NHL Offseason 2010

[tjung0831]

17 years and $100mil is the rumor...

[tjung0831]

Gagne trade to Tampa said to be complete.

[Feanor]

Any idea for who?

[10spro]

17 years and $100mil is the rumor...

He'll be crying for the KHL in less than half of that term, cause nobody will take him in the NHL.

[10spro]

Any idea for who?

Matt Walker and a 4th rounder.

[tjung0831]

Any idea for who?

Matt Walker and a 4th rounder.

Thats Gagne calling the shots there. Many teams with cap space could have beat that offer but Gagne chose where he wanted to go.
Tampa's top 6 is pretty sick...

[Naples39]

Rough day to be a flyers fan with kovalchuk to nj and gagne dumped. You knew gagne was a salary dump, but that isn't much of anything in return. The deal only makes sense for the flyers if they have another signing like turco lined up.

Now hearing 17 years $150m for kovalchuk. I always thought kovy wanted to go to LA, but if those numbers are true, no wonder Lombardi threw up his hands with this guy. Maybe the rumors were true that Kovalchuk wanted to upstage Ovechkin's deal. He's a good goal scorer but that contract would be preposterous for someone who hasn't proved to be a winner.

[LAking]

Rough day to be a flyers fan with kovalchuk to nj and gagne dumped. You knew gagne was a salary dump, but that isn't much of anything in return. The deal only makes sense for the flyers if they have another signing like turco lined up.

Now hearing 17 years $150m for kovalchuk. I always thought kovy wanted to go to LA, but if those numbers are true, no wonder Lombardi threw up his hands with this guy. Maybe the rumors were true that Kovalchuk wanted to upstage Ovechkin's deal. He's a good goal scorer but that contract would be preposterous for someone who hasn't proved to be a winner.

I doubt it's that much. It's probably around $100m for 17. Can someone explain how the buyout rules work? If the Devil's buy him out after 14 years at age 40, how is the cap hit calculated? Is it just based on the money that was left on the contract or is it based on the cap hit of the entire deal?

[Naples39]

Can someone explain how the buyout rules work? If the Devil's buy him out after 14 years at age 40, how is the cap hit calculated? Is it just based on the money that was left on the contract or is it based on the cap hit of the entire deal?

For players under the age of 26, a buyout costs the team one-third of remaining contract value.
For players 26 or older, a buyout costs two-thirds of remaining contract value.
On a buyout, the team takes a cap hit for a percentage of the buyout value (according to a very complex formula) spread over twice the length of the remaining contract years.

http://proicehockey.about.com/od/learnt ... ry_cap.htm

I think if a player retires the team is off the hook entirely with no cap hit.

[Sudz]

Why bother with a cap if deals like this are done by the teams? I thought the cap was part of the CBA fought for by the owners. Just uncap this thing and let teams do what they will.

over/under on games played by Gagne? I say 40. He's just been so dinged up.

[Feanor]

60, unless someone elbows him in the chin.

[Naples39]

Why bother with a cap if deals like this are done by the teams? I thought the cap was part of the CBA fought for by the owners. Just uncap this thing and let teams do what they will.

I suppose teams could theoretically sign someone to a 30 year contract that would take a player to his 60th birthday to reduce the cap hit, then be free of the contract for cap purposes when he retires with 20 years left on it. The only question is how far will teams push it? Hossa is signed to age 42 and Kovalchuk to 44. It's all allowed under the current CBA unless teams are wink*nudge agreeing that the player will retire at a certain age.

[10spro]

Not so fast on the long-term deals. The league rejected the 17 years deal and it's back to square one for Lou. What will happen most likely is that the deal will be lessened to 12 years but then you have the main $$$ issue again. I say time for LA to step up and offer the 80 million shorter term deal that was on the table. Bad timing for Kovi, everyone knows that he'll play the most, another 10 years.

[Feanor]

Good for the NHL. 17 year contacts for 27 year olds make the league look kind of ridiculous.

[Naples39]

I'm really surprised that the league will veto the deal. Sure, these contracts shouldn't be allowed, but right now they are. Period.

