Last season, Phantoms rookie Zac Rinaldo earned the dubious distinction of logging more suspensions (four times) than goals (three) during the season. He also logged a whopping 331 penalty minutes, the second most in the league. Rinaldo also acquired quite a rap sheet of suspensions during his junior hockey career, including a 12-gamer.

Rinaldo can be an effective player when he sets his mind to it. He skates well, forechecks effectively and actually has some puck skills to go along with ability to get under opponents' skin.

However, I think it's legitimate to wonder if Rinaldo is even capable of playing under control. In the split-squad scrimmage at the Flyers' summer prospect camp, Rinaldo left his feet to deliver a dangerous hit to Sean Couturier. That was extremely stupid. Rinaldo easily could have caused a concussion to the organization's top prospect.

Rinaldo is an extremely brash and self-confident young man, to the point of projecting an air of outright cockiness. That much was clear in his first NHL camp last September, when the faux-hawk sporting forward boldly proclaimed himself "a playoff player" who finds the regular season a bit "boring" (the Flyers later took him up on it and dressed him in two Stanley Cup playoff games after he had spent the entire regular season in the minors).

When running down the players whom he felt had impressed at the prospect camp, Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren mentioned Rinaldo as one of them. Rinaldo's hit on Couturier apparently did not bother the team brass that much.

Despite his lack of size (5-foot-11, 180 pounds) to perform an agitator/fighter role, Rinaldo does not back down from much larger foes. Here he is doing battle last season with now-teammate Tom Sestito.



*****

If only NHL games count toward waivers, I am still at a loss for how Oskars Bartulis was eligible for waivers last season (and he was).

Bartulis, who was born on Jan. 21, 1987, signed his entry-level contract on September 26, 2006. For players who sign their first pro contract at age 19, waiver exemption ends when the player has subsequently:

a) played 160 (NHL) games, or
b) four seasons have elapsed from the time he played his first pro game.

Bartulis was not AHL eligible in the 2006-07 season, so he played an additional season of junior hockey. Year one of his four-year exemption window should have started in 2007-08.

Then we go to games played. Bartulis played just 53 regular season games and 7 playoff tilts in the NHL as of the end of the 2009-10 season.

However, he played a combined 153 games (149 regular season and 4 playoff games) for the Phantoms in the two-plus minor league seasons he played before being recalled to the Flyers. Combine those 153 games in the AHL with the 60 NHL games and he would have lost his waiver exemption based on games played.

That is why I still maintain that for players in their 20s -- Bartulis was 23 at the start of last season -- the waiver rules expand to include AHL games.

The Collective Bargaining Agreement section on waivers ONLY explicitly mentions NHL games counting toward service time against losing waiver exemption. However, for purposes of counting years of service time on the waiver clock, it does say that it makes no difference if a player in his 20s plays a single game in the NHL during a particular season.

There are rules in the CBA designed to prevent stashing players in the minors or Europe for the express purpose of holding down their service time. There is nothing in the CBA, however, that says once a player's entry-level contract expires, he is waiver eligible. I mention this because, in Bartulis' case, the player's three-year ELC was over after the 2009-10 season and replaced by a new long-term contract.

As I interpret the CBA, year one (2010-11) of Bartulis' contract should have been waiver exempt as the fourth and final season of exemption for a player who signed his ELC at age 19 but was prevented by the AHL's age rules from playing his first game until the next season.

Thus, as far as I can tell, the ONLY possible way that Bartulis should have been waiver eligible last season was if his AHL games counted against his exemption status by that point. I may be wrong.

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