Elias Peterson has turned down the toilet.
And the Swedish Ice Hockey Association may face a new kind of insurance problem in the future that many Swedish stars would say no to.
– If we want to secure things that don’t exist, says Anders Lundberg, national team manager, we run too risky.
Anders Lundberg is careful to state that he is speaking in general terms and not specifically about the Elias Peterson case.
But the truth is that Elias Peterson will not be playing in the WC and the Ice Hockey Association may face a new kind of problem in the future.
Young players who will sign long and very expensive NHL contracts in the next few years can opt out of World Cup games if they don’t feel they have adequate insurance coverage for future earnings.
The gray area mainly concerns this type of player.
Because when it comes to current contracts, the line of the Ice Hockey League is clear:
– As long as the player has a valid contract, we will secure that contract. It applies, says Anders Lundberg.
Even an expensive ten-year contract?
– This is my absolute picture. definitely.
The next decade could be worth a billion
But when it comes to a player like Elias Peterson, who has one year left on his current contract and is likely to sign a very lucrative multi-year contract already this summer, it becomes problematic.
Peterson suffers an injury during the restroom which forces him to end his career, and loses astronomical sums of money if not properly insured.
But securing a player for income not included in the contract is not something the Ice Hockey Association is prepared to do.
– Based on what you just said: we insure existing contracts for players, no wonder. Then if players or agents want to cover things that aren’t there, how do we guarantee that? Then we talk about potential future income, they may have one, three, five years left in the contract but how do we secure what happens next? Players can quit or get injured during these years, Lundberg says and continues:
– That’s why we have this policy: current agreement, no insurance issues. But if we want to secure things that don’t exist, we are in a very dangerous situation.
Insurance costs amount to five million kronor
Sportbladet previously wrote that it could cost up to three million to secure Elias Peterson during the water cycle. Sources now claim it would be much more expensive than that and have serious consequences for the Ice Hockey Association’s other operations.
“I don’t comment on totals or individual players,” says Lundberg.
Sportbladet’s unconfirmed information says that the rules have been changed and that through the International Ice Hockey Federation system it was previously possible to insure players for future loss of income.
Something Anders Lundberg does not claim to know:
– This is my first year in insurance and I don’t have the exact date. But as I explained everything in a dialogue with the IIHF, there is no difference. Since then, there have always been discussions about insurance for players whose contracts have expired or who will soon sign contracts.
