It took a grievance, an arbitration hearing, two months of hand wringing and a crashed Ferrari race car, but yesterday the Islanders finally were able to complete the trade for veteran defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky.
Arbiter George Nicolau ruled that Visnovsky’s draft-day trade from the Ducks to the Islanders for a 2013 second-round pick was valid, laying waste to Visnovsky’s and the Players Association’s claim that his no-trade and no-move clauses were still active.
“It was an interpretation, and it could have gone either way,” Visnovsky’s agent, Neil Sheehy, told The Post. “Lubo is happy to be a New York Islander.”
The gist of the league’s argument presented to Nicolau on Sept. 4, was that when Visnovsky was traded from the Oilers to the Ducks in 2010, he waived those clauses. Upon receiving him, it was up to the Ducks to pick them up, and no one told Visnovsky that they didn’t.
According to Sheehy, after last season Visnovsky sat down with Ducks’ general manager Bob Murray and was assured he was not going to be traded. When he was on June 22 before the draft started, he felt betrayed, and soon thereafter started the grievance process out of principle more than out of any opinion of the Islanders.
“This was never about the New York Islanders,” Sheehy said.
Visnovsky, 36, carries a $5.6 million salary-cap hit this season while collecting an actual salary of $3 million, helping the Islanders get to the salary cap floor, no matter what it is under a new collective bargaining agreementWith labor negotiations still unsettled, Visnovsky remains in his native Slovakia — where he crashed while racing a Ferrari in August but didn’t sustain any serious injuries — and is anxious to get going. “He’s OK [with the trade being upheld],” Sheehy said. “Now he just hopes the season starts. He wants to get in there and play.”.