After careful consideration of all the events regarding the alleged Anaheim tampering case, we are disappointed with the ruling of the SMJHL Head Office and believe it to be unjust. We believe that the original decision was rushed as many of the declarations in the original statement were incorrect, additionally we were not contacted at all before the original decision was made and therefore could not see how SMJHL HO could make an impartial ruling on the matter. We submitted our original appeal to the members of the SHL's head office on 23 January 2020 at 2:21am est. Our appeal was a detailed document explaining many reasons why we disagreed with the SMJHL HO's decision to punish the Anaheim Outlaws for the alleged tampering case and yet despite the size of the document and the complexity of the issues at hand, SMJHL HO made a ruling on the appeal less than 12 hours later, once again without any communication to Anaheim. Upon reading the details of the appeal response, the management of the Anaheim Outlaws strongly believes that the SMJHL's Head Office did not give their appeal fair consideration and rather acted in bad faith, twisting some of the facts laid out in the appeal in an attempt to try to justify their original decision.
We will start with this claim made by SMJHL HO in their appeal ruling.
Quote: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.
SMJHL HO claims that Anaheim tampered with the player beyond a shadow of a doubt yet none of the evidence presented in the thread actually backs up HO's claim to this. The screenshot that the SMJHL HO refers to in their explanation of the tampering charge was a screenshot from a conversation in Anaheim's management which was submitted in the appeal document, this screenshot was taken from the document and posted publicly out of context in what Anaheim can only assume to be a bad faith attempt by HO to justify their bad decision without public backlash. HO used this screenshot to make the following claim in their appeal response. "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." Anaheim takes issue with this as it is a misrepresentation of the facts provided by Anaheim in Section 1 of their appeal where Anaheim management stated that they did in fact reach out to the player in question but that they only reached out to enquire about the player's future activity as they considered a trade for him. Another significant part about this is that Anaheim made clear in their appeal that they only considered trade talks for the player and hadn't actually approached St. Louis and so the HO's claim that Anaheim proposed trade talks but they never actually occurred can therefore only confirm that HO either did not properly understand some details in Anaheim's appeal, or flat out chose to ignore them. Additionally, the tampering rules laid out in the SHL's rulebook make it clear that in order for a communication to be considered tampering there must be a persuasion of the player to join the team in question. Anaheim did no such thing and HO has no evidence of such a thing because Anaheim at no point asked the player to request a trade, nor did they ask the player to request to be released, nor did the ask the player to facilitate any sort of move to Anaheim. Anaheim therefore refutes the SMJHL Head Office's claim that they are guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt of tampering in this instance.
Nonetheless we will proceed under HO's assumption that Anaheim was guilty. Section 2 of Anaheim's appeal to SMJHL HO highlighted the fact that the SMJHL rulebook doesn't have any actual rules against tampering. They also included in this section a screenshot of a prior conversation where the SMJHL Commissioner informed Anaheim's management that the SMJHL's rulebook is freestanding and therefore anything important enough to be enforced in the SMJHL would be included in their rulebook again, meaning that the SMJHL could not rule on matters in the SHL's rulebook and therefore even under HO's assumption of tampering, there is no legal basis for HO to punish Anaheim for tampering. So why then was Anaheim punished? We can look at the following claim made in the SMJHL HO's appeal response.
Quote: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
Code:
All other teams may sign a released player after approval on a first-come-first-serve basis (inactive) or by choice (active).
After being proved to be blatantly wrong on the tampering charge, HO passed the buck of the punishment on to this rule from their own rulebook. Anaheim's management does in fact admit to having broken this rule but this was once again a topic brought up by Anaheim in their appeal. The rule in question is practically obsolete as there is no precedence of this rule ever being followed or enforced in the SMJHL despite being broken every off season including by two other SMJHL teams in this off season. No SMJHL GMs are even aware of the rule as it is legitimately a rule with absolutely zero precedence of ever having been enforced by the HO, the rule itself is also counter intuitive and so it is not something that most GMs would think to look for before signing a player during the off season signing period in which they build their rosters. Why then is Anaheim being singled out by SMJHL's HO for breaking a rule that nobody has ever been punished for before, including the two other teams who broke the rule in question this off season?
In fairness, Anaheim's management did break the rule in question which would make the signing of Blake Faux an illegal signing at that point in time. Even with no precedence if SMJHL HO decided that they wanted to start enforcing that rule this off season without warning it would be within their power to punish Anaheim. The only issue is that the punishment levied by the SMJHL HO resembles what an SHL tampering punishment would look like. As seen in a recent punishment levied by SMJHL HO for an illegal signing, the punishment for such an infraction is much less severe than the punishment given to Anaheim. Anaheim's management can therefore only conclude that this rule was not SMJHL HO's main point of concern but rather a technicality used by HO in order to not have to admit that they made a mistake on the tampering charge.
