July 20: Landing

Hockey: Ilya Kovalchuk has finally decided on where he wants to play... in a sense. The winger signed one of those contracts that makes everyone scratch their heads. He signed a 17-year, $102 million contract with the New Jersey Devils. That keeps him a Devil through the 2026-2027 season. If he plays to the end of that contract, he'll be retiring as a 44 year old.

Why does this make sense? It's simple. Players are paid what they are negotiated for on a yearly basis. That is, I could sign a 2-year, $11 million contract that sees me being paid $10 million in the first year and $1 million in the second. Although my earnings would be distributed like that, teams are only accountable for the average of the control. In this case, while I'm making $10 million, my salary cap hit is only $5.5 million. In other words, this is a way to subvert the salary cap.

So, how does this all break down for Kovalchuk exactly? Well, first, the numbers here are speculative and are retrieved via data-mining on the NHL servers. Second, it isn't done by me, it's done by the good fellows at www.capgeek.com. Kovalchuk is worth a $6 million a year salary cap until 2027. He is slated to make $6 million in the 2010-2011 and the 2011-2012 seasons. Now, here's the tough part, because no team would ever be willing to pay this much for a single player; Kovalchuk is slated to make $11.5 million for the 2012-2013 through the 2016-2017 seasons. After that, his salary slowly drops.

Let's say he signed a 7 year contract with identical numbers. That would mean he would be making $81 million over 8 season, same personal distribution of wealth, but the Devils would be looking at a cap hit of $10,125,000 yearly for Kovalchuk. That's why the long contract. In his final 5 years he's slated to make $550,000 a season, which is tiny if he's still able to play, but it does make the contract viable for a team now.

Nonetheless, he's a big price to keep around, and don't think about trading him, either. NMC for 2010-11 through 2016-17; NTC for 2018-19 through 2026-27, is on the bottom of the contract. NMC meaning No Movement Clause and NTC being No Trade Clause.

He may as well have tattooed a the Devil's logo on his chest.