Significant turnaround in Peter Dorion’s departure in Ottawa in brutal press conference
What a mess…
HockeyFeed
On Wednesday, the Ottawa Senators parted ways with general manager Pierre Dorion and everyone thought he had been fired. That’s because earlier today, the NHL announced that that the Senators have to forfeit a first-round pick as a result of punishment stemming from their 2021 trade that sent Evgenii Dadonov to the Vegas Golden Knights and subsequent, invalidated trade that would have sent the forward to the Anaheim Ducks in March 2022. Dorion was held accountable and the Senators announced a 3h15PMET press conference in which it was confirmed that Dorion was out, though he instead has officially resigned.
Senators president of hockey operations Steve Staios will take over as interim general manager for the time being despite pressing rumours that Ottawa could hire Peter Chiarelli as potential replacement.
New owner Michael Andlauer did not hold back in his press conference when reacting to the sanction from the Dadonov aborted trade.
“As a member of this league, we have to be held accountable for our actions.
“The 73 page report that the NHL shared with me this week showed that the actions were negligent in nature by our hockey club. This set off events that embarrassed the league and pissed off two hockey clubs.”
He added that this whole trade situation leading to the league’s punishment was added to an already mess in which the Sens complicated their cap space on their own that led to restricted free agent forward Shane Pinto remaining unsigned into the season. Last week, Pinto was subsequently suspended 41 games sports betting activity. The report on Dadonov was the last straw for Dorion.
“I am looking forward to less phone calls from the NHL.”
Andlauer does not understand why it took the league so long to render a decision on the Dadonov mess, but will deal with it when choosing whether to forfeit that first round pick in 2024, 2025 or 2026.
“Why I inherited this is beyond me. There is no reason for it to last that long.”
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