Rental Players - Should there be rules attached?

I like players who spend their entire careers with one organization . Joe Sakic. Larry Bird. Magic Johnson. Now, this seems to be increasingly rare. Sports have become about the money, and some athletes would play anywhere for the right amount of money. To a certain extent, I can't blame them, but I also think there is something to be said for an athlete wanting to play for the organization that gave them their start, and perhaps take a paycut while doing so. Now, that brings me to the issue at hand. The rental player.

Ilya Kovalchuk is just the latest in a long list of players who, in the last year of their contracts, were traded to a contender. Peter Forsberg. Doug Weight. And, of course, my ultimate favourite, Marian Hossa. It's precisely the Doug Weight situation that I'd like to talk about.

In 2005, Doug Weight was a member of the St. Louis Blues. They then traded him to the Carolina Hurricanes at the deadline, who then proceeded to win the Stanley Cup. This is about as good as a rental can be. But then, after the season, Doug Weight went back to St. Louis. So, in theory, St. Louis could have kept all of the pieces they traded for, plus got back the guy they traded away. It's a smart move, but it almost seems to cheapen the game a bit in my eyes. Maybe there were no pre-arranged agreements in place, but it seems pretty likely that someone, at some point, said "Look, Doug. We love you, and we want you here, but let's send you to a contender now, give you a chance to win the Cup, then you can come back next season." They could have even negotiated contract terms. Maybe that didn't happen, but it doesn't seem too absurd that it did.

I'm not convinced that a rule should actually be put in place that prohibits the unrestricted free agent from returning to the team that traded him, because, he may not have had any control over the fact he was shipped out of town. Maybe he genuinely wants to go back where he came from and is willing to sign a new deal for less money in order to go back. That doesn't seem wrong to me, and it doesn't seem like the league should prohibit this. But, on the other side of the coin, any pre-arranged agreement almost feels like cheating to me, it just doesn't seem right. I can't quite explain why I think it's wrong, it just is.

This is one of those issues that I'm not 100% sure where I stand. What about you?