Negative Injunctions in Hockey and Baseball

First of all, a negative injunction means that the court orders an individual to stop doing something.  This helps limit an individual from breaching a contract.  In all standard player contracts in North American Pro Sport, players are listed as having unique skills which allows the club to pursue injunctions.  For example, a 2005 NHL Contract states in Section 6 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement:

"The Player represents and agress that he has exceptional and unique knowledge, skill and ability as a hockey player, the loss of which cannot be estimated with certainty and cannot be fairly or adequately compensated by damages.  The Player therefore agrees that the club shall have the right in addition to any other rights that the club may possess, to enjoin him by appropriate injunctive proceedings without first exhausting any other remedy which may be available to the club, from playing hockey for any other team and/or for any breach of any other provisions of his contract."

In other words, this means that the NHL club/league has the right to seek a negative injunction rather than monetary damages.  It is hard to put value on a star player that can't be replaced so a negative injunction is a way to ensure that you don't lose that player.

Let's take a look at an example from professional baseball.  In Central New York Basketball Inc v. Barnett (1961), the NBA franchise Syracuse filed a breach of contract against Richard Barnett after he signed a contract with the Cleveland franchise in the rival ABL.  Syracuse had a contract with Barnett to retain his services and the court agreed giving Barnett a negative injunction from playing for the Cleveland franchise.  Since Barnett was under contract, it was easy to enfore the negative injunction.

Now back to negative injuctions in the NHL.  An example of a negative injunction in the NHL is in Nassau Sports v. Peters.  This involved the New York Islanders seeking a negative injunction against Garry Peters who signed with the rival WHA.  At the time, the NHL has a reserve clause for players even if the players contract has expired.  This was also a lawsuit at the time between the WHA and NHL.  Peters was assigned to the Boston Braves by his contract team, the Boston Bruins.  This made him available in the expansion draft the following year where the New York Isalnders drafted him.  The New York Islanders were unsucessful in seeking a negative injunction because Peters had never signed a contract with the Islanders.  By not signing a contract with the Islanders, they were unable to pursue a negative injunction.  Peters went on to play for the New York Raiders in the WHA and never joined the Islanders.


Recent examples of negative injunctions involve the NHL and KHL.  The KHL is the highest professional hockey league outside of North America and is seen as a rival to the NHL.  Players have jumped from the KHL to the NHL and vice versa.  Two examples of players are Alexander Radulov and Ilya Kovalchuk.

Alexander Radulov is a Russian hockey player that was drafted by the Nashville Predators in the NHL. He signed a three year entry level contract and played for Nashvilles's affiliate Milwaukee for 11 games before joining Nashville.  He played two years for Nashville before going back to Russia and playing in the KHL.  The NHL and KHL have a history of losing players to one another so they tried to strike a peace treaty to ensure that players would not breach their contracts.  However, the KHL was furious will a player (Nikita Filatov) who was under contract with the KHL and jumped to the NHL so the KHL allowed Radulov to come back.  The NHL and KHL had no agreement in place to prevent players from changing leagues and the NHL doesn't have the power to seek a negative injunction because the KHL is outside of North America.  The NHL expected the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) to step in to nullify the Radulov KHL contract but they also didn't have the jurisdiction to do that.  The IIHF only has the power to ban Radulov from international events and not the KHL.  Since, there is no agreement between the NHL and KHL, expect players to continue to breach contracts to jump leagues.

Another example between the NHL and KHL is the Iyla Kovalchuk contract.  Ilya Kovalchuk is a Russian hockey player signed a new contract with the New Jersey Devils for 17 years and $102 million.  After 3 years of the contract, he decided that he wanted to return back to Russia to be with his family.  He announced retirement from the NHL leaving 12 years left on his deal and lost $77 million.  The Devils were unable to seek an injunction because Kovalchuk had retired and the courts wouldn't be able to force him to unretire.  Kovalchuk went home and played in the KHL.  Because of the contract between the Devils and Kovalchuk, the Devils were penalized $3 million and had to forfeit 3 draft picks for circumventing the cap to make the contract possible.  Again, there wasn't an agreement between the NHL and KHL so nothing could be done to stop Kovalchuk from staying.

In conclusion, signing a Russian player to an NHL contract can be very risky because they always have the option to leave even if they are under contract.  Negative Injunctions are great to prevent players from jumping to rival leagues in North America but it has no affect internationally.  This will continue to be a problem for the NHL and KHL.