[News] UPD: VGK/ANA Dadonov deal voided by the NHL

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by Bleeding Red

This is all on VGK for not doing their due diligence.

Would you trade for a player without reading his contract?

"Yeah, we traded for him last year, but didn't know he had a $10 lump sum bonus payable next week." - That guy is fired by the owner.

Every team has (or should have) a guy who has read every contract for every player on his team. It's the same as having a guy who specializes in the cap.

Yes, Ottawa has the onus to give over all information, but I am sure the NTC is right there in the contract. All someone on the Knights had to do was read it.

From what I understand,

Its not "in the contract".

Its an addendum/rider that is applied to the contract but a separate transaction from signing the deal that gets registered to the league.

NHL GM's are rivals but also a tight group, and for one to apparently mislead another on something this significant is unprecedented as far as I can tell.

Dorion either blatantly lied, did not know himself who was on the list, or did not disclose all information normally done in transactions. None of which are a good look.

I know everyone has this serious hate for Vegas and in other cases its warranted, but this one in isolation is just not on them at all from what has been disclosed.

I suspect we will get the whole story later today or tomorrow, and from all indications it will not paint the Sens in a very good light.....though it seems when things like this occur there can be other info to come out that muddles everything.

More fascinating to me now is how the Knights move forward. They have to be burning the lines to make a deal to at least make enough room for Martinez to come back when he is ready because its apparent they arent even making the playoffs unless he gets back pronto or at least get Lehner and Martinez....none of which can occur at this point.

[PeteMoss]

Honestly - the issue is with the league for not having NTC details registered with them. Its a ridiculous system where you are just emailing someone in the organization a list and then hoping that person is still around when they trade you.

Should Ottawa have passed along the information and should Vegas have chased after the information harder? Yes. But its a terrible system that was bound to have something occur like this.

[Loyal and True]

Originally Posted by PugnaciousIntern

So a big issue in the LTIR ‘loophole’ is that declaring a player “off LTIR” doesn’t seem to be a rigid timeline. If they had space now, would Stone be playing? And now that they don’t, is he destined to be on LTIR for the rest of the year even if he isn’t injured anymore?

Seems difficult to punish a team for not removing a player off LTIR

I agree it's sloppy. A player goes on LTIR, so you can get a comparable replacement but then when the player is healthy again you should have to get rid of some players before you can add the injured player back. Vegas and Tampa did not want to get rid of players and instead were willing to leave a "healthy" player on LTIR until playoffs and unfortunately they are allowed to play everyone in game 1. It worked for Tampa.

I am enjoying the fact that Vegas is going to miss the playoffs as their strategy has backfired marvelously. Only at the 11th hour did they try to get rid of players, after they realized they could not afford to leave the healthy players on LTIR.

It seems to me that the NHL requires evidence to put players on LTIR but they can't really force a recovered player off LTIR if the team doesn't have room. They are allowed to sit on LTIR until game 1 of playoffs and then ice a stacked line up.

[GordonBlue]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

Honestly - the issue is with the league for not having NTC details registered with them. Its a ridiculous system where you are just emailing someone in the organization a list and then hoping that person is still around when they trade you.

Should Ottawa have passed along the information and should Vegas have chased after the information harder? Yes. But its a terrible system that was bound to have something occur like this.

But if I'm following this thread correctly, the NHLPA didn't want the league to have access to these lists. So it's not just on the NHL. Blame the union, too.

agreed that it's a terrible system.

Can't wait to hear more details. Right now it looks like Vegas was lax but Ottawa stepped over the line.

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by GordonBlue

But if I'm following this thread correctly, the NHLPA didn't want the league to have access to these lists. So it's not just on the NHL. Blame the union, too.

agreed that it's a terrible system.

Can't wait to hear more details. Right now it looks like Vegas was lax but Ottawa stepped over the line.

Moreso its the agents who have resisted this because they are worried about contract details getting leaked.

LeBrun really dove into this thing and has an article on The Athletic about it all

A couple snippets..

According to sources, the Golden Knights’ assertion is that the Senators, on the trade call last July that originally sent Dadonov to Vegas, told the league and the Golden Knights that the player had not submitted his trade list for the 2021-22 season which made his list void for the season.

That actually happens more often than people realize.

But that was not the case here. There’s documentation proving that Dadonov’s representation did file the no-trade list of teams before the July 1 deadline.

As for whether the Senators mistakenly informed the Golden Knights and the league that the no-trade list wasn’t submitted in time, the Senators said they had no comment. A league source also declined comment on that.

