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“We feel Mikkel Boedker is a good player. He had a great second half. He was San Jose’s fifth-leading scorer in their two rounds in the playoffs. We know, with the culture we’re aiming to get, that he’s going to fit into that dressing room.”

The Senators felt they had to move the high-scoring winger after learning that Melinda Karlsson, the wife Ottawa captain Erik Karlsson, had filed for a protection order against Hoffman’s fiancée, Monika Caryk, for alleged cyberbullying.

“No rooms in the NHL are perfect. We’ve all been around a long time and we know that those 23 guys, at times they’re like brothers,” Dorion said. “They get on each other’s nerves. This wasn’t an indictment on Mike Hoffman. This was a direction we needed to go.”

Photo by Karl B DeBlaker / AP

Dorion said he wasn’t aware of the Hoffman-Karlsson allegations until the end of the regular season in early April. He also said the club had an “open-door policy,” but neither player opted to speak to management about it.

“We heard a rumour at the end of the season,” Dorion said. “If we acted on every rumour we hear, we couldn’t do our job in management as a general manager.

“No player ever came to us about these things. At the start of every year, we address the team. We say the general manager, our management group, we have an open-door policy about anything personal or professional. The only thing we tell our players is not to come see us about ice time or role because that’s the coaches job.

“When we address the players this year at the start of the year, we’re going to make sure that situations like this they can definitely come to us.”