Where is the line on deals that are no good? Hossa's makes $7.9m a year until he turns 38, then makes a total of $3.5m the remaining four years of the deal. That's okay but Kovalchuck's isn't? Even Briere's yearly salary cuts in half the last two years in his late 30s. I guess Richard's and Ovechkin's contracts aren't as egregious, but where is the line.

Pass a rule against this stuff. Until then, too bad.

[10spro]

I'm really surprised that the league will veto the deal. Sure, these contracts shouldn't be allowed, but right now they are. Period.

Where is the line on deals that are no good? Hossa's makes $7.9m a year until he turns 38, then makes a of $4.2m the remaining for years of the deal. That's okay but Kovalchuck's isn't? Even Briere's yearly salary cuts in half the last two years in his late 30s. I guess Richard's and Ovechkin's contracts aren't as egregious, but where is the line.

Pass a rule against this stuff. Until then, too bad.

While Hossa's contracts pushes the boundary of believability, Kovalchuk's one just steps over it. If you care to look back in the last NHL thread at my views over the Hossa's signing with CHI, I was ridiculing the whole situation and how eventually the contract was going to blow in the Hawks face one day and the league's for that matter.

The implication is that Kovalchuk would be willing to play 6 years for near or at the league minimum, after holding out for a $100 million contract. Just the idea of Kovy making less than a million dollars for 7 years to soften the 9.5 million he makes per year over 10 years would fall under 'circumventing the cap'. Sooner or later the league had to draw a line. But I know where you're blowing the fuse at. The league should have never allowed the R. Di Pietro disastrous 15 years contract to go through in the first place, yes there are loops in the current CBA which managers are trying to break in, and I am sure that Lou is going to file a grievance.

Unless LA steps up (Lombardi must be laughing his a$$ off), Kovy will sign a shorter term with the Devils because it'll be hard for the league to prove that he won't play beyond 40 years old. If the contract was done in good faith, then there should be no problem re-structuring it so that it's the same term, but no front-loading. Then we'll see just how much 'faith' Lou had that Kovy would play till he's 44.

[Naples39]

If it was up to me I'd pass a rule tomorrow capping contract length at say 10 years, and that yearly pay can't deviate than by more than 30%. That would take care of nonsense like the Hossa and Kovalchuk contracts. I didn't note that Kovalchuk would earn $98.5 the first 11 years of the contract, then earn $3.5m over a six year period. Laughable.

At least with contracts like DiPietro, Ovechkin and Backstrom the yearly pay doesn't change too much so there's no clear circumvention of the cap. Then you have contracts like Pronger where the Flyers blatantly tried to circumvent that cap but failed because it was ruled a 35+ contract.

[GameSeven]

Well I'm obviously biased as a Devils fan. But while I call BS on all of these contracts, I also don't think the league should have the ability to arbitrarily change the rules mid-CBA. Plus, while I would've believed Lou to be among the last to hand out such a deal, I think he looked around and saw some of his primary competitors in Detroit and the now cup-winning Hawks locking up talent in this way and grudgingly went along with the flow.

Closer to home, to varying degrees the Flyers (Briere, Richards, Pronger) and Boston (Savard) have manipulated the cap.

Hell, Bobby Lou will average 7.125M over the next 8 years at a 5.33 cap hit.

And after ostensibly losing out on Hossa, which Lou was purported to have been pursuing, the Devils brass probably pressured Lou into making this type of deal. After all, LA was purportedly offering up 80 over 15 (5.33 cap hit)!

The fact is, a lot of teams are performing some cap gymnastics.

I think this deal gets restructured a little and Kovy remains a Devil (especially after the presser yesterday), although I think the principals involved can take a hard-line if they want to contest this with the league after they let all the others stand.

[tjung0831]

Well I'm obviously biased as a Devils fan. But while I call BS on all of these contracts, I also don't think the league should have the ability to arbitrarily change the rules mid-CBA. Plus, while I would've believed Lou to be among the last to hand out such a deal, I think he looked around and saw some of his primary competitors in Detroit and the now cup-winning Hawks locking up talent in this way and grudgingly went along with the flow.