And I think one of the reasons for that is that players and agents don’t want the content of the no-trade lists ever to leak out publicly, that it remains a secret which teams players don’t want to get traded to. So that information has been kept in a very small circle.

But judging from just a handful of calls with team executives and player agents the last few days, the number of times some agents have either forgotten to file the no-trade list or clubs forgot to ask for them, it’s actually surprising we haven’t had more problems.

https://theathletic.com/3206099/2022...shared_article

[Tkachukwagon]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1506768089198829573

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Loyal and True

Vegas probably should have followed up with Ottawa, just to be safe, but why would Vegas assume that Ottawa would neglect to provide this evidence within a reasonable time?

Here is where I can offer no benefit of doubt to Vegas. It is not like the deal with Ottawa is something that just happened, and you have had no opportunity to form your own relationship with the player, and are still dependent upon third-party information from which to make decisions. Dadonov has been in Las Vegas for a year. What I cannot fathom is how it so happened that he had been playing with the team, had gone through the playoffs, end-of-season exit interviews, a training camp, practices, team dinners and nothing about his own market preferences had ever come up? That seems like nonsense. How is it that Cap-Friendly knew about Dadanov's NTC, and yet this was news to Vegas AFTER A YEAR?

Sent from my SM-G960W using Tapatalk

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Loyal and True

Like I already said, the contract shows a conditional NTC. The evidence of conditions is a separate document which was not provided nor disclosed by Ottawa. If you are going to do due diligence then you are going to need ALL the documents. You should not have to keep going back to Ottawa to ask if there is anything missing.

But the player knows. It would be useful to, you know, talk to your own god-damned player.

Sent from my SM-G960W using Tapatalk

[Jacks]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

Here is where I can offer no benefit of doubt to Vegas. It is not like the deal with Ottawa is something that just happened, and you have had no opportunity to form your own relationship with the player, and are still dependent upon third-party information from which to make decisions. Dadonov has been in Las Vegas for a year. What I cannot fathom is how it so happened that he had been playing with the team, had gone through the playoffs, end-of-season exit interviews, a training camp, practices, team dinners and nothing about his own market preferences had ever come up? That seems like nonsense. How is it that Cap-Friendly knew about Dadanov's NTC, and yet this was news to Vegas AFTER A YEAR?

It's been said many times. Vegas knew that he had a NTC as part of his contract but they thought it was invalidated.
"Hey Dadonov, we know that you screwed up and didn't submit your no trade list in time but just for giggles who would you have put on your list if you could have?"
Is it really so implausible that they didn't have this conversation?

[SuperMatt18]

In the end even if Ottawa did mess up 8 months ago somehow…it’s still on Vegas for not doing their due diligence.

If you’re acting in good faith with a player on your roster, and are treating players with respect, then you would reach out to the player/agent and say “Ottawa has informed us that you didn’t submit your NTC paperwork in time and the NTC in your contract is void.”

You’d confirm that with the player and his agent and not just take Ottawas word for it. In the end it lies at the fault of Vegas.

[transplant99]

Nope.

[Jacks]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

Here is where I can offer no benefit of doubt to Vegas. It is not like the deal with Ottawa is something that just happened, and you have had no opportunity to form your own relationship with the player, and are still dependent upon third-party information from which to make decisions. Dadonov has been in Las Vegas for a year. What I cannot fathom is how it so happened that he had been playing with the team, had gone through the playoffs, end-of-season exit interviews, a training camp, practices, team dinners and nothing about his own market preferences had ever come up? That seems like nonsense. How is it that Cap-Friendly knew about Dadanov's NTC, and yet this was news to Vegas AFTER A YEAR?

Also, he's only been on Vegas this year, he hasn't been though the playoffs or in exit interviews with them.

[old-fart]

Originally Posted by transplant99

NHL GM's are rivals but also a tight group, and for one to apparently mislead another on something this significant is unprecedented as far as I can tell.

Very true - there are only 31 other potential trade partners out there. Pissing one off, and in such a public way, is bound to limit your options going forward. The only other example of this I can think of is the brilliant Kevin Lowe demanding Comrie repay his signing bonus after apparently striking a deal with the Ducks (for a package that included Corey Perry no less). Lowe severely hamstrung his ability to make any reasonable trades for some time, and I was very sad about it (not actually).

Originally Posted by transplant99

Dorion either blatantly lied, did not know himself who was on the list, or did not disclose all information normally done in transactions. None of which are a good look.

