Earlier this month, Ottawa Senators majority owner Michael Andlauer treated his amateur scouting staff to dinner.The front-office employees were in the middle of working through the NHL Draft Combine in Buffalo, spending hours studying draft-eligible prospects and putting them through fitness tests and interviews. But on the Wednesday night of a busy week, Andlauer and his staffers visited the Buffalo Chophouse, whose website bills itself as “Western New York’s premier steakhouse.”They wined and dined before raising a toast to a much-needed victory for the franchise: having a first-round pick in the 2026 NHL Draft.Why the Senators traded Brady Tkachuk to the Panthers in an NHL blockbusterJulian McKenzieOn Friday night, when the festivities kick off in Buffalo, it remains to be seen what will happen with the Senators’ No. 25 pick, one of three first-rounders obtained from the Florida Panthers through last weekend’s Brady Tkachuk trade. Ottawa has already sent away another part of that return, the No. 9 pick, to the San Jose Sharks for winger William Eklund. But the Senators are guaranteed to take a prospect with their own 2026 selection at No. 32, the final slot of the opening round, as part of the NHL-imposed conditions when the team successfully lobbied to get it back.In November 2023, the NHL originally stripped the Senators of a first-round pick for failing to disclose a no-trade clause in Evgenii Dadonov’s contract before the winger was traded to the Vegas Golden Knights in July 2021. Vegas tried to move Dadonov in a subsequent trade with the Anaheim Ducks in 2022, but the Ducks were on Dadonov’s no-trade list. As punishment for the debacle, the Senators were forced to part with a first-round pick in 2024, 2025 or 2026.The terms hung over the Senators’ heads, with the team twice exercising its right to defer the pick ahead another year. But just when the Senators appeared poised to forfeit their 2026 first-rounder for good, the NHL announced in a statement that it was modifying the team’s penalty. In exchange for getting its pick back, Ottawa would be required to pay a fine of $1 million Canadian, and the pick would be the last of the first round.“I think it’s good for us, it’s good for the organization, it’s good for our fans,” Andlauer said earlier this month at the Senators’ Alumni Golf Charity Tournament. “We had to show the league what kind of organization we are.”According to the league’s statement, the Senators applied for the draft choice to be reinstated. They argued that their recent ownership change — with Andlauer completing his purchase of a controlling stake in June 2023, two years after Dadonov departed the Sens — called for the punishment to be reconsidered.“Michael Andlauer, from the time he closed on the franchise, made it clear to me that this was something to him and the franchise,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said at a news conference in April at Canadian Tire Centre.Even if Andlauer understood that discipline was unavoidable for the Dadonov incident, he hoped, and stated his case, for nearly three years to get the draft choice back. How did it eventually work?“I think, maybe, a little persistence went a long way,” Andlauer said.An ongoing effortAs is often the case when buying something new, Andlauer’s first month as majority owner in 2023 was, for the most part, enjoyable. For $950 million, the Montreal native had assumed a 90 percent stake of the Senators after the death of predecessor Eugene Melnyk, beating out a field that included Snoop Dogg.However, in the days leading up to Nov. 1, the honeymoon period screeched to a halt.Amid a three-game losing streak and injuries to lineup mainstays Artem Zub, Thomas Chabot and Erik Brännström, Andlauer received two phone calls from the NHL he later described as “disturbing.” One of them resulted in a 41-game suspension of Shane Pinto for “activities relating to sports wagering.”The other phone call notified the Senators they were being stripped of a first-round pick. It was the conclusion of an NHL investigation into the Dadonov trade, the findings of which were sent to Andlauer in a 73-page report. The night before a Nov. 1 news conference at Canadian Tire Centre, Andlauer had dinner with then-general manager Pierre Dorion and explained it would be best for the sides to move on. The next day, Andlauer announced Dorion’s resignation over his role in the botched trade. Steve Staios, the now-current GM, assumed duties in an interim role.“It kind of brought me back to earth,” Andlauer said.At the time, Andlauer acknowledged the organization was ultimately at fault for the omission of Dadonov’s no-trade list, and appealing the decision would be “futile,” but when asked about inheriting the consequences of the previous regime’s mistake, he made his frustrations clear.“I know the commissioner had a lot of time to deliberate on it and think about it. But why I inherited this is beyond me,” Andlauer said. “There’s no reason for it to last that long. I knew about it, the due diligence process, and it was basically, from the seller’s perspective, it was really a nonissue. I don’t know if a first-rounder is a nonissue to you guys, but it is to me.”An adorable tradition: Putting babies in the Stanley CupJoe Smith and Madison EadesOver a year later, Bettman came to Ottawa and affirmed he hadn’t considered reversing the draft pick punishment.“The penalty that was imposed on the franchise wasn’t something I took lightly,” Bettman said in November 2024. “It was not something I was happy I had to do, but I felt I had to do it.”Later that night, while being interviewed on Prime Video’s NHL telecast, Andlauer nonetheless issued a public plea for the league to reconsider.“I just hope that, being good citizens, we can get the same relief that New Jersey did with a similar situation,” Andlauer said.Historical precedentIn 2010, the New Jersey Devils were stripped of a future first-round pick and a third-round draft choice and received a $3 million fine for salary-cap circumvention. The Devils committed the offense of signing Russian superstar Ilya Kovalchuk to a 17-year, $102 million contract that paid him just $550,000 in each of the final six years. Kovalchuk and the Devils eventually agreed to a reworked 15-year, $100 million deal after the league intervened, but the Devils were still penalized.Ultimately, the Devils gave away only the third-rounder and half of the $3 million fine. Bettman amended the Devils’ punishment in 2014 because of the team’s ownership change in 2013, when U.S. businessmen Joshua Harris and David Blitzer bought the Devils for $320 million. Also that year, Kovalchuk left the NHL for good and returned to Russia to be closer to family.“If it weren’t for the fact that there were new owners, I wouldn’t have done it,” Bettman said to The Star-Ledger in New Jersey in a 2014 article. “The fact that there were changed circumstances and new owners made me comfortable doing it.”In submitting a formal application for their own stripped pick to be reinstated — while deferring the actual punishment as long as possible — the Senators referred to the Devils’ ownership change as precedent. Andlauer said he made his final plea to the NHL to reconsider in December, the same month as the NHL Board of Governors’ meeting in New York City.“I kind of pleaded my case,” Andlauer told The Athletic in June. “And he was kind enough to say he would look at it.”Four months later, Andlauer and the Sens got their pick back. And depending on how the first round of this year’s draft shakes out, numerous talented prospects could still be available.The Sens could always grab one of the famed Ruck twins, Liam or Markus. In colleague Scott Wheeler’s latest mock draft, Ottawa is projected to select right winger Casey Mutryn. But Staios could also be in on right-shot center Brooks Rogowski, left-shot defenseman William Håkansson, center Ryder Cali or even the enigmatic Marcus Nordmark, among others.The fact the Senators are even in a position to draft a player Friday — and possibly two, depending on what comes of the No. 25 pick — is a relief for the organization.“It’s behind us now, and it’s nice to know that we’re gonna be picking 32nd this year,” Andlauer said.