Closer to home, to varying degrees the Flyers (Briere, Richards, Pronger) and Boston (Savard) have manipulated the cap.

Hell, Bobby Lou will average 7.125M over the next 8 years at a 5.33 cap hit.

And after ostensibly losing out on Hossa, which Lou was purported to have been pursuing, the Devils brass probably pressured Lou into making this type of deal. After all, LA was purportedly offering up 80 over 15 (5.33 cap hit)!

The fact is, a lot of teams are performing some cap gymnastics.

I think this deal gets restructured a little and Kovy remains a Devil (especially after the presser yesterday), although I think the principals involved can take a hard-line if they want to contest this with the league after they let all the others stand.

I honestly don't see how the league can win this one.....The CBA allows this. Regardless of intent to circumvent the cap and thats what the Devils did here...how can you really prove that in a court of law? However I will say, if the leagues ruling stands and the Devils have to take off a number of years of the contract making the cap hit go up, not to mention they have a huge contract coming up next year with Parise.....My Blues would be more than happly to take Travis Zajac off your hands!

[LAking]

Well I'm obviously biased as a Devils fan. But while I call BS on all of these contracts, I also don't think the league should have the ability to arbitrarily change the rules mid-CBA. Plus, while I would've believed Lou to be among the last to hand out such a deal, I think he looked around and saw some of his primary competitors in Detroit and the now cup-winning Hawks locking up talent in this way and grudgingly went along with the flow.

Closer to home, to varying degrees the Flyers (Briere, Richards, Pronger) and Boston (Savard) have manipulated the cap.

Hell, Bobby Lou will average 7.125M over the next 8 years at a 5.33 cap hit.

And after ostensibly losing out on Hossa, which Lou was purported to have been pursuing, the Devils brass probably pressured Lou into making this type of deal. After all, LA was purportedly offering up 80 over 15 (5.33 cap hit)!

The fact is, a lot of teams are performing some cap gymnastics.

I think this deal gets restructured a little and Kovy remains a Devil (especially after the presser yesterday), although I think the principals involved can take a hard-line if they want to contest this with the league after they let all the others stand.

Lombardi said in an interview before the league even rejected the contract that his offer was for 13 years/80 million and that the numbers didn't drop off as dramatically as the NJ deal. He basically said they weren't even close to the Devil's offer. They had no idea that the 17 year deal rumor was true until Monday.

At this point it's impossible for Kovy to come back to the Kings. He's already made his public statements about how he chose NJ for his family and all that BS. Even if it's obviously a lie to cover up his desire to make 20 million more I think it's too late now. It just wouldn't feel right if he all of a sudden signed with the Kings and said this is what he wanted all along.

[10spro]

Sami Salo somehow can get himself injured even when he's not on the ice. The often injured Finn will be out for at least 4 months with an achilles tendon cut and all of the sudden, the life span of Kevin Bieksa in a VAN uniform got extended with this news.

Salo apparently was injured playing floor hickey.

[10spro]

The cost of being SC champions continue to cost the Hawks dearly. Will they be able to retain Niemi who got a huge raise in arbitration? And it's not like Huet is underpaid either.

[10spro]

Reports are that the Hawks will walk away from the Niemi huge pay raise making him an UFA if they don't trade him. M. Turco is set to be signing a one year deal worth 1.75. Life of a rookie goalie.

[ScoopBrady]

I am pissed that they can't keep Niemi. That f***in Huet deal is killing them.

[Naples39]

I am pissed that they can't keep Niemi. That f***in Huet deal is killing them.

I can understand the frustration with losing your stanley cup goalie, but turco at 1.3 vs 2.75 for niemi? That's a no brainer, and frankly a steal for turco by any measure. I mean the flyers are paying more money to michael leighton!

Rumors were that turco turned down a 3 year, 6m offer from flyers last week. Can't verify, by kind of shocking decision by turco if you ask me.