NHL News: The Ottawa Senators Fire Pierre Dorion, Forfeit a First-Round Draft Pick

Elliotte Friedman: The Ottawa Senators are relieving general manager Pierre Dorion of his duties.

TSN 1200: Senators President of Hockey Operations Steve Staios will be their interim GM.

NHL Public Relations: The NHL’s ruling on the Ottawa Senators, Evgenii Dadonov situation.

“The National Hockey League today announced that the Ottawa Senators will forfeit a first-round draft pick for their role in the July 2021 trade of Player 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.

Ottawa will forfeit its first-round draft pick in one of the 2024, 2025 or 2026 Drafts. The determination as to which pick will be forfeited will be made by Ottawa within 24 hours of the conclusion of the Draft Lottery for that year. The League will have no further comment on the matter.”

Chris Johnston: Senators new owner Michael Andlauer said  “two teams wanted a pound of flesh.”

Sports 590 The FAN: Eric Francis and Jeff Marek on the punishment handed down the Ottawa Senators.

** NHLRumors.com transcription

Marek: “Eric Francis joins me here from sportsnet.ca. Supposed to be talking initially here about the Calgary Flames but if you have a thought on the Dadonov situation here and the punishment for this. Which is a first-round draft pick which is an absolute whopper of a punishment.

Hey, Michael Andlauer, thanks for the thanks for the $900 million for the team. Now you’re going to surrender a first-round draft pick for an indiscretion that happened before you bought the squad.

What do you think about that one Eric Francis?”

Francis: “Yeah, that harsh. I heard you and Elliot talked about it on your latest podcast, but you know, I think the belief was, well they wouldn’t really do that to a new owner  would they? A first-round draft pick but that’s, that’s pretty harsh.

And you know, it does speak to the fact that, you know, like there’s, there’s a cause and effect to everything you we do, and when you make a mistake like that, you know, it really affected the Golden Knights and you know, and the Golden Knights were the ones who you know, kind of my gonna say they pursued this but I think they wanted this cleared up too.

So, it’s harsh, no question about it. But, but you know, kind of like the, I’m not trying to connect dots here, but kind of like the Rasmus Andersson thing when he was trying in vain to get his suspension reduced from four games to three. You know, the commissioner said, I can’t take into account the fact that the fourth game happens to be the outdoor game. Like the punishment is the punishment no matter, you know, what the situation is.

And in this, it’s the same sort of thing in this case, just because you have a new owner I’m not going to go a little easier on you. Although, I think people in Ottawa we’re certainly hoping they would.”