Here you go Chance:
" Lou Lamoriello, the president and general manager of the Devils, had his suspicions in 1994 when the St. Louis Blues tendered an offer sheet to the free agent Scott Stevens. Even though the Devils matched the offer and retained Stevens, who went on to become their captain and cornerstone, Lamoriello and the Devils did not forgive and forget. Instead, they pursued an investigation into the dealings.
More than four years after the fact, the efforts of the Devils and the National Hockey League resulted in a settlement that awarded the Devils a record cash payment of more than $1.4 million from the Blues and their choice of one of the Blues' first-round picks in the next five years of the entry draft. New Jersey will also gain the ability to swap first-round picks once during that time period, with the Blues able to defer the claim one time.
''I don't look at something of this nature as a triumph,'' Lamoriello said yesterday in a conference call after Commissioner Gary Bettman handed down his decision. ''It's a detriment to the N.H.L. I don't think the compensation could be severe enough. My request was five first-round picks, plus damages.''
Stevens, who came to the Devils as compensation for the Blues' signing of Brendan Shanahan in 1991, was a restricted free agent when the Blues tendered him an offer sheet worth $17 million over four years on July 4, 1994, three days after his contract with the Devils expired.
The Blues had been angered by the decision of an arbitrator to send Stevens to the Devils rather than their offer of Rod Brind'Amour, Curtis Joseph and draft picks. They were particularly miffed because they had sent five first-round picks to the Washington Capitals when the Blues signed Stevens as a free agent in 1990, then lost him just a year later.
The Devils suspected there had also been tampering in the signing of Shanahan, an allegation the team raised when arguing successfully to acquire Stevens as compensation.
But Lamoriello, who would not disclose details of what his own investigation had produced, suspected that a deal was in place long before the official unveiling of the offer sheet between Jack Quinn, who was then the president of the Blues, and Richard Bennett, who was then Stevens's agent and who died two months later.
''In a process of negotiations, when they are ongoing and you are speaking, you can usually sense when there is something else involved,'' Lamoriello said. ''I sensed that I was talking to myself. I just felt as though there was something funny in the way things transpired, the way things went. I was the sole person that could be negotiating, but I felt very strongly reading some of the articles that did come out of St. Louis and things I was hearing, that something happened. Where there was some smoke, I wanted to make sure there wasn't any fire.''
The league found the fire when it forced the current management of the Blues to open its books. According to Lamoriello, the league found the evidence he had lacked, in the form of an offer sheet that preceded the end of Stevens's deal with the Devils by ''a substantial period.''
In a statement, Bettman said: ''I view the Blues' conduct with respect to Mr. Stevens to be abhorrent and deserving of the harshest sanctions. Violations of the no-tampering provisions directly undermine the integrity of the league and the game.''
The Blues said they would not contest the penalty, but in a news conference yesterday, their chairman, Jerry Ritter, was hardly happy to be left taking responsibility for actions of his predecessors.
''I am appalled at the severity of the penalty,'' Ritter said, while adding that he was also appalled by the actions of the former management in St. Louis.
Among the penalties imposed was a $500,000 payment that the Devils had to include in matching the Blues' offer. The Devils will receive a total of $1.425 million, with an additional $75,000 going to the league.
Lamoriello said that Stevens was unaware of the illegal dealings."
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