GMs wonder if foreign players could be exempt from Canadian house-purchasing law

MANALAPAN, FLA. — When Mattias Ekholm was traded from Nashville to Edmonton on Feb. 28, he came with his wife, two kids, a salary that will count against the cap for three more seasons, and a desire to immediately set down roots in Alberta.

But as Ekholm noted to reporters in Toronto last week when the Oilers passed through for a game against the Maple Leafs, a new law in Canada prohibits him and any other non-Canadian residents from purchasing residential property through 2024.

He didn’t have to say he’s unhappy about it. That he even raised the issue made that clear, and it also reinforced to what end this could affect Canadian teams in free agency moving forward if no further exceptions to the law are made.

When it went into effect on Jan. 1, the only people who could circumvent it were Canadians living abroad, refugees, or people on work visas who worked in Canada or filed taxes in Canada three of the preceding four years and didn’t already own residential property in the country.

Ekholm doesn’t qualify. Neither will any foreign player who was previously playing for an American NHL team or European team and wishes to sign with a Canadian one when free agency opens come July.

We surveyed several NHL agents to ascertain just how big of an impediment they think this will be for the group of seven north of the border, and all of them expressed varying degrees of concern.

Dan Milstein of Gold Star Hockey, who initially expressed his major dissatisfaction on the issue a day after the law came into effect, doubled down on his position.

“Compare it to other situations,” he said via text message, “and ask yourself: Would you go to a country that takes more than half your money in taxes and doesn’t allow you to buy a home for your family to live in?”

Whether you view his comment as hyperbolic or not—never mind the loose definition of the tax reality in Canada (it varies from province to province and there are several mechanisms available to players to defer taxes or lessen the percentages paid)—it accurately represents a viewpoint some non-Canadian players hold.

Alain Roy of RSG Hockey, who estimates roughly 30 per cent of his 71 NHL clients under contract come from outside Canada, was measured in his response, texting that “it could be an issue” for any non-Canadian players who are “looking at longer-term contracts” in Canada. And Don Meehan of Newport Sports said, “It wouldn’t be the determining factor,” but acknowledged it would be one that can’t be ignored.

One agent we spoke with, on the condition of anonymity, said, “The NHLPA is going to have to get together with Major League Baseball’s PA and the NBAPA and lobby the Canadian government for an exemption because this is going to be a problem for everyone.”

“We all understand why the law was put in place—to stop foreign investment from driving up the prices of real estate and making housing unaffordable to Canadians,” the agent continued. “But it shouldn’t apply to people who are coming here to work and live.”

That was a thought expanded on by both Ottawa Senators general manager Pierre Dorion and Montreal Canadiens GM Kent Hughes when we tried to gauge just how concerned they might be about the law’s potential infringement on their ability to attract and/or retain talent in their respective cities.

“I think for our players, they’re coming in here to work, they’re not coming here to buy properties and make investment on it,” said Dorion. “They’re coming here to buy properties to have a home and a foundation they can go to and move from there.

“There should be some kind of exemption for people who are working and trying to provide financial resources for their family.”

Hughes said, “It’s challenging. It’s challenging in the hockey business, and I would think it’s even more challenging in every other industry—how do you attract foreign workers?”

“I think I can appreciate the reason of trying to control the price of real estate for the people who live here,” he continued. “I don’t know to what extent those prices are driven up by people who are from here versus people who are investing or getting their money out of foreign countries. I would hope that there’s a way to find some compromise, but I don’t know enough about the inner workings of the Canadian government to say how that could come to be.”

The Canadiens have several players on expiring contracts and will have holes to fill in free agency, and Hughes knows that could prove even more difficult if nothing changes with this ban.

Dorion is hoping to get Alex DeBrincat signed to a long-term contract extension and mused that this law won’t affect negotiations because he believes DeBrincat bought a house in Ottawa prior to it coming into effect.

Kevin Cheveldayoff, who already has arguably the hardest job of any of his Canadian counterparts to convince free agents to come play and stay in Winnipeg, said he wasn’t familiar enough with the intricacies of this specific law to provide comment on it.

But the last thing he needs is another obstruction to signing players.

Many — especially those who are younger or on shorter-term deals — are happy to rent rather than buy, which will help mitigate the issue.

But it’s going to be an issue regardless, and we expect it’ll garner more attention as hockey season winds down and free agency comes into view.

Expansion of video review/coach’s challenge could be on the horizon

NHL executive vice president of hockey operations Colin Campbell said following Day 2 of the NHL GM meetings, no changes will be made before the end of this season or the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Still, there’s an appetite amongst the game’s caretakers to eliminate erroneous high-sticking calls—like on plays where an opposing player is wrongly penalized for a high-stick that actually came from a teammate—and ensure that puck-over-glass (delay-of-game) penalties are properly assessed. This was one of the major themes they discussed over the past 48 hours.

Coach’s challenges are currently only issued to review if a play resulting in a goal was influenced by a missed offside or goaltender interference call.

“Now we’re talking about fixing a penalty,” said Campbell.

Whether or not the NHL would be opening Pandora’s Box by going down this road is a question GMs have to grapple with as they assess the value of expanding video review/coach’s challenges beyond plays involving goals.

That’s why none we spoke to took a particularly firm position on whether or not they’d actually like to see these changes made.

“Several years ago we didn’t have coach’s challenges, and now we do,” said Cheveldayoff. “So where does it stop? You’ve gotta make sure that if you’re challenging things, you’re not slowing the game down. You’ve gotta make sure that you think of all the consequences. So one of the things that hockey operations does very well is gauge the temperature of the room and then they’ll do a deeper dive. I think the temperature of the room was not overwhelmingly in favour, but it’s something we all want to get a little bit more information on.”

What NHL director of officiating Stephen Walkom was able to provide was the pertinent insight to at least guide that conversation.

He said there were 700-750 high-sticking infractions called per season, so naturally you couldn’t review every single one without significantly lengthening games.

Walkom added that out of the 225 or so puck-over-glass penalties handed out this season, only three were called incorrectly because the puck had been deflected over.

Hughes said that, with mindfulness towards not wanting to slow the game down by reviewing every single high-stick or delay-of-game penalty, the proper solution would be a coach’s challenge.

“If you’re talking about a high-sticking penalty on friendly fire and you want to make a challenge and you’re wrong, you’re going down 5-on-3,” Hughes said. “So I think for the most part you would only do it where it was really clear there was a mistake.”

Campbell said the discussion would continue because GMs want the league to just “get it right,” and so does the league.

“You don’t want to hold up a game,” Campbell said. “But at the end of the day, I always argue I wouldn’t mind holding up a game for five minutes and getting it right than not getting it right and hearing about it for five weeks.”

Something we’re hearing a lot about—and not just from executives, but from agents, media members and fans alike—is a desire to see fights after clean hits curbed, if not eliminated.

While there’s no one lobbying to have a new rule specific to this, GMs want to see the instigator rule enforced whenever it’s applicable and other infractions like roughing, slashing or crosschecking called when it isn’t to ensure these situations don’t end with both players in the box serving even penalty minutes.

“You want hitting in the game and want that to stay in,” said Chevaldayoff.

But neither he nor anyone else wants to continue to see clean hits constantly responded to by fights.

Whether or not an extra penalty to the offender would be a significant deterrent is questionable, but GMs are asking the league to have its officials apply one in these situations.