But those aren't the only options... Vegas could have asked if there was an issue with the NTC and Ottawa could have responded "no" - meaning (at least in their minds) "don't worry about it Vegas isn't on the list". There could be multiple permutations of how that conversation went that aren't nefarious.

I'd never buy a used car that I knew had some mechanical issue and just trust that the salesman was being 100% forthright in saying the issue was totally fixed and not to worry about it.

Should Ottawa have sent over the list? Ya, for sure. If they knew they had it, they should have sent it over.

Should Vegas have asked the agent or the player sometime in the following 8 months what the deal was with his 10 team NTC, especially if they were considering moving him to free up cap space? Absolutely. There is zero reason for Vegas to have not made that call to the agent. I can't believe they didn't call the agent anyway to at least say "look, we got ourselves in a bit of cap trouble here and one potential option is moving Dadanov. We really like him and hope we don't have to, but it is one of the potential things we are looking at...". If they didn't even have that common courtesy to one of their players that they just traded for less than a year earlier, they deserve whatever they get.

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by old-fart

Very true - there are only 31 other potential trade partners out there. Pissing one off, and in such a public way, is bound to limit your options going forward. The only other example of this I can think of is the brilliant Kevin Lowe demanding Comrie repay his signing bonus after apparently striking a deal with the Ducks (for a package that included Corey Perry no less). Lowe severely hamstrung his ability to make any reasonable trades for some time, and I was very sad about it (not actually).



But those aren't the only options... Vegas could have asked if there was an issue with the NTC and Ottawa could have responded "no" - meaning (at least in their minds) "don't worry about it Vegas isn't on the list". There could be multiple permutations of how that conversation went that aren't nefarious.

I'd never buy a used car that I knew had some mechanical issue and just trust that the salesman was being 100% forthright in saying the issue was totally fixed and not to worry about it.

Should Ottawa have sent over the list? Ya, for sure. If they knew they had it, they should have sent it over.

Should Vegas have asked the agent or the player sometime in the following 8 months what the deal was with his 10 team NTC, especially if they were considering moving him to free up cap space? Absolutely. There is zero reason for Vegas to have not made that call to the agent. I can't believe they didn't call the agent anyway to at least say "look, we got ourselves in a bit of cap trouble here and one potential option is moving Dadanov. We really like him and hope we don't have to, but it is one of the potential things we are looking at...". If they didn't even have that common courtesy to one of their players that they just traded for less than a year earlier, they deserve whatever they get.

They were lead to believe he did not have a valid NTC any longer because it wasn't sent to Ottawa by the agent.

That has since been disproven.

So in their mind, there was nothing left to be talked about as far as the player or the agent.

[sureLoss]

Originally Posted by old-fart

Very true - there are only 31 other potential trade partners out there. Pissing one off, and in such a public way, is bound to limit your options going forward. The only other example of this I can think of is the brilliant Kevin Lowe demanding Comrie repay his signing bonus after apparently striking a deal with the Ducks (for a package that included Corey Perry no less). Lowe severely hamstrung his ability to make any reasonable trades for some time, and I was very sad about it (not actually).

Oh there was also the time Dean Lombardi was livid about acquiring Colin Fraser from the Oilers in the deal that sent Ryan Smyth back to the Oilers. He claimed the Oilers didn't properly disclose injuries to Brule and Fraser.

https://############.com/2011/07/09/...omment-page-3/

Kings General Manager Dean Lombardi, contending the Edmonton Oilers have twice traded him players who are not able to play, said Friday he will “look at our legal avenues” to get a remedy.

“The bottom line for me, I would have rather invested my money with Bernie Madoff than invest in Edmonton’s word,” Lombardi said.

Lombardi initially agreed to take forward Gilbert Brule in exchange for left wing Ryan Smyth but balked when he said the Kings’ lawyers determined Brule had not been procedurally cleared following a concussion. Unwilling to void the trade because Smyth had asked to leave Los Angeles—and because Smyth’s departure would take a huge burden off the Kings’ salary cap–Lombardi agreed to instead take center Colin Fraser and a seventh-round pick in the 2012 draft.

Lombardi said he knew Fraser had suffered a fractured foot last season but was told Fraser was days away from being cleared.

However, Lombardi said the Kings’ doctors found not only an unhealed fracture but an alarming cyst in Fraser’s foot and a blood disorder. Lombardi said Fraser will require surgery that would keep him out four months. Lombardi also said Tim Leiweke, the chief executive of the Kings’ parent company, AEG, tried to broker a settlement but the Oilers have not responded to the Kings’ requests for further discussions.

