| Nick Obergan. 7th September, 2010 - 1:00 am
 It took the entire summer, but the Ilya Kovalchuk waiting game has finally ended, and he isn?t going to be playing where everyone assumed he would be when the offseason began. No, Kovy didn?t go to Hollywood and sign with the Los Angeles Kings, though they courted him heavily; instead he is re-signing with the team that traded for him before the deadline. Yes, Ilya Kovalchuk is a New Jersey Devil, and will be for the rest of his (hockey) life after signing a 15-year, $100M contract that the league ultimately decided to approve after weeks of debate.
The sum of $100M is the second largest ever, right behind Alexander Ovechkin?s 13-year $124M extension signed before his rookie contract ended. The total dollar amount of the contract was not really the topic of debate around the hockey world though, it?s the way the original 17-year pact circumvented the salary cap.
The original contract that was denied by the league featured five years of minimum salary ($550,000) tacked onto the end of the deal. This was a clear circumvention of the CBA: it was clear that they anticipated Kovy retiring by the time those seasons came around and only added them on to bring down the annual cap it.
The new deal doesn?t have a single year under $1M, and the end of the contract has two years totalling $7M in an attempt to prove they are not circumventing the CBA by anticipating Kovy walking away from the end of the contract.
The contract breaks down as follows:
? 2010-11: $6 million (age 27)
? 2011-12: $6 million (28)
? 2012-13: $11 million (29)
? 2013-14: $11.3 million (30)
? 2014-15: $11.3 million (31)
? 2015-16: $11.6 million (32)
? 2016-17: $11.8 million (33)
? 2017-18: $10 million (34)
? 2018-19: $7 million (35)
? 2019-20: $4 million (36)
? 2020-21: $1 million (37)
? 2021-22: $1 million (38)
? 2022-23: $1 million (39)
? 2023-24: $3 million (40)
? 2024-25: $4 million (41)
Under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement there is no cap on how many years a contract can be, and veteran GM Lou Lamoriello used that to his advantage so that he could bring the annual cap hit down to a manageable number (a devilish $6.66M). Now, Kovy may still elect to retire as those $1M seasons come to fruition, but by adding the larger salaried years on the tail end, the Devils changed it from sketchy to acceptable.
Casual readers may wonder what happens if Kovy were to retire during the contract; he contract and cap would come off of the Devils? books because Kovy was under-35 when he signed the deal ? so no extraordinary harm done in New Jersey?s mind.
If you ask me (and I?m pretending that you did), Kovalchuk won?t play past the 2019-20 season. At that point, he won?t yet have reached the bottom of his game but his salary starts to teeter off, and at that point it is extremely likely that he fetches one last big contract back home in Russia. Just because he is signed until 2025, doesn?t mean he is obligated to play in the NHL until then if he so desires to leave.
So the annual salaries aren?t as big as the extensions he turned down from Atlanta (12-years/$101M, 7-years/$70M), but he does get the $100M total he desired, and a chance to win a Stanley Cup in the immediate future for a very reputable organization.
Grade for Kovalchuk: A
This move puts the Devils approximately $5M above the salary cap, so they have a lot of work to do to relieve this problem. The error seems to be the addition of Jason Arnott prior to free agency, but they would still be over the cap without him and his $4.5M cap hit. This means they are going to have to trade some of the following players and their cap hits: Patrick Elias, 3 years at $6M; Brian Rolston, 2 years at $5.062M; Danius Zubrus, 3 years at $3.4M; Colin White, 2 years at $3M.
So while the Devils were able to land the biggest fish the NHL free agent market has ever seen, and allowed themselves to stay in Stanley Cup contention, it may force them to jettison some of their roster for salary cap reasons much like the Chicago Blackhawks have just done.
Grade for New Jersey: B
Nick can be reached via email nickobergan@hotmail.com or @NickObergan |
