Hey everyone, I hope you're doing well,

It came to the attention of SHL Head Office following the draft that this trade contained a retention that was in contradiction with the SHL Rulebook's outlines for retention. In specific, due to Commander Shepard being on a 1 season contract, this trade was in violation of Section I, Article C, Subsection 4f, which reads:


From here on out, the process was pretty difficult. This was brought to our attention at a point where discussion on the topic only began after the SHL Draft, due to us focusing on running it that day, and pieces in that trade (11th and 40th), had already been used, making renegotiation a logistical nightmare, made even more difficult once the S64 Winnipeg 3rd Toronto received was flipped to Minnesota as a result of the trade for Kluster's player. Due to all these factors, Head Office took our time evaluating the situation, seeking past precedent, and bouncing ideas off one another to see if we could come up with the best solution possible that was 1. Fair to the innocent parties involved, while 2. Reprimanding parties that were at fault. After much deliberation, there are 2 punishments we'll be handing out:

Winnipeg Aurora
- Forfeiture of next, team-owned 3rd round selection, which in this case is S65

Rangerjase
- $2,000,000 deduction to his S62 Salary
- First write up received, which will remain on his record until the start of S65

Before we address what the ruling will be in this situation, let me break down our thought process on these punishments. For Rangerjase, its pretty cut and dry, as Section III, Subsection 1fi reads:


For Winnipeg, it was a little trickier due to lack of precedent and no real defined guide in the rulebook on how to handle situations like this. We opted to go for the standard punishment that we give for double trading picks, as we found this situation to be decently comparable, seeing as Winnipeg moved an asset they didn't actually posses (a retained contract they couldn't legally retain on).

Finally with those explanations out of the way, all that's left to do is announce the ruling for the situation itself. Like I mentioned above, this whole situation was a logistical nightmare to figure out how to properly work out, and truth be told most of the solutions we came up with were not ones that we were happy with, so it really came down to a lesser of 2 evils type of situation. We toyed with the idea of finding a way to make the two teams renegotiate, but given the use/movement of so many different assets, there was no real way they could actually renegotiate this deal in a reasonable way. In addition, there exists the option to force Toronto to take Shepard without retention, which at the surface feels like the easiest call, but also presents its own issues. It unfairly punishes Toronto for something that was entirely not their fault. It's Winnipeg's responsibility to verify the legality of the assets they move, not Toronto's, which was something everyone in Head Office came to an agreement on, and forcing Toronto to take Shepard at full salary forces them to take the trade at terms they never agreed to (Kluster himself told me that the only reason he parted with a 1st rounder was for that salary retention for example), which is something we're never comfortable doing in HO.

With all this said, we've opted to allow the retained contract to go through. We're aware that this decision will likely catch us some backlash and some of you will disagree with this call, but with a situation this muddy we really feel that this is the best case going forward. Toronto doesn't deserve to get screwed for a situation like this when they did everything right, and every other solution on the table negatively impacted Toronto in some way, which didn't sit right with us. What was important to us was making sure the parties that WERE wrong faced some consequence for this, and as much as I don't feel great about this final call, I can at least say we did that much. The reality of the situation is that Jase is new to HO and was still learning the approval process on trades. This was a misstep on Winnipeg and Head Office, and as messy as this has been, we're poised to move forward and ensure we avoid little mistakes like this from happening again. Again I'm aware some of you might not be happy with this decision, I'm not crazy about it either, but in terms of fairness to the innocents in this situation, we really do feel this is the best way for us to go about this.

Thank you all for your time and patience, and on behalf of the SHL Head Office
nour