Can the Maple Leafs get Doug Armstrong by sending the Blues a draft pick? No. Here's why

AtlanticBruinsCanadiensLightningMaple LeafsPanthersRed WingsSabresSenatorsMetropolitanBlue JacketsCapitalsDevilsFlyersHurricanesIslandersPenguinsRangersCentralAvalancheBlackhawksBluesJetsMammothPredatorsStarsWildPacificCanucksDucksFlamesGolden KnightsKingsKrakenOilersSharksScores & ScheduleStandingsPodcastsFantasyNHL OddsNHL PicksPlayoff projectionsNHL Draft rankingRed Light NewsletterCan the Maple Leafs get Doug Armstrong by sending the Blues a draft pick? No. Here’s whyThe Leafs may want Doug Armstrong, but he's under contract with the Blues. Bruce Bennett / Getty Images Share full articleColleague Jeremy Rutherford wrote an excellent piece this past week on Doug Armstrong and potential interest from the Toronto Maple Leafs, who are looking for a general manager and potentially a president of hockey operations, too. Armstrong is turning over St. Louis Blues GM duties to Alexander Steen this summer, but as a reminder: He is signed for another three years as the team’s president of hockey operations. The top comment from a reader about that piece was, “I think 2 1st round picks should get it done for Toronto.” Not to pick on the commenter, but that note is representative of confusion about the NHL rules not= just among hockey fans but also some media colleagues, based on things I have heard and read this past week. So let me clear this up: Compensation to a team for letting someone under contract leave to work for another organization has not been allowed in the NHL for 10 years. I was at the NHL Board of Governors meeting in Pebble Beach, California, in December of 2015 when the NHL governors, with the strong recommendation of commissioner Gary Bettman, voted to end the compensation rule. Since then, if a team wants to let a signed employee go somewhere else, there is zero compensation. No draft picks, no money, nada. I double-checked this with two league sources on Thursday, just to make sure there were no amendments to that in the new collective-bargaining agreement. There were not. The rule remains: no compensation, in any fashion. At the urging of some GMs, notably Brian Burke and Ken Holland at the time, the league brought in a rule for the 2014-15 season that allowed compensation for teams who allowed front-office staff or coaches to switch organizations despite being under contract. The compensation was either a second- or third-round pick, depending on certain criteria. Before that season, the NHL had gone 10 years without any compensation allowed, something that Bettman wanted because of controversies in past years, when he had to step in to settle feuds between organizations that couldn’t agree on proper compensation for personnel switching teams. The idea in bringing back the compensation rule with set draft picks attached to it was to help compensate teams that lose good young employees. So when a young AGM would become a GM elsewhere, or an assistant coach would get a head coach gig, the team losing that talent would get a draft pick. “I don’t like disagreeing with Gary, because he’s very smart and he’s been a great leader for our league, but I felt at the time and I still believe there should be compensation for losing talented people — especially young folks,” Burke told The Athletic on Friday, recalling how that all went down more than a decade ago. “Doug Armstrong, that’s a different thing, but losing a third-year assistant GM or losing a fifth-year assistant coach, that should be compensated in my mind.” Unfortunately, what really happened with that rule in 2015 is that the league felt it had no choice but to apply it to anyone switching teams who still had term on their contracts. So in the summer of 2015, the Maple Leafs had to pay a third-round pick to the Detroit Red Wings for hiring Mike Babcock and a third-round pick to the New Jersey Devils for hiring Lou Lamoriello. Elsewhere that year under that rule, the Columbus Blue Jackets gave up a pick for hiring John Tortorella from the Vancouver Canucks, the same went for the Buffalo Sabres when they hired Dan Bylsma from the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the Edmonton Oilers for hiring Peter Chiarelli from the Boston Bruins, and for the Oilers for hiring Todd McLellan from the San Jose Sharks, and for the Devils for hiring John Hynes from the Penguins. That same year, the Devils waived compensation for letting Peter DeBoer go to the Sharks, and the Penguins waived it when they allowed the Devils to hire the late Ray Shero as their GM. What especially bothered some teams was why there would be compensation for people who had been fired. Like, why did Columbus have to send Vancouver a pick for the fired Torts? So here we go again, teams grumbling about compensation. That irritated Bettman. And you know what happens when the commissioner gets irritated. “Well, Gary lost his temper, and I don’t blame him,” Burke recalled. “It was being abused. So I get it. I can live with it (the league’s decision that year).” By the time the owners and governors assembled at Pebble Beach in December 2015, with the compensation rule having been in place for only a