Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

Flyers coach Dave Hakstol has to pay $100,000 fee for taking Flyers' job

05/26/2015 at 11:26pm EDT

You would expect a college hockey team to protect itself against a coach potentially leaving for the NHL, but the University of North Dakota found a unique way to dissuade coach Dave Hakstol from leaving for the NHL--though it didn't work.

The Grand Forks Herald's Brad Elliott Schlossman reports that Hakstol will have to pay UND $100,000 for the opportunity of coaching the Philadelphia Flyers:

Although it had been almost 30 years since an NHL team hired a coach straight from the college ranks, UND athletic director Brian Faison was prepared for that possibility.

When negotiating coach Dave Hakstol’s last contract in 2012, Faison put a clause in the contract that specifically outlined a penalty fee if Hakstol left UND for an NHL head coaching position.

The Philadelphia Flyers hired Hakstol to be their head coach last week.

According to Hakstol’s contract, he will owe the school $100,000 for leaving his contract before June 30, 2015, for an NHL head coaching job.

If he were going to a minor league team or taking an assistant coaching job in the NHL, Hakstol would have owed $50,000. If he left for another NCAA team, he would have owed $318,270, which was his base salary for the 2015-16 season.

Hakstol had three seasons left on his contract with UND. The monetary penalties for leaving before the end of the contract would have decreased each year. He was in the third year of his six-year deal.

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Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

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