Notre Dame has lost another player late in the summer, as incoming freshman Jarred Tinordi chose to sign with the London Knights of the OHL.
It’s tough to classify Tinordi as too big of a loss, since he had yet to actually play in a game, but his departure does make Notre Dame that much thinner on defense, and it certainly must be frustrating to have a person go back on their word mere weeks before the start of the fall semester of school, but some people are like that.
There’s a couple issues at play here. First, I don’t think you can understate the relationship between the Hunters in London with Tinordi’s father, Mark.
Second, is the greater flexibility this gives Tinordi’s NHL team, the Montreal Canadiens. It may benefit the Canadiens, but it doesn’t seem to benefit Tinordi much. It’s no coincidence that NCAA players tend to get better bonuses on their first NHL contract. One of the basic rules of negotiating in hockey–or any sort of negotiation; cue Don Draper’s “They want me, but they can’t have me,”–is to give yourself other options for leverage, all the way back to when Hod Stuart threatened to return to working at his gravel pit if he wasn’t given more money at the turn of the 20th century.