few months, it was all but dead. “You have to know when to pick your battles, and when Gary says it’s dead, there’s no point fighting that,” one NHL governor, speaking anonymously, told me that day. Here’s what Bettman said after it was made official that the compensation rule was gone: “Bill Daly, the deputy commissioner, gave a lengthy report of the history — of what there was, what the protocol was that I put into effect roughly 10 years ago to the reaction and change we made this year, and I decided to, as of Jan. 1, to go back to the old rule, which was there is no compensation. You either give permission to negotiate, and if the two parties actually make a deal, then the executive is free to go. But there is no compensation. If you don’t want to give permission to somebody who is under contract, whether or not they’re employed but they are being paid and still under contract, is the club’s decision.” Once the league had decided the new rule applied to fired people, that changed everything. But it also invited the chaos. “We think it needed to apply to terminated personnel,” Bettman said. “It wasn’t a policy that was free from issues. There were collateral issues that were impacted by the conveyance of the draft picks or not, the compensation. What we had worked very well for 10 years. It was a sentiment by some of the managers that we should do something different. I resisted for a while. Perhaps against my better judgment, I deferred to them to try it. But again, when I discussed this with the (owners’) executive committee, they were all in agreement that going back to what we had was the correct thing.” Another contributing factor to the league abolishing the rule was that the NHL Players’ Association had filed a grievance against the league related to the new rule. The NHLPA felt that the rule was a CBA matter because it involved draft picks and that the union should have been briefed on it before it went into effect. The NHLPA also felt that teams losing draft picks for compensation would hurt a team’s ability to sign offer sheets. So, that was it. As of Jan. 1, 2016, no more compensation for personnel under contract changing teams. And it’s been that way ever since. “I think, on balance, it just wasn’t worth the debate, the confusion, the uncertainty that flowed from it,” Bettman said that day. “Frankly, I thought the old policy worked very well. I think you remember from the GMs meeting, one of the caveats that I put into place when I agreed to implement the revised policy a year ago was that if there are any problems with this, we will scrap it and go back to what we had. That ultimately happened. We deferred to the will of the GMs for a year, we tried it, and I think we were better off with the policy we had.” Which, well, really hurt for a team like the Leafs, who had to give up a pair of third-round picks for Babcock and Lamoriello in the short window that rule existed. “And you know what, if we had to do it over again, we would still do it, I think, with what we got in return,” then-Leafs president Brendan Shanahan said at that December 2015 Board of Governors meeting. “It’s unfortunate timing for us, but there’s some things that are in your control and some things that are not. And I agree with the league’s stance after a year to abolish it. We move on.” Said Montreal Canadiens owner Geoff Molson after that Board meeting: “It’s pretty simple. I don’t think it was working out the way it was intended to, and we’ll go back to the way it was, which was if you want to talk to somebody, you ask for permission to talk to them, and if they grant it, then they grant it. If not, then they don’t.” Which, well, came to fruition just last year when the New York Islanders asked the Habs if they could talk to Jeff Gorton. Molson politely said, “Non, merci.” Molson was well within his rights to do so, because after all, whatever version of head of hockey operations Gorton could have ended up with on Long Island doesn’t rank higher than his role at the top of the hockey food chain in Montreal. It would have been a parallel move for Gorton (although notably, the Habs changed Gorton’s title from Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations to President of Hockey Operations when he signed an extension in October). The unwritten rule to this day in the NHL is that teams generally don’t block an AGM from getting a GM job elsewhere (see: Mathieu Darche leaving the Lightning for the Islanders last spring) or an assistant coach from a head coaching job. Anything that is a tangible promotion, teams generally allow, again without compensation. But parallel moves? That’s a more delicate matter. In those cases, it really comes down to the owner in question potentially losing a key personnel member doing it from the goodness of their heart. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Pierre LeBrun has been a senior NHL columnist for The Athletic since 2017. He has been an NHL Insider for TSN since 2011 following six years as a panelist on Hockey Night In Canada. He also appears regularly on RDS in Montreal. Pierre previously covered the NHL for ESPN.com and The Canadian Press. Follow Pierre on Twitter @PierreVLeBrun