How 'Dadonov-Gate' happened and how to prevent it going forward

When it comes to paperwork and detailed record keeping, compliance with the NHL collective bargaining agreement can be more onerous than complying with the income tax rules of the IRS or CRA. Every move a team makes is part of a complicated disclosure process that allows the NHL to account for the whereabouts of each player and each dollar of cap space at all times.

Sending a player to (or recalling a player from) the AHL? You need to file a separate player transfer form for each affected player by the daily deadline, or the player can’t move up or down. Putting a player on IR? You need to file an injured reserve form signed by the team management, the team doctor and the player before the roster spot can be filled with a replacement. Signing a new player to a contract? You need to file the contract and wait for it to be reviewed and approved before the player becomes eligible. There is even a form to be signed by the team’s medical director and submitted any time the player sees team medical personnel about an injury or illness, even if the player does not miss a single shift.

All of this makes the current Evgenii Dadonov situation very curious. In a league where every transaction is tightly regulated and reviewed, how did we get here?

For background, Dadonov signed a three-year contract with the Ottawa Senators on Oct. 15, 2020, as a free agent. As part of his deal, Dadonov was granted the right to provide the team with a list designating 10 teams to which he would not accept a trade. Without knowing the specific wording of his contract, the presumption is that it required him to submit a list each season before a July 1 submission deadline. Reports have suggested he provided the Senators with that list on June 30, 2021, and that it named the Anaheim Ducks as one of the 10 teams.

On July 28, 2021, Dadonov was traded by Ottawa to the Vegas Golden Knights, a permissible trade because Vegas was not on his no-trade list. As part of the trade call to approve that transaction, the NHL would have required Ottawa to produce written proof that Vegas was not named on Dadonov’s no-trade list or, alternatively, a written consent from Dadonov agreeing to the trade. Since the trade was approved, Ottawa must have provided the list. Usual practice would have been for Ottawa to forward a copy of the list to the Knights, as it would apply going forward for the balance of the term of Dadonov’s contract.

Fast-forward to this past Monday, when Vegas attempted to trade Dadonov to the Ducks in exchange for John Moore and the contract of Ryan Kesler, a deal the Golden Knights were making to allow them to use Kesler’s LTIR space in lieu of Dadonov’s cap hit to help them activate one or more of their injured players. Did Vegas never get the list from Ottawa? Did it just forget Dadonov had no-trade protection? Was Vegas led to believe Dadonov hadn’t submitted his list on time and that his rights had been voided? Did Vegas somehow mistakenly believe Anaheim was not on his list?

The answers to these questions will be known soon enough as the NHL completes its investigation into what transpired. In the meantime, the players remain on their original rosters, and the Golden Knights are precariously without sufficient cap space to activate a player like Alec Martinez, due back from injury soon, let alone Mark Stone.

The question remains, however, about how this could happen in a league with very tight controls that generally work so smoothly. Credit where it’s due: The NHL staffers responsible for administering the salary-cap system and the daily transactions are a smart and tireless group of professionals that know the rules inside and out and regularly bail the teams out of jams.

In this case, the NHL staff wasn’t able to bail Vegas out of a jam because the jam couldn’t have been known by staff until the situation was presented on the trade call between Vegas and Anaheim. You see, unlike every other aspect of a player’s status, the identities of the teams on a player’s no-trade list are not required to be filed with the league. This is an item entirely left to the clubs to manage, and only when a trade is completed does the proof need to be submitted.

I suppose it makes sense that the NHL Players’ Association would not want a player’s list to be sent to a central location and posted for the world to see. Players would be made into villains by the cities identified on their lists, and it would be a bigger mess than we are seeing now.

However, if the lists were in fact sent to the league, on a confidential basis, the league could distribute a reminder or some other documentation to GMs making it less likely for this type of miss to occur. For example, the league sends out detailed RFA information so each team understands what its qualifying offers need to be to retain a player’s rights. The league even offers to review each team’s qualifying offers in draft form, just to make sure teams don’t screw them up. Such hand-holding shouldn’t be necessary, but it helps the league by limiting embarrassing situations. 

As we await a decision in the Dadonov case, I guess even more hand-holding was necessary.