renegotiated to make him the team's highest-paid player. The holdout caused many Senators' fans to sour on him. Some commentators have sympathized with Yashin's position in the dispute, as Daigle had struggled on the ice in contrast with Yashin's performances. Yashin's offensive numbers exceeded Daigle's in every season they played together on the Senators. In 1998, Yashin initially pledged to give $1 million to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, the Centre's largest ever donation. The Senators had earlier collaborated with the NAC to produce the 1998–99 season program titled "Symphony on Ice", which featured Senators head coach Jacques Martin on the front cover wearing a tuxedo and waving a conductor's baton, while NAC music director Pinchas Zukerman was shown in the Senators' locker room with a #00 Senators jersey. When the NAC learned that one of the conditions of this donation was for them to pay Yashin's parents $425,000 in consulting fees for "loosely defined" services, they balked and Yashin cancelled the donation. The failed arrangement was a public relations disaster for Yashin and his family, and served to further damage Yashin's already strained relationship with the Ottawa public. Yashin's relationship with the Senators reached a new low after the 1998–99 season—he refused to honour the final year of his contract and demanded a pay raise (he would have earned $3.6 million that year, compared to other star centremen in the NHL such as Steve Yzerman and Joe Sakic, who made $6–7 million). When the Senators refused, Yashin demanded a trade on the advice of his agent, Mark Gandler. This was the third time that Yashin demanded a new contract during his five years with the team. The Senators refused to trade Yashin, instead stripping him of his captaincy and issuing it to Daniel Alfredsson. When Yashin still refused to report, the Senators suspended him for the remainder of the 1999–2000 season on 10 November, with the full support of the NHL. Yashin attempted to sign with a team in Switzerland, but the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) suspended him from playing internationally until the dispute was resolved. After the season, an NHL arbitrator refused to grant Yashin the free agent status he claimed to have earned, instead tolling his contract for another season on the grounds that Yashin owed the Senators the final year of his contract if he ever returned to the NHL. It was another public