No Punishment for Ottawa in Dadonov Saga, PHF Finals, Penguins Rising, and More

Welcome to the Monday edition of Links, News, and Notes where the one thing that I can promise is that you won’t get any Oscars-related talk.

As for what’s happening around the hockey world:

• During a segment on Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday, Elliotte Friedman reported that the league will not take any action against the Ottawa Senators for their role in the Evgenii Dadonov trade fiasco. This is obviously great news, but unless more information comes out of this it seems we’ll be left in the dark as to what, exactly, happened on the infamous Ottawa-Vegas trade call. Yet another in a line of embarrassing moments for the NHL.
• The biggest reason the cancellation of the latest Dadonov trade caused such a brouhaha is that the Golden Knights are already playing all sorts of cap games with LTIR. Barring another move or some sort of relief from the league they will not be able to activate all of their currently injured players before the playo-ffs — and it’s no guarantee they’ll make it to the post-season without them!  As Pierre Lebrun details in this piece for the Athletic (paywall), it seems some tweaks to the salary cap may be in order to avoid these types of shenanigans in the future.
• There’s no doubt that the Sens have had their fair share of bad luck this year — but is this a historically unlucky season? Ian Mendes says Ottawa’s actually been through worse (paywall).
• The University of North Dakota Senators, errrr Fighting Hawks, may have been eliminated from the men’s NCAA ice hockey post-season but the Frozen Four is set: number one seed Michigan, Minnesota, Minnesota State, and Denver will face off for the national title.
• While there may be some sexier names, it would be a mistake to count out the Pittsburgh Penguins when the play-offs roll around. The Pens are fully healthy and destroying all comers of late, highlighted by Sunday’s 11-2 annihilation of the Detroit Red Wings. The Eastern Conference play-offs are going to be an absolute bloodbath. At least two legitimately good teams are going home in the first round.
• The Premier Hockey Federation Finals are set for Monday night with the Boston Pride taking on the Connecticut Whale. The Pride romped to a 5-1 win over the Toronto Six while the Whale netted four in the second period to lock up a 4-2 victory over the Minnesota Whitecaps. The passing on the Whale’s game-winning goal was a thing of beauty:/

Tic-Tac-Toe and Wohlfeiler finishes it off! The Whale lead again!#Isobel2022 pic.twitter.com/KBigulr0WS

— PHF (@PHF) March 27, 2022

You can watch the finals tonight at 9pm ET on TSN2 or ESPN2.