Unlike scholastically based development systems, the junior leagues reserve the right to trade players or demote them to a second-tier farm team in another city. When you're with one team and all of a sudden they move you to another, it's that much worse. He says the old pre-1967 junior setup in which NHL teams owned the junior affiliates and, for the most part, recruited players from the region in which the teams were situated, was a more humane system. Generally, players stayed closer to home and weren't traded. Although junior hockey is deemed to be a development league, it is, foremost, a business.
Local ownership is dependent on gate revenue and revenue production is dependent on playing games.
But games and winning, alone, do not advance a player's skill level. Even the stars handle the puck for only about 45 seconds in a game. In junior hockey, the margin of profit for the clubs is small, so owners cut costs by piling extra duties on the coach, such as managing, marketing and promoting the team, as well as scouting. As a result, the training of players suffers. For several years, an additional source of income for owners has been expansion, in which existing clubs share in the entry fees charged to new teams.