Yep - seen that happen too many times. Ever since seeing that kind of damage, I've always removed that little spacer from ALL of my VC gaskets prior to installation.
Fel-Pro puts them on all their SBF VC gasket sets (possibly others as well), but not on the pan gasket IIRC. And, as mentioned, the VC's get removed much more frequently than the pan.
It also means the oil pickup screen lets allot more through than we'd like!
That really sucks. Hope you get it back on the road again soon.