NHL Offseason 2010 discussion

[Timby]

I think it was a good move to walk away from Niemi. Sure he won the cup, but this was his first good year and he really got saved by the scoring powers of his team.

I don't think he's worth 3 mil.

It was his first real year, period -- he only played in three games in 2008 - 09, his first season in the league.

Replacing a 26-year-old who won the Cup and went 26 - 7, 2.25 GAA / .913 save percentage and racked up seven shutouts with a 34-year-old who just went 22-20 with a 2.72 GAA and .912 save percentage ... it's not a huge downgrade, but it's definitely a downgrade, especially because Niemi is going to sign a multi-year deal with someone else now (probably San Jose) and the Blackhawks will need to find someone else next year all over again. Also, if the Blackhawks meet Detroit in the playoffs, they are so screwed. Quenneville and Turco? Might as well not even show up at the stadium.

God, that Huet contract is indefensible.

 

[Danny99]

I think it was a good move to walk away from Niemi. Sure he won the cup, but this was his first good year and he really got saved by the scoring powers of his team.

I don't think he's worth 3 mil.

It was his first real year, period -- he only played in three games in 2008 - 09, his first season in the league.

Replacing a 26-year-old who won the Cup and went 26 - 7, 2.25 GAA / .913 save percentage and racked up seven shutouts with a 34-year-old who just went 22-20 with a 2.72 GAA and .912 save percentage ... it's not a huge downgrade, but it's definitely a downgrade, especially because Niemi is going to sign a multi-year deal with someone else now (probably San Jose) and the Blackhawks will need to find someone else next year all over again. Also, if the Blackhawks meet Detroit in the playoffs, they are so screwed. Quenneville and Turco? Might as well not even show up at the stadium.

God, that Huet contract is indefensible.

I don't see enough from Niemi to make me like him as a go to goalie. Sure he won the cup, but he wasn't spectacular in the Finals.

 

[Timby]

He was starting to break down, definitely. And Finnish goalies have an annoying trend of slumping badly after breakout seasons.

Turco's a lateral move, at best. He's not terrible, and he was probably their best option after they chose Hjalmarsson over Niemi (which is essentially what happened, here). But the Red Wings and the Blues do utterly own his shit.

 

[AdmiralGarak]

And Kovalchuk's ri-fuckin-diculous contract is...


Rejected!

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blznLIJOgRw[/yt]

Let the Kovalchuk UFA odyssey begin anew.

 

[Danny99]

As annoying as the renewed rumor mill will be, I'm glad this contract will be overturned. Kovalchuk was not going to play for seventeen more years and if he did, what's stopping him from pulling an Alexei Yashin and demanding a new contract while holding out.

The salary cap may not be perfect, but it's better than having out of control contracts. It's sad that teams can't learn to live within it.

 

[Timby]

And Kovalchuk's ri-fuckin-diculous contract is...


Rejected!

Technically, it was rejected by the NHL last month. An arbitrator today rendered the contract null and void. In terms of these long-term contracts, it's sort of like drunk driving: Everyone was in the wrong, but the Blackhawks and the Canucks managed to make it home to crookedly park in their driveway, while the Devils decided to take the long way home and drove right past the police station.

I have a feeling this episode will come up during the NHL's next labor armageddon in 2012.

Edit: Uh, oh. There's some wording in the ruling handed down by arbitrator Richard Bloch (there's an unfortunate name) that suggests the NHL may in fact pursue already-registered, similar long-term contracts, such as Hossa's with the Blackhawks, Luongo's with the Canucks and Pronger's with the Flyers. If that happens, the NHLPA will lose its shit.

 

[AdmiralGarak]

In terms of these long-term contracts, it's sort of like drunk driving: Everyone was in the wrong, but the Blackhawks and the Canucks managed to make it home to crookedly park in their driveway, while the Devils decided to take the long way home and drove right past the police station.

This contract was the equivilent of driving the car through the front door of the police station, and asking the desk officer for a breath test.

It was obviously a challenge to see how far the NHL could be pushed. Deals like Hossa's didn't thumb their noses at the CBA by tacking on numerous years at league minimum.

 

[Timby]

It was obviously a challenge to see how far the NHL could be pushed. Deals like Hossa's didn't thumb their noses at the CBA by tacking on numerous years at league minimum.

Deals like Hossa's and Luongo's merely thumbed their noses at the CBA by tacking on numerous years at $1 million or so.

Apparently, Marc Savard's contract may also be targeted by the NHL. We could see contract bloodshed soon.

