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You can look up the history bewteen the NHL and WHA yourself (just look at the Canada/Russia controversy), but the fact remains that Greztky was considered to have been playing "professional" hockey, yet somehow Stastny was not?
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The wording, is "major professional league"
http://www.nhl.com/trophies/calder.html
By this measure, Greztky obviously
should have been excluded. But I think even more problematic than Stastny is Sergei Makarov who played for CSKA Moscow for 11 seasons before joining the NHL and winning the Calder.
Considering CSKA's record against NHL teams in exhibition play (26-8-2) it's hard to argue it's any less "major league" than the WHA.
From wikipedia:
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Russian Super League is the highest division of the main professional ice hockey league in Russia, and is commonly considered third-best in the world after the NHL and the Swedish Elitserien.
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Yes, for purposes of the Olympics, Red Army players were considered "amateurs". However, this was an obvious legal fiction that the NHL was under no obligation to respect.
It does seem that this rule has been interpreted selectively.