The NHL has announced that the Ottawa Senators will forfeit a first-round draft pick for their role in the July 2021 trade of Evgenii Dadonov from the Senators to the Vegas Golden Knights and the subsequent, invalidated March 2022 Dadonov trade between the Golden Knights and the Anaheim Ducks.
According to the league’s announcement, the Senators will have 24 hours after the conclusion of the NHL Draft lottery to determine if they will surrender their first-round pick in that given year, and they will be able to choose between giving up a pick in either the 2024, 2025, or 2026 drafts.
The Vegas Golden Knights issued a statement regarding the Senators’ punishment, stating:
We appreciate the league’s diligence on this matter and respect the decision. The club will have no further comment.
This issue originates from 2021, when the Golden Knights acquired Dadonov from Ottawa. No official statement regarding how exactly the Senators mishandled that trade has been released, but The Athletic’s Jesse Granger writes on X that the issue relates to the Senators’ handling of the no-trade list in Dadonov’s contract. 
While the league did not elaborate on any specifics as to what the Senators did that merited such a punishment, the fact that a first-round pick has been docked sends a signal that the league deemed serious punishment in order for the Senators.
Per the league’s statement, the NHL nor any of the involved clubs will comment further on this matter, meaning no official explanation of the reasons for this punishment will come.
Thankfully, reporting from Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch sheds some light on the situation. Garrioch reported that today’s punishment has come “as a result of general manager Pierre Dorion giving the Knights the wrong information about the existence of Dadonov’s 10-team ‘no move’ clause.”
The Golden Knights, seemingly believing that Dadonov did not possess no-trade protection, attempted to trade the player to the Anaheim Ducks in a move that was eventually vetoed by the league.
Garrioch added: “The Knights were under the impression that Dadonov hadn’t entered a 10-team no-trade list before the 2021-22 campaign so he no longer had one.”
This appears to have been an issue for Golden Knights management, as Garrioch cites a source who said: “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,” a move that resulted in today’s punishment.
Garrioch also laid out the Senators’ argument in defense of their actions, stating that at the time of the trade, the Senators “argued that Vegas had the contract on its books for eight months” and had not looked “at the details” of the contract. While it’s true that the Golden Knights had employed Dadonov for quite a bit of time before the trade, it seems this argument was not sufficient to stave off punishment from the league.
This reported chain of events has not been officially confirmed, and the league’s statement today makes clear that no official confirmation is set to come. But regardless of what exactly happened in Ottawa to merit this kind of punishment, the reality the Senators now face is that they have lost a key asset for their future.
Their right to choose which draft pick they surrender does offer them some crucial flexibility in the matter, especially if the team misses the playoffs this season and ends up in the draft lottery. Just a few years after the Senators had to watch the Colorado Avalanche draft Bowen Byram fourth-overall with a draft pick that once belonged to them, the Senators will not want a repeat of that situation.
Photos courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Way to go, GMPD.
Does LAV get punished? Or is OTT just stupid?
Feel like the player agent should also be accountable here…but whatever
This is why nobody takes the NHL seriously. Sens lose a 1st for botching a no-trade list but Blackhawks lose nothing for letting an employee s assault Beach the cover it up.
Their punishment should have been at least mass firings and lifetime bans of many of upper management, significant fines that would actually make the team feel it, AND the loss of multiple 1st round draft picks. So no Bedard. Once they won the draft lottery ( another NHL joke ) the Blackhawks recouped a million times more from their petty fine in season tickets and merchandising.
Bedard was like 5 years old when this all happened, stop crying wuss XD
Beaded being 5 has NOTHING to do with this…so stop acting like a 5 year old yourself!
I don’t care about Bedard. A team loses a 1st because Dadanov didn’t want to go to Anaheim but Blackhawks traumatize a guy for life and no pick loss? lmao
As well as not informing the Universities and high schools that Aldrich was a deviant and would eventually continue his sexual assaults on other young men and children.
Fu(k Brad Aldrich, the Blackhawks, and the people that support them.
idk who “Beaded” is, you spell like a 5 year old
cry
No One supports Aldrich, perhaps the liberals do given a good chunk of them support pedophilia as a sexuality, they probably support r@p3 too if its a gay guy like Aldrich
I feel like the punishment is pretty watered down if they’re allowed to pick which year they give the pick up
This is a joke u tell how this could happen these days and Vegas not knowing. Nothing about Vegas using the system all the time with keeping guys out of the lineup til the playoffs come along to get under the cap.
Unprofessional and unacceptable!
Chicago?
Meanwhile the Hawks are gifted Bedard for a huge sexual assault cover up.
Bedard was 5 at the time, stop crying kid XD
Being 5 has NOTHING to do with this so stop!
cry
So if VGK had the contract in their possession for 8 months, how could they allow anything Dorian said to mislead them?
I am certainly no expert and have never read through the complexities of an NHL contract, but the league taking away a first round pick makes it feel like maybe the Sens didn’t hand over the entirety of relevant information when the initial trade went down. Either way, I have to agree with @pawtucket here. The agent should have had some level of involvement in both the VGK trade and the ANA trade and therefore be held partially responsible for how it all turned out.
if dadonov didn’t have Vegas on his no trade list why would the agent be involved? and it’s likely the agent who did get involved when LV and Ana agreed to a deal stating his client has a no trade list that includes the ducks
But the league itself has to put its stamp of “OK” on every trade that is made, so why is it not partially their fault for apparently ignoring (or not confirming) Dadonov’s NTC in the original OTT->VGK trade? Fine, give OTT a slap on the wrist, but then spank yourself for having such a shoddy oversight process.
Totally agree. The league got embarrassed once again, because they didn’t do their job once a trade was registered with them, and then go heavy handed because of it. If they did their job properly the trade would have been terminated with the Sens and Knights, and the rest of the teams would be in the know as well.
completely.
plus Vegas saying not all info was handed over… ok sure but you wouldn’t care except you had a deal in place with ana and got caught.
As usual Bettman handing out punishment unfairly to Canadian markets while us markets are gifted
Should have just covered up and protected a years long sexual assault scandal instead. This league sure is galaxy brained.
The punishment is too severe, the Knights and the league are also involved and responsible of this situation.
For a group of hockey fans, the tears are flowing mightily in this thread
fr maybe Hockey isn’t for everyone XD