The recent saga of Martin Reway has been a strange one. He’s been solid for Sparta Prague in the Czech Extraliiga, with 15 points in 14 games on top of some flashy moments in the CHL tournament. The 20-year-old forward was also a standout during last year’s World Junior Championship and put up 37 points in 34 games for Sparta last season at age 19.
But Sparta demoted him to a lower league, which is kind of inexplicable.
According to The Hockey News’ Ryan Kennedy, “Sparta wanted to sign Reway to a contract extension, but the left winger wasn’t agreeable. That led to a rift, which led to a trade request, which is where we stand now.” It seems that the trade request and his desire to not sign the extension led to the very strange demotion of one of the league’s top scorers.
“Now” was yesterday and today is a new day.
Tomas Kmec, a Slovakian prospect writer, reports that Slovan Bratislava GM Maroš Krejči has confirmed that Reway is transferring over the KHL to play for Slovan, who owns his KHL rights. (That report is confirmed by KHL reporter Igor Eronko.)
The situation was complicated. He probably isn’t ready for the NHL and Reway’s agent Michal Sivek told Kennedy that the NHL-IIHF transfer agreement prevents Reway from making the jump from the Czech League to the AHL.
There are a couple NHL veterans in Slovan who could be a help to Reway if he hopes to leap to North American hockey next year. Cam Barker has been playing there all season and it was reported yesterday that former New York Islanders defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky has signed a one-year deal with Slovan as well.
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