 

[Danny99]

I doubt this one ruling is going to create some kind of anarchy with the NHL on a crusade to rid themselves of contracts like this.

I'm not a fan of these contracts. I don't understand the financials of it, but from a non business knowing fan, it seems like the teams keep trying to one up each other in the length of contracts.

I do think that is not only allows the NHL to stop this stupidity in the future, but will discourage teams from doing it in the future.

 

[tomalak301]

I think this whole thing opens a big can of worms, but like Danny, I'm not knowledgeable enough to really have an opinion on if this contract is good or bad. What I can say though is what is it with these long 10+ year contracts. Doesn't that end up screwing a team in the long run? What if the guy gets hurt, and it's a major injury or something. I keep going back to the DePietro Contract with the Islanders which ended up kind of screwing the team more than they were already. The guy is injury prone but still getting paid all that money for the long term. It's just a dangerous road to walk for teams.

 

[Danny99]

I doubt this one ruling is going to create some kind of anarchy with the NHL on a crusade to rid themselves of contracts like this.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/pu...t=AtfcMSNo4Yg8Kwttuw6InRx7vLYF?urn=nhl-261315

I stand corrected.

 

[Timby]

I think this whole thing opens a big can of worms, but like Danny, I'm not knowledgeable enough to really have an opinion on if this contract is good or bad. What I can say though is what is it with these long 10+ year contracts.

The entire point behind this mega-deals is that they are heavily front-loaded with salary for the optimal years of the player's career, and then there are several years added to the back end at close to league-minimum pay. Due to the way the NHL operates its salary cap, a player's cap hit is calculated according to the average salary over the length of the contract. Hence the reason that a contract like Kovalchuk's, which ran until he was 44, was considered cap circumvention -- there's no way in hell he'll be playing in his 40s.

it seems like the teams keep trying to one up each other in the length of contracts.

Keep in mind what I said last month:

It's perversely hilarious that we missed a year of hockey and did serious permanent damage to the game as a whole to create this CBA, which is turning out to be as effective as first-year 0% APR in preventing another rapid descent into overspending.

 

[BigFoot]

So Canucks signed Raffi Torres (1 year deal, 1 million) which should definitely be an improvement over guys like Bernier. And the L.A. Kings signed ex-Canuck Willie Mitchell (2 years, 3.5 million per year). So I'm thinking with Salo being out at least until Christmas, Canucks are gonna keep Bieksa at least until the trade deadline.

 

[Timby]

Cristobal Huet is also fucking off to Europe, though the salary cap relief won't come until opening day of the regular season.

 

[Timby]

The point is that the cap is being circumvented and the door is open for anyone who wants to do it until the NHL grows a sack and clamps down on it. That, or we'll just get another work stoppage when the NHL moves to close this loophole in the next CBA and the NHLPA decides to raise holy hell. A strike is looking pretty likely in 2012, with the momentum that Eric Lindros and his fellow hardliners in the NHLPA have been generating; they're getting ready to hire Donald Fehr (who kicked the dogshit out of MLB and made the MLBPA retardedly powerful) as their executive director and go to the mattresses over the cap.

Welp.

Donald Fehr has now been hired by the NHLPA as the "interim executive director," with multiple outlets reporting that he has an agreement to stay through 2012 -- essentially, get the union through the current CBA and negotiate a new one.

Gary Bettman has also fired another shot, saying that the league may be looking to close the cap loophole that allows teams to bury players in the minors or transfer them to Europe and thereby eliminate the salary cap hit from their contracts.

The summer of 2012 is going to get ugly.

Also, this bit from The Sporting News is interesting:

KHL president Alexander Medvedev -- who owns the club SKA St. Petersburg -- is eyeing the Ilya Kovalchuk situation very closely, because he's still hoping to land the Russian winger if he can't find an NHL deal. And, on that front, he got a very good phone call yesterday.

According to the Sporting News' Craig Custance, Medvedev got a call from none other than Jay Grossman, Ilya Kovalchuk's agent. This comes right after reports that the NHL looked over the proposed deal and rejected it. So while the Devils are still working on a deal with Kovalchuk, this latest news might mean Kovalchuk will get even less money than he anticipated. So Medvedev might be hoping Kovalchuk rejects the next re-structuring and looks to the KHL.

Medvedev wouldn't release the offer made to Kovalchuk, but he did tell Custance the deal could be be anywhere from two to eight years, depending on what Kovalchuk wants.

 

[Danny99]

As much as I want NHL parity, Bettman and company have to serious look at Kovalchuk's "entertainment factor," how many fans he will bring into buildings, therefore concessions, jersey sales, etc., and how many people will tune in to watch him on TV. Sure, you don't want player contracts to get out of control, but you also want to continue to have people interested in your product.

