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***BadWolf*** · 01-23-2020, 01:35 PM

First of all I’d like to say thank you for those individuals who put a lot of time and effort into working this problem as it happened and towards resolving it in a reasonable amount of time. It’s not easy, the jobs that any of us do for this league and players in it, and we all understand that.

We’d like to address the punishment surrounding the situation involving Anaheim and BDonini. As of last evening, about 2 hours after the initial punishment, he had filed his appeal with us. We would like to thank him for working diligently to do so and we in the SMJHL HO respect the time and effort he has put in for his team since joining it in a management manner.

There are several points of contention we will be hitting on based on this, so please allow us to explain to the best of our ability. I understand many of the member-base of the site may have come to their own conclusions based around this matter, and we would like to clear it up.

First of all, BDonini does admit that he contacted the player prior to the signing to ANA, which was illegal due to rule III.a.6 stating

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All other teams may sign a released player after approval on a first-come-first-serve basis (inactive) or by choice (active).

It’s important to note however that the player would not have been considered “released after approval” until the finalization of SMJHL GM tasks, which occurred at 11:59PM on 1/22/20. After which, HO will approve the teams rosters and they turn green on a forum the GMs can see. Once the team is green, their FAs are "released after approval". Therefore, the player was still on the roster for St Louis until that time and date, despite their intention to cut them.

Next, we have evidence of BDonini speaking about getting this player to join Anaheim’s roster as far back as the 10th of January, which would be well before the SMJHL draft and thus, the player would have been officially still on St Louis’ roster as free agency had not officially started throughout the league. He also mentions that the player would be updating again if they joined Anaheim, which does prove that they two were in contact prior to this point already. He also speaks of trading for that player, but we have been informed by the management team in St Louis that at no time were they contacted to make a deal to acquire the player, nor were they aware of Anaheim’s interest in acquiring him by any means.

Continuing on, BDonini states that the tampering rule in question is as follows

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Tampering is defined as approaching a player under contract with another team outside of the public forums, with the purpose of persuading them to join your team

He denies did this. However, he did contact the player outside of the public forums with the purpose of having them join Anaheim as early as the 10th of January. Additionally, The fact that the proposed trade talks he mentions in the same piece of evidence never occurred also adds to this point.

Finally, Bdonini also mentions that “The technicality that the ruling is based off is based off a rule that has never been followed or enforced before, that is counter intuitive and which has been broken by two other teams this off season without punishment.” In this case, the SMJHL HO sides with BDonini. The rule itself is badly written and worded and sadly, has not been enforced properly to this point due to several factors, many of which revolve around the confusion that surrounds some aspects of the SMJHL rulebook. We understand that being a GM in this league is hard, and I assure you having a job in SMJHL HO is no cake walk either. It’s our job, however, to follow the letter of the law, have a good time, promote player retention, and overall just be good people to one another. However we do have to address the rule as it was written at the time of the infraction.

Many have stated that this punishment hurts the juniors teams. The 6 million cap fine in one year does hurt the new players as a team can approach a cap level where they cannot field all send downs and new rookies under the cap, based off send down cap hit rules. We have adjusted this below. However, HO believes that apart from cases such as this where large cap fines are in play and the cap level gets below a point where it is reasonable to have all rookies and send downs under reasonable contracts, these types of arguments are invalid. The SMJHL HO roster bonus was put in place for events such as cap fines, allowing teams to sign rookies to 1M cap hits and getting the rookie enough money in their bank for a full season of SMJHL training. Apart from alleged gross cap fines, these arguments will no longer be taken into consideration.

With all of this now in the open, the SMJHL HO rules on the appeal by Anaheim and BDonini as follows:

The punishment of tampering will be upheld. It’s beyond a shadow of a doubt for us based on all of the evidence (all shown below) and factors involved that Anaheim and BDonini did in fact tamper to get this player.

However, that being said, the rule itself that caused this to become such an issue is also a problem. We acknowledge this in HO and will work towards clearing this up for the future. It’s a shame that an event such as this one has gotten us here but we can look towards the future of the league and teams by doing so as well.

The punishment for BDonini an Anaheim will be reduced and changed to:

Loss of S53 1st round pick
Loss of S54 2nd round pick
5% cap hit for S53 and S54 (rounded the the nearest whole number, for S53 this is 3 million)
AlexF will not be able to resign with ANA for S52
Anaheim will have no free agent restrictions placed against them for season 52 beyond the inability to claim AlexF on their roster.
Loss of GM pay for BDonini.

We thank you for your time, and we officially consider the matter closed.

All images have been edited to remove tells of where they came from and who was in the conversations besides the party in question.
[Image: image0_edited.jpg]

BDonini · 01-23-2020, 01:51 PM

Honestly I was hoping that HO would take my appeal seriously but this is just more distortion of the actual events to cover your asses. I'm going to have to legitimately consider taking my appeal publicly as half of it wasn't even addressed in this response.

Wallflower · 01-23-2020, 01:55 PM

yes take it publicly

nykonax · 01-23-2020, 02:15 PM

so saying "hey lets trade for this guy he might be a good addition" is tampering now?

TnlAstatine · 01-23-2020, 02:15 PM

PUBLIC OUTRAGE

***Chevy*** · 01-23-2020, 02:23 PM

01-23-2020, 01:55 PMWallflower Wrote: yes take it publicly

No. I wouldn’t.

There’s already a division blooming of the “we said” vs “they said” mentality, and regardless of what posting publicly can or can’t prove, doing so may only further push a wedge into that divide to spread it further.

Whether it was just Home Office, just Donini or both...someone messed up.

Pushing this any farther, with and without pitchforking, is just going to put a stain on the league and on Anaheim.

Seasons down the road, people won’t likely remember exactly the details of what was done (or they might, I can’t predict that), but they will definitely remember how the situation was handled on both sides.

The verdict by the AHJ (authority having jurisdiction) found something that broke a rule based on information they had, and they acted upon it. An appeal was given, and the AHJ ruled on that as well, even going so far as to amend their prior actions.

Regardless of how everyone FEELS, what’s done is done and we need to move on from this unfortunate distraction and get back to what we do best: < sarcasm>Blame Hamilton</ sarcasm>

Play Sim Hockey.

Zombiewolf · 01-23-2020, 02:24 PM

Still waiting on the proof of tampering

Thank you Brandon, Fish, GeckoeyGecko, Karey, Kit, takethehorizon, and Ragnar for the sigs!
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nour · 01-23-2020, 02:24 PM

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**First GM in SMJHL history to win 3 Four Star Cups back-to-back-to-back**

***WannabeFinn*** · 01-23-2020, 02:32 PM

Why did you censor names lol

nour · 01-23-2020, 02:32 PM

not leavin this thread till i make it onto a forum team

**First GM in SMJHL history to win 3 Four Star Cups back-to-back-to-back**

Samsung virtual assistant · 01-23-2020, 02:33 PM

Tbh the cap is high enough with the rookie bonus from HO so a 6 mil fine would still be ok IMO.

Still not saying i like the tampering punishments, just saying it as a general thought.