Vegas Pushing for Punishment for Senators' Role in Dadonov Situation

As we await news on what punishment the league will impose on the Senators for their involvement in the Evgenii Dadonov fiasco, more details are slowly trickling out

During yesterday’s broadcast of ‘The Chris Johnston Show’ on the SDPN, the TSN Insider and contributor to The Athletic shed light on what was driving this Dadonov issue 18 months after the events in question.

According to Johnston, the reason why everything is playing out right now is because Vegas continues to push for punishment.

“The problem for Vegas was they didn’t know (Dadonov) had a limited no-trade clause,” explained Johnston. “The reason, I think, they pursued justice in this case is because that is not how this system is designed to work.”

To quickly rehash, when Dadonov signed a three-year contract with the Senators on October 15, 2020, the team also agreed to give the player a limited no-trade clause. As part of this negotiated right, Dadonov was granted the ability to select 10 teams that he could not be traded to. The wrinkle, like all of these limited no-trade clauses, is that for this no-trade clause to be respected, it must be submitted to the team by a negotiated date that is outlined in the contract. If a player or his representation fails to do this, that no-trade clause is voided for the remainder of its term.

When the Senators dealt Evgenii Dadonov to Vegas on July 29, 2021, they mistakenly communicated to Vegas that Dadonov’s no-trade clause was no longer in effect.

On today’s ‘32 Thoughts Podcast’ Elliotte Friedman relayed the story that the conversation between the two teams went something like this:

“It turned out that when he was traded from Ottawa to the Golden Knights, Vegas asked, ‘Is there any no-trade list that we have to be aware of?’”

And they were told, “No, there’s no, no-trade list.”

Dadonov would go on to play 62 games for the Golden Knights before the 2022 trade deadline when the Knights tried to move Dadonov with a future second-round pick to Anaheim for the contracts of Ryan Kesler and John Moore, who were both on LTIR. With the Golden Knights desperately fighting for a playoff position and risking the possibility of a shortened roster because of their cap situation, the purpose of the trade was to use these LTIR acquisitions to free up enough cap space to bring their own high-salaried star players (ie. Mark Stone and Alex Pietrangelo) off the LTIR.

When the Knights finalized their deal, Dadonov’s representative, Rick Komarow, grieved the move saying that his client’s no-trade clause was still in effect and that Anaheim was on the list. After submitting evidence that he had sent Dadonov’s list to the Senators at the appropriate time, the league ended its investigation and agreed with him — thereby voiding the deal between Anaheim and Vegas.

No details have surfaced regarding why Ottawa believed that Dadonov’s no-trade clause was not submitted in time, but those details will hopefully come to light when the league announces its punishment.

Friedman explained that the reason why Vegas continues to push for some resolution to this is because of the optics involved.

“They wanted it made very clear that this one was not their fault, because of some of the challenging and difficult decisions that they’ve made, in the past, which teams do have to make, they kind of had this reputation and it bothered them. And they said, you know what, we feel that we make difficult decisions but we also do good things by our players. And you know, there’s a group of them that are pretty happy there. They won the Stanley Cup there.

Whatever the case is, Vegas pushed it, you know, they said we want it made very clear that this one was not on us. And at some point this week, I believe there’s going to come out a ruling on this that is going to exonerate Vegas and have some kind of penalty on the Senators.” ~ Transcription via NHLrumors.com

A year, seven months and 10 days have gone by with Vegas ultimately winning the Stanley Cup this year. I completely feel for an organization that was relying exclusively on the acquisition of these LTIR contracts so they could legally circumvent the spirit of the CBA and create the cap space they needed to fit in their most expensive players. It must have been really difficult to miss the postseason for the first time in their existence and bounce back by winning the most coveted trophy in professional hockey. How could anyone with the hockey operations department enjoy reaching the pinnacle in this sport with an Evgenii Dadonov no-trade clause hanging over their collective heads for the past year and a half…

Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch shed more light on why the league pivoted and has decided to punish the Senators.

“While the league had originally ruled there would be no further action on the matter, and you’re wondering why this hasn’t been settled, Vegas president of hockey operations George McPhee and GM Kelly McCrimmon refused to let this matter go and appealed to the NHL’s head office to look into it.”

Of course, I get the frustration with a lost year and the missed opportunity. Maybe Vegas does some damage in a terrible Western Conference if everything breaks right and they get into the postseason. Ottawa knowingly or unknowingly communicated a mistake at the time they dealt Dadonov, but if we are talking about degrees of blame, this situation highlights some shortcomings of the current system.

Chris Johnston referred to the league’s no-trade clause landscape as “the wild west” because there is no private central registry available for teams and agents to access. In other words, there are currently no mechanisms or safeguards in place to prevent these sorts of predicaments from occurring.

The league would prefer to put the onus on the individual teams for transparency.

“It hasn’t come up, that I’m aware of, as an issue until this situation. So, probably the reason it doesn’t exist is that there was never a problem if you know what I’m saying. The system appeared to be working fine until this happened. I know in the wake of the Dadonov situation, there has been some discussion at the league level about doing that. But, my sense is that that’s kind of been abandoned. I don’t know that we’re going on the path to where there will be a centralized list kept like that. I can see why they don’t want that falling into the wrong hands - that sort of information.” ~ Chris Johnston on The Chris Johnston Show

The reason why there is no registry stems from the idea of respecting a player’s privacy and the awkwardness that could arise if some party leaks information from a centralized registry.

At least if there was some central portal or registry, general managers could access it to get the most accurate information available to them without having to rely on anyone else.

I certainly do not want to excuse the Senators of blame. Relaying false information regarding a player’s contractual status is negligent, but the league office and the Knights share some of that blame too. I’ve already detailed the need for a central registry, but Vegas carried Dadonov on the roster for 62 games leading up to the 2022 NHL trade deadline. Once the Knights acquired Jack Eichel earlier in the fall, the possibility of a cap crunch was very real. Without many internal alternatives, Dadonov represented the likeliest player to be dealt. If Vegas was concerned with Dadonov’s no-trade clause and whether it was voided, the team had ample opportunity to touch base with his agent before the 2022 NHL trade deadline.

Vegas ultimately did reach out to Dadonov’s agent at the 2022 deadline.

Vegas’ push for the Senators to be punished is intriguing because of the very real possibility that when the dust settles here, everyone involved who had decision-making power within Ottawa’s hockey ops department in 2022 will no longer be with the organization. Dorion will likely get canned. Assistant general manager Peter MacTavish resigned to join Quartexx Hockey that summer. Dorion fired Pierre McGuire as the team’s senior advisor and vice president of player development a few months after the passing of Eugene Melnyk.

Johnston essentially confirmed rumours that the Senators will be punished in the form of draft pick compensation, but if there is any encouraging news, it arrives in the form of Jeff Marek believing the punishment will be light.

“My thought on this one is whatever comes out, punishment-wise, will be light. And you know why I say that? Because of Josh Harris and David Blitzer. When they bought the New Jersey Devils there was the Ilya Kovalchuk cap circumvention penalties still in place.”

Just in case you needed another reason to be grateful for Michael Andlauer, here we have it. Now, all we can do is wait and hope that that holds true.