Rudner Law

Stuart Rudner's "Rant"
Oilers refused the right to talk to Vegas coach

I’m wearing an Oilers hat today, which blends in well with the background. I want to discuss a recent incident involving the Edmonton Oilers and the Las Vegas Golden Knights.

The Oilers sought permission to speak to Bruce Cassidy, their former coach who was still under contract. Edmonton was looking for a new coach, but Las Vegas refused, causing frustration and confusion among fans. Many questioned whether Las Vegas had the right to refuse.

Edmonton or any other team couldn’t speak to Cassidy. Las Vegas did have the right to do that, but not because of employment law. Instead, it was due to an agreement between NHL team owners that precludes speaking to a coach under contract without permission.

This rule doesn’t exist in regular workplaces. You can approach and recruit competitors’ employees, salespeople, and other professionals. However, if someone is still being paid under contract, like Cassidy, they would have to resign and give up their money before joining the other team.

The owner’s agreement prevented this in this case. Normally, you might worry about a non-competition agreement from the person you’re approaching.

In Canada, non-compete clauses are rarely enforced. They’re only enforced when a court finds there’s no other way to protect a legitimate business interest of the employer. Most non-compete clauses don’t pass this test. In fact, in some jurisdictions like Ontario, non-competition clauses are even illegal for almost all employees except for those in the C-suite.

Watch out for non-solicitation clauses. You might be free to hire someone from your competitor, but they might have a non-solicitation clause that prevents them from contacting their client list, which is probably why you want them in the first place.

Courts will enforce non-solicitation clauses as long as the terms are reasonable. Also, if you recruit someone away from another company and then let them go, that can increase their severance package. The best way to protect yourself is to have a good termination clause in your contract.

You can reach out to your competitors’ employees, but do it right and protect yourself. Get proper legal advice.

Edmonton couldn’t pursue Bruce Cassidy and ended up hiring Mike Babcock instead. I’ll talk about whether a supervisor should be allowed to ask their employees to hand over their phones so the supervisor can scroll through their photo roll in a future video.

Stay tuned for that one. If you found this helpful, please like, subscribe, and share it. Thanks for tuning in.