VGK QUIET AT THE TRADE DEADLINE
By Emmet Kenney
The Vegas Golden Knights seemed to be having their first quiet trade deadline in team history until late Monday afternoon.
The Golden Knights announced a trade with the Anaheim Ducks sending Evgenii Dadonov and a conditional 2024 2nd round pick for John Moore and Ryan Kessler. On the surface, this seems like a good trade for the Golden Knights as it does help out with the salary cap issue by getting rid of Dadonov’s $5 million contract, but this trade has a hidden issue the Golden Knights did not know about.
When Dadonov was traded from the Senators to the Golden Knights in the summer, it was not revealed to the Golden Knights that in Dadonov’s trade clause that he had a list of teams that he would not be allowed to be traded to unless he approved of it and the Anaheim Ducks were one of the teams on that list. Now the Knights have run into the issue that they announced this trade and agreed upon it with the Ducks, but it might not be able to go through because of the no-trade clause for Dadonov.
The League Office is now working on a solution for the trade and the most probable outcome of this is the fact that the trade will just be terminated and the Knights keep Dadonov and their 2nd round pick. This is a very uncommon thing to happen in the NHL and something to keep an eye on these next few days to see the outcomes of this mess that could have easily been avoided by every team involved if the communication was there from the Senators and Dadonov’s agent. So what seemed like it was going to be a very calm trade deadline day for the Golden Knights for the 1st time in team history, has now turned into a trade disaster that is very uncommon.