July 21: Near-misses

Hockey: The NHL rejected the Ilya Kovalchuk deal. The Devils attempted to sign him to a 17-year, $102 million contract. The league states that the contract was designed to circumvent the salary cap, thus making it an invalid contract. Interesting call by the NHL. TSN asked the two most important questions about such a contract: first, are these kind of monster contracts good for the NHL (assuming the contract was not rejected); second, was the NHL justified in rejecting this contract?

You better believe the NHL was justified by rejecting this contract. The NHL pays the wages to the players. To bring parity to the league, they instituted a salary cap. In a way, the NHL said that a player is only worth a percentage of a team's available funds, rather than a player being with a certain dollar amount. Now, that's not exactly how it plays out in arbitration, but is more or less accurate. For example, given his current contract and the current salary cap, Alex Ovechkin is worth $9,538,462, or 16% of a team's salary. He's the star player of the team, leads them in points, leadership, energy, and humor. Logic would say that his value is accurate.

Looking at Kovalchuk, he would have been costing the Devils $6 million a season (for EVER!). That amounts to 10.1% of the Devils' salary. Now, that in itself isn't bad. After all, he will likely lead the team in goals and points next year. He brings leadership. That part is okay. What the league didn't like was the fact that, although only costing the Devils $6 million (or 10.1%) he would have been paid $11.5 million (or, if making that much a year, would be a cap consumption of 19.4%). No player is worth $11.5 million. Especially not one who isn't the center piece of a team. The league was justified in saying that offering a player that much money, then reducing the overall impact for the team by adding on additional years (which he wasn't likely to even play in) with little financial cost, was done in an effort to circumvent the cap.

This leads to the other question. These monster contracts are only good if it means keeping a franchise player in your city for a reasonable amount. Moreover, these long-term contracts should only be done to keep proven players in the city they want to be in. Luongo, Ovechkin, and Crosby (although, he doesn't have a massive contract) all want to be in their respective cities. Kovalchuk wants money. If he truly wanted to play in the NHL (and not chase the money to the KHL) then he would have signed with the LA Kings. Reasonably long term contracts are balanced, fair to the team, fair to the league, and don't have that player making twice as much a year than the salary cap hit.

Kovalchuk's signing was a farce. The league did the right thing. Will he sign again with the Devils? Doubtful. Teams with the room might offer him a 3 or 4 year contract worth $35+ million. After this fiasco I'm not that the Devils will want to have the looming eye of the league gazing down on their next round of contract talks to keep the Russian sniper in the red and black. He wants money and playoff experience. Until he gets more play off experience I would argue that he isn't worth more than $6 million a season. Even then, if he had 3 cups I would say he isn't worth more than $7 million.