million. The Canucks can want to sign him all they like, but they won’t receive the opportunity to do so until next decade, when Rutherford will almost certainly be on to a well-earned retirement.

Luke, on the other hand, is a pending free agent whose entry-level contract expires on July 1, 2025. A restricted free agent, sure, but a free agent all the same. Due to the existence of offer sheets, an RFA can still be tampered with.

But not Luke Hughes, specifically. He’s what they call a “10.2.c” RFA due to not yet having three official years of professional experience under his belt, and 10.2.c RFAs are not eligible for offer sheets.

So, the only team that Luke can sign with this summer is the New Jersey Devils, unless they trade away his rights.

And that fact right there should reasonably prevent the Canucks from incurring a tampering penalty.

If we go back to that 2016 Benning incident, we’ll recall that Benning also mentioned, at the same time as he tampered with Stamkos and Lucic, that he had trade discussions with Montreal about PK Subban. Montreal GM Marc Bergevin complained about this, and Benning apologized, but no formal penalty was ever handed out. Why not? Because that’s not tampering. No exclusive negotiating rights are being violated there.

The same should go with this incident and these comments. The exclusive negotiating rights that the Devils have for Jack and Luke Hughes cannot be violated right now, as one is under contract and the other can only sign with New Jersey.

Rutherford’s comments may not have been the wisest or the most well-thought-out. But they weren’t tampering. At least not the standard that has previously been set by the NHL.