“Tim has made several overtures to try and settle this in a fair manner to put the deal back where it’s supposed to and we’ve gotten no response,” Lombardi said. “So the heck with it, we’ll look at our legal avenues right now.

“This kid needs surgery now, which is going to put him out four months. It’s not even close. To be told he’s going to be cleared that Wednesday and now we get him and he’s clearly not cleared and to clear him he’s going to need surgery … and that’s the one [injury] they told me about, let alone the other two. On the heels of Brule? Holy smoke.”

He added, “In my 20 years I’ve never had this happen once, let alone twice in one week. And people used to think maybe I was crazy but when I was scouting for Philly, Edmonton was my favorite city because of the history of the building and the crowds seemed like honest, working-class people. You still had a blue-collar feel at times. And I don’t think this conduct is emblematic of that city at all.”

[old-fart]

Originally Posted by sureLoss

Oh there was also the time Dean Lombardi was livid about acquiring Colin Fraser from the Oilers in the deal that sent Ryan Smyth back to the Oilers. He claimed the Oilers didn't properly disclose injuries to Brule and Fraser.

https://############.com/2011/07/09/...omment-page-3/

LOL - always the Oilers.... joke of a franchise.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

In the end even if Ottawa did mess up 8 months ago somehow…it’s still on Vegas for not doing their due diligence.

If you’re acting in good faith with a player on your roster, and are treating players with respect, then you would reach out to the player/agent and say “Ottawa has informed us that you didn’t submit your NTC paperwork in time and the NTC in your contract is void.”

You’d confirm that with the player and his agent and not just take Ottawas word for it. In the end it lies at the fault of Vegas.

McCrimmon must have an elephant's memory, too. I can understand not fretting much about it when acquiring the player (presumably you're not planning on trading him again immediately...), but to rely 100% on recollection of a 'verbal fact' 9 months later seems really silly.

I suspect every team - especially sellers - do a thorough review in advance of TDL of all moveable assets to specifically avoid nasty surprises like this. We know that it can take a ton of work to get a trade to the finish line.

I would also think a GM would want to pay at least a little lip service to relationship management. I can understand some reluctance to shake the boat unnecessarily, but I'm sure Dadonov and his agent (Maxim Moliver) knew a trade was possible.

"We're not planning to trade your player, but of course you understand we have to explore all possible options right now. I know he didn't submit an NTC - I'm sure he was happy to go anywhere but Ottawa [chuckling]? I can't make any promises, but if there are any teams he desperately wants to avoid I'll do my best to keep it in mind [inner dialogue - no I won't]".

It's a bit of a numbers game - chances are you won't trade him at all or not to one of the few teams that might be mentioned in the convo (thereby building a tiny bit of goodwill/reputation as a good GM to deal with). If you do trade him to an undesirable destination, well that's just business, and the player/agent won't love you either way.

Of course, somewhere in that theoretical conversation Moliver would have interrupted. FWIW he also represents Shesterkin, Radulov, Kuznetsov, and a couple young Russians, including VGK's 3rd round pick in 2019.

[ToraToraTora]

So, I'll admit that I haven't read every single post in this thread, but it seems like a lot of the issue with having a central registry is about players/agents not wanting the teams on the No trade list out there publicly.

Can't the player just file a list with their team, then file the same list in a sealed envelope to the league that only gets opened in the event of a trade? That way everyone is on notice that there is a list, but only the team with rights knows whats on it unless there is a trade.

[Jason14h]

Originally Posted by ToraToraTora

So, I'll admit that I haven't read every single post in this thread, but it seems like a lot of the issue with having a central registry is about players/agents not wanting the teams on the No trade list out there publicly.

Can't the player just file a list with their team, then file the same list in a sealed envelope to the league that only gets opened in the event of a trade? That way everyone is on notice that there is a list, but only the team with rights knows whats on it unless there is a trade.

We are in 2022! Encryption on data exists

[CalgaryFan1988]

Originally Posted by transplant99

They were lead to believe he did not have a valid NTC any longer because it wasn't sent to Ottawa by the agent.

That has since been disproven.

So in their mind, there was nothing left to be talked about as far as the player or the agent.

If this NTC list is casually sent to Ottawa by the agent (and not really documented anywhere else), shouldn't it be the agent's responsibility to ensure that the new team has all of the paperwork to go with the client? Then if the new team has any follow-up questions, they can go back to Ottawa and ask. Seems like a miss by the agent imo.