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The Flames still have the rights to college-bound prospect Jaden Lipinski
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Photo credit: James Doyle/WHL
Ryan Pike
Jun 3, 2025, 12:00 EDTUpdated: Jun 3, 2025, 03:07 EDT
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Gang, the recent changes to the NCAA’s eligibility rules, opening up college hockey as an option for Canadian major junior players, have obviously had a ripple effect of confusion and uncertainty for the NHL’s community of contract and CBA aficionados.
Our little community tends to lean heavily on precedents and past events to help us anticipate how the league will interpret different things, particularly items like how long NHL clubs retain rights to their unsigned drafted prospects, and so as June approached, there was a small amount of anticipation and anxiety about how the league would handle the first big milestone date of the new era.
You see, under the current CBA (Article 8, Section 6, paragraph (a)), if a player is drafted from junior hockey, their rights are held by the team that drafts them until the second June 1 after they’re drafted. So for Calgary Flames draft choice Jaden Lipinski, and five other players drafted in 2023, normally their rights would lapse if they hadn’t signed with their drafting clubs by June 1, 2025.
However, Lipinski and those five others all committed to play college hockey in 2025-26 on various NCAA clubs – Lipinski’s headed to Maine – and based on how we thought the NHL would interpret the existing wording in the current CBA, there was an expectation from several within the contract/CBA community, and within many NHL clubs, that these players would have their signing rights be extended.
Here are two sub-sections within Article 8, Section 6, paragraph (c), which governs the signing rights for College Players – we’ve skipped past sub-sections (i) and (ii) because they’re not relevant to Lipinski’s situation:
(iii) If a Player drafted at age 18 or 19, who had received a Bona Fide Offer in accordance with Section 8.6(a)(ii) above, becomes a bona fide college student prior to the second June 1 following his selection in the Entry Draft and remains a bona fide college student through the graduation of his college class, his drafting Club shall retain the exclusive rights of negotiation for his services through and including the August 15 following the graduation of his college class.
(iv) If a Player drafted at age 18 or 19, who had received a Bona Fide Offer in accordance with Section 8.6(a)(ii) above, becomes a bona fide college student prior to the second June 1 following his selection in the Entry Draft and does not remain a bona fide college student through the graduation of his college class, his drafting Club shall retain exclusive rights for the negotiation of his services until the later of: (a) the fourth June 1 following his selection in the Entry Draft, or (b) thirty (30) days after NHL Central Registry receives notice that the Player is no longer a bona fide college student; provided that if the Player ceases to be a bona fide college student on or after January 1 of an academic year and the Player: (1) is in his fourth year of college and has commenced his fourth year of NCAA eligibility, or (2) is in his fourth year of college and is scheduled to graduate from college at the end of his fourth year, then in the circumstances described in (1) or (2), the Club shall retain the exclusive right of negotiation for such Player’s services through and including the August 15 following the date on which he ceases to be a bona fide college student.
To phrase it more simply: based on how these two sub-sections are worded, since Lipinski became a college student prior to the second June 1 after being drafted, his rights would remain with the Flames until (a) the fourth June 1 after his drafting or (b) Aug. 15 following the date he ceases to be a college student, whichever is later.
The precedent we cite that makes us think that this is the case is 2016 Flames fifth-rounder Mitchell Mattson, who played two seasons in the USHL after being drafted (2016-17 and 2017-18) before going to Michigan State for four seasons. The Flames retained his NHL rights throughout this window, only losing them in August 2022 after he finished school, and from his case and a few others we’ve examined, committing to college (via signing a Letter of Intent) was enough to be considered a “bona fide college student” under the CBA’s rules.
(Article 8, Section 6, paragraph (b) also has a secondary set of rules governing “drafted players who leave the major juniors prior to age 20,” but that wouldn’t apply to Lipinski’s situation because he’s reached age 20.)
June 1 came and went, and the Flames still have Lipinski listed on their reserve list, as reflected on the NHL’s media site. Based on this, we think that the NHL has shared our interpretation of the CBA’s college player rules. But since the NHL has yet to say anything definitive on the subject, and the smart folks at PuckPedia have shared that some agents are disputing the interpretation, we’ll stop just short of saying “We were right, the CBA doesn’t need to be amended to reflect the new college environment!”
All we think we can say, for now, is that the Flames still hold Lipinski’s NHL rights. Based on the CBA (and what the league told Anaheim’s front office, among others), we’re under the impression that the Flames hold his rights through the later of June 1, 2027 or the Aug. 15 after he leaves college, but that has not been definitively declared. Yet.
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