Finally, in the appeal response, the SMJHL Commissioner made the following claim about the SMJHL HO:
Quote: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.
If this is in fact the job of the SMJHL HO then why did they not follow the letter of the law in their original punishment? Why are they trying to harm the ability of Anaheim's players to have a good time in order for them to save their face to the SHL's public? Why are they targeting a team who managed to promote player retention by returning an inactive member to the site and possibly making an active, contributing member out of him? Anaheim cannot stress enough that they believe they are being unfairly treated in this matter. Anaheim's management believes that it has given ample reasons in this statement to show that the SMJHL HO did not give Anaheim a fair appeal and that the appeal process was conducted in bad faith in order for HO to justify their mistake and gain the public support they never had, we would therefore like to respectfully call on the SHL Head Office as well as the SHL Owners to review the case in question and assure that the members of their user base associated with Anaheim and its management are treated fairly and justly. Please @Eggy216, @SDCore, @Tomasnz, @Baelor Swift, @Fordyford, @ArGarBarGar, @Leafs4ever and @teztify let us send our appeal to SHL HO and plead our case to a higher office in the league in order to assure that we are treated fairly and that any mistake that may have been made in the original decision can be properly corrected. We are calling on cooler heads to prevail and for the league to the right thing in a case in which we strongly believe that the SMJHL HO did not care about getting it right.
Thank you,
BDonini and the management team of the Anaheim Outlaws
Tbh your screenshot from the 10th makes it look like you reached out to him about being active if he was on your team which is the tampering part. You could post screenshots of your convo from there to disprove this
Based on my argument here, I don't think that this is a case of tampering at all and at worst is a case of an illegal signing due to the GM tasks rule (which to be completely honest, I wasn't fully aware of before and I've heard hasn't been followed to the letter in the past). In that case, the only suitable consequences would be either to not let Alex sign with ANA or docking pay/cap space from ANA. HO states that one of their primary goals is apparently player retention, so I don't see how allowing Alex not to sign with ANA (when that's the only reason he's active) would be conducive to obtaining that objective. Some kind of pay/cap penalty then would be the most appropriate if there is to be some kind of sanction.
This is my somewhat qualified opinion and is subject to change at any time without notice.
01-23-2020, 06:36 PM(This post was last modified: 01-23-2020, 06:38 PM by Fordyford.)
Im not gonna comment on what SHL HO will or will not do, although I'm sure I can say that the matter is being discussed in HO (although I have no idea what the outcome will be.)
Either way, I'm unlikely to be dealing with the appeals process in depth as I'm not offering a re-application to Head Office, so won't be there for much longer.
Edit: Re: appeals, the site's appeal system is, IMO, in a bad place at the minute, due to the absence of owners. As it is, I'd like to see another system, but won't be effecting it.
01-23-2020, 06:36 PMFordyford Wrote: Im not gonna comment on what SHL HO will or will not do, although I'm sure I can say that the matter is being discussed in HO (although I have no idea what the outcome will be.)
Either way, I'm unlikely to be dealing with the appeals process in depth as I'm not offering a re-application to Head Office, so won't be there for much longer.
Edit: Re: appeals, the site's appeal system is, IMO, in a bad place at the minute, due to the absence of owners. As it is, I'd like to see another system, but won't be effecting it.
Thanks for the transparency, it's very much appreciated.
Quote:appeal where Anaheim management stated that they did in fact reach out to the player in question but that they only reached out to enquire about the player's future activity as they considered a trade for him.
I only made it this far (I will continue reading), but I always thought you had to ask for permission from the other GM before contacting a player in connection with a potential trade?
01-23-2020, 06:46 PMJKortesi81 Wrote: I said this @ztevans earlier but I’ll add @SDCore and @Eggy216 and @Zoone16 and whoever else has been in HO when I’ve been a GM.
Quote:appeal where Anaheim management stated that they did in fact reach out to the player in question but that they only reached out to enquire about the player's future activity as they considered a trade for him.
I only made it this far (I will continue reading), but I always thought you had to ask for permission from the other GM before contacting a player in connection with a potential trade?
I mean, you can ask someone “hey are you gonna be active on SHL?” without asking for permission, and it isn’t asking them to join your team so it isn’t tampering either
I am on record for hating our tampering rules. But given all this I am mostly annoyed that you could have approached Stl for a trade.
Maybe you did and they played hard ball over a player they were going to cut anyway..
Agree the appeals process doesn’t seem ideal. But by the sounds of it you are the one that presented evidence of contact with another team’s player without their GMs permission (unless you had that?.... maybe the st.louis GM can do us all a solid here and say that they gave said permission?)
