11-04-2021, 10:09 AMRomanesEuntDomus Wrote: So there is nothing in the rulebook here that the team can't be punished then. I mean I get your point of course and our two approaches here reflect the two different philosophies you can have towards such a ruleset. But as the past has shown, new gaps in our rulebook pop up every time and we have to deal with them as they appear. However it is indeed unfortunate that HO has somewhat set the precedent in recent years that sometimes these situation are resolved with the "there is no rule against it, so no punishment" argument and sometimes with the "there is no specific rule against it but you broke the spirit of the rule and therefore get punished". It's a unfortunate double-standard that has crept in.

Yes, extrapolating from the "no trading picks you don't have" rule sounds tempting but ultimately isn't sufficient imho, because the responsibilities are distributed differently. In cases of double-traded picks, there is only one team who can realistically be expected to have double checked if the pick is legal (the team that has it) and the same team is also the only one that benefits from such an illegal trade because they get to trade away an asset that they don't actually have. So they are both the team where the oversight happened and the one that benefitted from said oversight - hence why they get punished. In a case like this one here however there are both two teams who can realistically be expected to catch the illegality of the action and there are also two teams that benefit from said illegal trade, as outlined in my previous post. This is why in this case they share the responsibility much more than in the case of a double traded pick.

I don't really think that's sound logic. Applying punishments that have no grounds in the rulebook is a suuuuper slippery slope. I think this situation probably indicates that maybe we do need to implement something in the rulebook to establish a punishment for both sides of a trade like this, but as long as it is not in there, I don't think you can just arbitrarily throw out punishments no matter how obvious it might be.

I do have some strong opinions on the rulebook and various places that I think it could be improved and/or updated, but that hasn't been done yet, and I know that's a separate discussion.

Like I said, I think this punishment/resolution on the whole is pretty weak (and I don't think it effectively disincentivizes people from doing the same thing in the future, which should be the intention of any punishment). I agree that the double-trading-a-pick rule was not a sufficient reference for this, but I don't think that would be fixed by just fining/penalizing Toronto in an unprecedented manner. Undo/renegotiate the bad trade (if that is possible) or punish WPG more harshly for trading an asset illegally, those are the options here to me based on the current rulebook.