The first day of the NHL Board of Governors meeting has started with some dramatics. According to TSN’s Pierre LeBrun, the owner of the Ottawa Senators, Michael Andlauer, has accused the New York Rangers of ’soft-tampering’.
It’s safe to say there’s now a Brady Tkachuk-sized wedge between the two organizations. Andlauer’s statement was regarding a report from Larry Brooks of the New York Post indicating the Rangers were aggressively pursuing Tkachuk in a trade with the Senators.
Nothing indicates that Brooks’ report came from a leak within the Rangers organization but the Senators organization believes it did. Andlauer told LeBrun that Ottawa hasn’t discussed Tkachuk with any team and he hopes he will be the team’s leader for many years.
The accusation is understandably heavy and will likely be discussed at the Board of Governors meeting. Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff reports the Rangers responded to the accusation by saying, “This is an irresponsible accusation and we defer to the Commissioner’s office.”
It’s a situation the league will likely investigate given its updated policies on tampering. The league was reportedly displeased with the number of contracts preemptively announced before free agency began on July 1st and sent a memo to all 32 teams.
Any team caught tampering could face fines as large as $5MM, lose draft capital, or even have contracts voided (although that wouldn’t apply in this scenario) should they be caught tampering. The last time a team has been charged with tampering by the league came back in 2016 when former-general manager for the Vancouver Canucks, Jim Benning, made public comments regarding P.K. Subban and Steven Stamkos which resulted in a $50K fine.