I'd really glad to hear about the hire of Fehr. I don't think the NHLPA is a kicking bag anymore and they won't be steamrolled in negotiations. Hopefully, a lockout can be avoided with an experienced person like Fehr involved.

Bettman really has to stop walking around stamping his feet like a child. It has gotten worse since the Phoenix debacle. Now this whole grandstanding about Kovalchuk and the Sochi Olympics. He and the NHL need to realize that the Olympics sell the sport, especially in American markets when it takes over the airwaves in the winter, where the NHL could end up on specialty channels behind other leagues. They also need to admit the KHL is real and a threat to them. The NHL is no longer the only professional hockey league and they need to stop acting like they are.

 

[Timby]

The NHL had to come down on the Kovalchuk contract, though. The last several years of it were at the current league minimum, which in 15 years (even if the current CBA were extended that far, hypothetically speaking) certainly won't be the league minimum. Between its length, Lou Lamoriello's statements in the press conference that were basically flipping the bird at the NHL, and its salary structure, it was just utterly unacceptable.

The Kovalchuk thing isn't grandstanding. The contract was blatant cap circumvention, and the league absolutely had to reject the deal. If Lamoriello had played it safe, like the Blackhawks did with Hossa, and just had several years around $1 million (and not at an utterly absurd length), the contract probably would have passed muster -- though the frontloading of contracts is certain to be addressed in CBA negotiations. Seventeen years, though, with many of them at league-minimum ... yeah, that's bullshit. If the NHL didn't come down on that, the collective bargaining agreement isn't worth the paper it's printed on. You can't just ignore an agreement made in good faith between ownership and players just because one guy might bring in a little more money for the league.

The Olympics stuff? Yeah, that's grandstanding, and Bettman being an idiot. The latest proposal being tossed around is that the All-Star Weekend would be eliminated in favor of a North America v. Europe weekend playoff series, which is so incredibly retarded that I'm amazed no one's tried to shank Bettman, prison-style.

As for Fehr, it's both good and bad news. Eric Lindros and his cronies are the current group in power at the upper levels of the NHLPA, and their drumbeat for quite some time has been, "Go on strike and return everything back to the way it was before this CBA." They're ready to go to the mats, and truth be told, most of the union membership will likely go along with whatever the executive board decides.

Every sane person agrees that an NHL player strike (or another lockout) would be monumentally retarded for everyone involved.

The problem is that the decision to strike will be made by a group of people not generally believed to be the smartest men on the planet.

 

[Danny99]

I didn't agree with the original Kovalchuk contract, but the NHL and Devils should not be sitting on opposite sides of a court room as enemies, they should be working together to keep an exciting player, who is a draw, in the league.

 

[Winterwind]

If there's another hockey strike/lockout, I'll probably respond the way I did when MLB did it. Move on.

As for Kovalchuck, while the contract may not have violated the "letter of the law", it sure violated the spirit. A contract running until his early/mid-40s was a joke, especially how it was structured. His agent gave the NHL an ultimatum, work it out or my client goes to the KHL. My reaction was "Have fun in Russia buddy".

I'm really sick of these over-paid athletes, making more in a season than most of us will in a lifetime, whining about needing more money.

 

[Timby]

His agent gave the NHL an ultimatum, work it out or my client goes to the KHL.

It's not so much an ultimatum as it is that, since every other team is realizing that the NHL is now looking very, very closely at these outlandish front-loaded contracts, no one is willing to give Kovalchuk the kind of contract he wants, so he's having a bit of a tantrum and threatening to take his ball and go home. It's a negotiating tactic -- I can't imagine that, despite the special treatment he'd undoubtedly get, Kovalchuk would last more than a year in the KHL, given its amateur, miserable atmosphere. (I also can't imagine that he actually wants to take frequent trips to places like Siberia and Kazakhstan to play.)

Personally, I think it's hilarious that Kovalchuk officially can't have the contract he wants. It's simply not allowed under the laws of the current collective bargaining agreement. He might as well ask for a brachiosaur egg and a pet unicorn as a signing bonus -- it's not happening.

Multiple sources say that the league is steadfastly refusing to accept any potential Devils contract with him that runs longer than 13 years, putting the cap hit at around $7.5 million, which would seriously crimp the team's ability to re-sign Zach Parise.

In any event, I assume that when Kovalchuk demanded 100 million dollars in 24 hours "or else," he did so from his secret ice fortress under the South Pole and cut off the satellite feed as he cackled, maniacally.