My big issue with all this is where is the victim? Is it st.louis.. not really? But maybe?
Sorry @BDonini I think this is a rough situation that I don’t see many easy outs of for your team or smjhl Ho..
The above is not super helpful I know but figured I would add another perspective to all this.
01-23-2020, 06:58 PMTomasnz Wrote: I am on record for hating our tampering rules. But given all this I am mostly annoyed that you could have approached Stl for a trade.
Maybe you did and they played hard ball over a player they were going to cut anyway..
Agree the appeals process doesn’t seem ideal. But by the sounds of it you are the one that presented evidence of contact with another team’s player without their GMs permission (unless you had that?.... maybe the st.louis GM can do us all a solid here and say that they gave said permission?)
My big issue with all this is where is the victim? Is it st.louis.. not really? But maybe?
Sorry @BDonini I think this is a rough situation that I don’t see many easy outs of for your team or smjhl Ho..
The above is not super helpful I know but figured I would add another perspective to all this.
I think the situation as a whole is really messy and there we’re definitely missteps on Anaheim’s part, but while there is back and forth dialogue on what went wrong, the simple fact of the matter is that this isn’t tampering. He inquired the player in question about what their activity on the SHL would be and made no attempts to sway the player to his team. We can ALL agree the clear fault was the signing being illegal, as St. Louis HAD cut the player but the GM tasks weren’t finalized so ANA signed him too early. There is a precedent for that and this punishment simply isn’t it. This isn’t tampering, and it really comes across as SMJHL levying a gigantic, crippling punishment just because they can. The correct, precedent-driven punishment should be:
- ANA can’t sign free agents
- Signing is revoked, player can sign anywhere but ANA
- POTENTIALLY forfeiture of S52 GM pay
To throw a tampering punishment where ANA loses 6mil in cap space over 2 seasons AND 2 major picks, in addition to all that, is insane. This isn’t tampering, it’s being punished that way because people in leadership roles on this site get off at swinging the largest punishment possible.
**First GM in SMJHL history to win 3 Four Star Cups back-to-back-to-back**
01-23-2020, 06:58 PMTomasnz Wrote: I am on record for hating our tampering rules. But given all this I am mostly annoyed that you could have approached Stl for a trade.
Maybe you did and they played hard ball over a player they were going to cut anyway..
Agree the appeals process doesn’t seem ideal. But by the sounds of it you are the one that presented evidence of contact with another team’s player without their GMs permission (unless you had that?.... maybe the st.louis GM can do us all a solid here and say that they gave said permission?)
My big issue with all this is where is the victim? Is it st.louis.. not really? But maybe?
Sorry @BDonini I think this is a rough situation that I don’t see many easy outs of for your team or smjhl Ho..
The above is not super helpful I know but figured I would add another perspective to all this.
We did not approach STL for a trade immediately as we wanted to wait to see if we would fill our defense through the draft. I've said over and over again that the trade was just an idea at the time and that we didn't plan to offer any deal until this week as we finalized our roster. Regardless of whether people interpret what happened as tampering or not (personally we didn't or we obviously wouldn't have done it), we have BW on record saying that her HO can't enforce SHL rulebook rules unless they're explicitly stated in the SMJHL rulebook which the tampering rule isn't.
All I'm really asking is for SHL HO to take this media post and the appeal that I sent to SMJHL HO and conduct their own review of the case based on everything we have to say. From the wording of the SMJHL's response we just don't think our appeal was given a fair look.
I generally stay out of these 99.9 % of the time… I’m not going to comment on what I think an appropriate ruling should be due to my inherent biases. But as someone who is a former SMJHL Head Commissioner, former SHL Advisor (Head Office Member), and current IIHF Commissioner, I do want to voice serious concern in regards to how this has been handled.
It took me a decent amount of time to go through the evidence laid out by the SMJHL HO as well as the extensive appeal made by BDonini which is several pages long to fully grasp the situation. After doing this, I have two large concerns regarding the process utilized by the SMJHL HO.
1) Reaching a verdict without talking to all parties involved: For me it is hard to fathom that an initial ruling was made without reaching out to all parties involved for information. Imagine a judge rendering a verdict on a case before the defendant has had a chance to present their evidence.
2) Time before a decision was made both initially and on the appeal: The SMJHL HO says that the initial decision was made in “10-12 hours”. The time between BDonini’s appeal and the SMJHL HO’s response was less than 12 hours (I imagine many of these hours were probably spent sleeping for North American members of the HO). Like I said, it took me a good amount of time to read through all the information available. It is hard for me to fathom that a good review of BDonini’s appeal was done by all members of the SMJHL HO within this time period, let alone a productive discussion on the points he raised.
I sincerely hope that going forward, these issues can be rectified for any future punishment situations that may arise.
BDonini
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