OHL'S Niagara IceDogs To Pay $150,000 Fine For Violating Recruitment Rules - But Major Junior Has Bigger Problems

Niagara IceDogs | via SportsLogos.net

The OHL has fined the Niagara IceDogs $ 150,000. As a result, the organization will lose a first-round pick in the 2021 draft after reaching an agreement with the league regarding a violation of the players’ recruitment rules.

That being so, as the main junior hockey is on the wrong side of the story, we have learned that OHL and the Niagara IceDogs have reached an agreement regarding the violation of the league’s recruitment rules by the team. The IceDogs agreed to pay a $ 150,000 fine and will lose their first round pick in 2021.

It is necessary to establish that in comparison, the IceDogs really recovered lightly. In fact, seven years ago, the OHL fined the Spitfires of Windsor $ 400,000 and took three first-round and two second-round picks for violating the recruitment rules.

Interesting fight

An important fact to mention is that the OHL, along with its partners in QMJHL and WHL, has spent the last few years convincing the public that many of their equipment are family operations that would not survive without the help of “student-athletes” and that they would be paid More than poverty, wages would endanger some of their equipment.

In this way, they establish a constant fight against a collective demand with everything they have. In many cases, they have successfully pushed legislators to adapt to their needs when it comes to rewriting labor laws. Meanwhile, they are waving the flag that this beautiful Canadian junior hockey institution is threatened if its owners are forced to pay the players.

Even so, it is necessary to mention that by virtue of the fact that both were found guilty, the IceDogs and Spitfires suggest that they had some extra dollars to compensate the players outside the rules of the league. And the same league that states that their teams can not pay players the minimum wage has no problem reducing the boom of one of their own by a sum of $ 150,000. Based on a list of 20 players, with each player earning $ 60 per week, that fine would cover the payroll costs of one player in an organization for 125 weeks, which is the equivalent of almost four seasons.

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Source: Ken Campbell | The Hockey News