I have been watching this situation quite closely from the “sideline” over the last few days. One thing really blowing my mind and the reason why I´m writing this lines, is the fact how arbitrary this decision is. If you make the effort to write and introduce rules you got to follow them and respect the wording – even and especially the ones who are carry them out. That is not the case here.
Let´s dive into the wording of the relevant paragraphs:
„13.3
Teams are allowed to release a player from their roster, provided this doesn’t violate the roster size rule. If a player is released or transferred to another team and thus the roster size is temporarily below the limit mentioned in 2.2, the team has 24 hours to invite a new player to the team to meet the rule again, otherwise it will be disqualified. Released players cannot go back to the team that released them and their next move is considered a transfer from the team that released them.
13.4
Team captains are not allowed to be transferred during a league/tournament. Team assistant captains are allowed to transfer in case the team captain agrees to a transfer. In case the team captain disagrees, an assistant captain is not allowed to be transferred to another team. This paragraph also applies if a team is not able to finish the tournament for whatever reason.
13.8
If a team is disqualified, its managers are banned from the league/tournament. The other roster players are free to transfer to another team, unless they were proven involved in the disqualification of their team, in which case they are also banned.“
As there is no rule embodying something like a “right to reject trades/transfers” for the LA, the following situation played out:
Team RAD was falling apart. After the C of RAD decided to shut the team down, the A´s didn’t have a chance to really solve this situation. So, they did what, I think, everyone in this situation would do: searching for an out. The seemingly got one by joining NOR.
Now we come to transfer rules. Yes, in general A´s aren’t allowed to change teams midseason unless they have the ok of the team´s C (13.4) – both A´s reached that agreement with their C. So they played by the rules.
Next step is 13.3 and 13.8. The captains of a team are disqualified from participation in the on-going season when their team is disqualified. Now the timeline of this situation becomes leading. As the wording of 13.8 says: a decision of the LA is needed to disqualify a team. But at the time the A´s got transferred to NOR there wasn’t any decision about a disqualification of RAD. If the LA wanted to prevent a situation like this from happening, they should have taken this into account when writing the rules. The other option for LA would have been to make a temporary decision on RAD and putting all transfers out of RAD on hold until the final decision is made. They didn’t obviously. What they did is handling the situation pretty sloppy and let time lapse away. Time the two players used to join NOR. Something A´s are allowed to do (13.4). So RAD was still part of ECL Elite by the time the transfer happened. In fact, the two players were already part of NOR when disqualification was vocalised. In my understanding of the rules there is no basis in the rules for disqualifying them after that point.
Now one might say: “The rules intended to keep Captains responsibly for their teams.” That argument is not valid here. If you want intentions to be taken into account in legal interpretation, you have to make these intentions publicly and more important by the time the said rule is established. You can´t just say, this was the intention when we wrote the rule back in the days. That´s not how rules work, because if you do so decision can (and almost certainly will) become discretionary. But it is exactly what happened here. The rules got bend in line with the feelings of how this situation “morally” should be handled.
Since NHLgamer wants to take the next step into a more professional league and tender cash prizes, situations like this can´t happen – that´s really hacky. Everyone should think twice about handing over money to a league that´s run the way it is at the moment.
I strongly recommend that you should re-evaluate those transfer rules and perhaps install something like a “rules committee” that is completely independent from the LA in order to separate jurisdiction from legislation.