Adam Novotny may not be headed back to the OHL after all.
The Vancouver Canucks have already said the 24th overall pick from this year’s draft is expected to return to the Peterborough Petes, but there is at least a path that could put him in Abbotsford instead. That possibility comes from a rule change between the NHL and the Canadian Hockey League, plus the unusual way Novotny got to North America in the first place.
Novotny was not simply a CHL draft pick in the traditional sense. He was still under contract with his Czech club, Mountfield, and was only on loan to Peterborough last season. That matters, because technically he was selected from Czechia, not from the OHL, which means he is not covered by the NHL-CHL agreement.
That puts him in a different category from the teenager many around the Canucks have already assumed will be AHL-bound: Braeden Cootes. Cootes, a 19-year-old, fits under the updated NHL-CHL framework that now allows some CHL-drafted players to play in the AHL if they meet specific requirements. One of those requirements is having played three years in the CHL.
The old system was much stricter. For players drafted at 18 out of Canadian major junior hockey, the first two post-draft seasons usually came down to one of two choices: make the NHL or go back to junior. The AHL was largely not an option, aside from conditioning stints like the one Seattle used with Shane Wright in 2023-24.
Novotny’s situation resembles what the Canucks once dealt with in other cases involving European players on loan. Nick Jensen, the Danish forward drafted from the OHL, could be reassigned freely because of that same loan setup.
Michal Repik followed a similar path with the Vancouver Giants, and the Giants needed him to sign with the Florida Panthers after he was drafted in 2007 in order to keep him in North America for a third season. In that scenario, Florida would have been able to send him to the AHL if it had wanted to.
So while the expectation remains that Novotny will go back to the Petes, the door to Abbotsford is not completely shut.
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