It’s that time of year again, when we can all sit back in utter amazement at the nonsense major junior hockey franchises often get away with in this country.

As is the tradition, there has been a flurry of transactions in recent weeks as many of the 60 teams in the Canadian Hockey League, behaving like mini-NHL franchises rather than developmental organizations for amateur student-athletes that they insist they are, barter in teenage hockey horseflesh while pursuing championships and profits.

Players as young as 15 have been traded in recent weeks, shipped to new teams hundreds of kilometres away or across the border to the United States. In fact, more top stars will be traded in the CHL this season than in the NHL despite the fact major junior players remain unpaid.

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The salary cap restrains NHL teams. Nothing restrains major junior franchises.

The CHL, which includes the Ontario Hockey League, Western Hockey League and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, has been cleaned up considerably over the past 20 years. But in many ways, it still maintains the same archaic structure.

That structure allows players, many of whom aren’t old enough to vote or legally drink alcohol, to be traded in the middle of the season and school year. You could do it in 1970, and you can still do it in 2018.

So a 16-year-old playing fourth-line minutes and attending Grade 11 might wake up and find he’s been traded from Prince George to Brandon, Charlottetown to Shawinigan, or Sarnia to Sault Ste. Marie.

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These are junior franchises that are operated for profit but don’t pay their players. Instead, they offer room and board, provide hockey expenses and post-secondary education packages, and also retain the right to trade players anywhere within their league, sometimes without the consent of the player and his family.

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It’s been going on for decades. Many NHL stars were once traded as juniors, including current Leafs John Tavares and Nazem Kadri. In recent weeks, several players who skated for Canada at the recent world junior hockey championships — goalie Mike DiPietro, defenceman Markus Phillips, and forwards MacKenzie Entwhistle and Owen Tippett — have been traded.

Defenceman Noah Dobson, whose stick snapped at the worst possible moment in Canada’s quarterfinal loss to Finland, was dealt last week from Acadie-Bathurst to Rouyn-Noranda, QMJHL franchises that are 1,400 kilometres apart. Dobson, 18, is from Summerside, P.E.I.

And everyone in hockey seems to think this is good for the game.

Usually, these trades involve multiple draft picks, with the team giving up the star setting itself up for the future and the other team loading up for a run at a title. But there’s often a younger, non-star player going the other way, as well. The London Knights acquired overage forward Kevin Hancock last week for 17-year-old defenceman Andrew Perrott, who was sent 200 kilometres away to Owen Sound.

The OHL franchise based in Saginaw, Mich., got Tippett from the Mississauga Steelheads for six draft picks and Aidan Prueter, a 17-year-old centre from London, Ont. The Steelheads also traded Edmonton draft pick Ryan McLeod to Saginaw for Duncan Penman, a 17-year-old defenceman from Oakville. These are all teenagers being traded in mid-season by teams separated by 370 kilometres and the Canada-U.S. border. It’s grotesque.

Meanwhile, there are rumours about a 16-year-old skating for an OHL team who is being pressured to waive his no-trade clause so he can be traded for an older, high-profile player to help that team go after the league championship. Talk about an awkward predicament.

The same practices go on in the WHL and QMJHL as well. The Seattle Thunderbirds acquired 17-year-old forward Henry Rybinski from Medicine Hat for a 15-year-old midget defenceman. Seattle is more than 1,200 kilometres southwest of Medicine Hat.

Many Canadians find it convenient to slag the way the NCAA and its member colleges do business down south, and there’s lots to criticize. But Alabama can’t trade a cornerback to Oregon State halfway through the season. Notre Dame’s outstanding women’s basketball team can’t pick up the best player from another university in January in exchange for high school recruits who have committed to the Irish.

The OHL, and the other CHL leagues, continue to treat teenagers like professional assets, not amateur student-athletes. This continues to happen while several class action lawsuits across the country are demanding that major junior players should be paid minimum wage. Sam Berg, son of former Leafs forward Bill Berg, is the lead plaintiff in one of those lawsuits.

The Ontario government, without consulting anyone other the OHL, pre-emptively sided with the league’s owners in November by exempting more than 400 OHL players from becoming employees regulated by the Employment Standards Act, including the requirement to be paid minimum wage.

“Our government is proud to take action and cut red tape to provide clarity and help make sure the OHL is able to continue training players and showcase this great sport,” said premier Doug Ford.

Like a quote right out of the 1960s. All for the love of the game.

As far as the trade issue goes, the simple solution would be to bar teams from trading players in-season. Teenagers should not be asked to uproot their lives in the middle of a hockey season. A school year.

It’s one thing for the CHL to continue to propagate the fiction that it is a development league for amateurs. But it’s an appalling extension of that larger fiction to believe it’s fair and reasonable for these teams to treat teenage boys like 30-year-old NHL veterans.

It needs to stop.