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New Kovy Update ("As the Kovy Turns")


DevsFan7545

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over under on voided deals next off-season is 1.5. and i'd take the under on that one. the league doesn't want voided deals. play by the rules and there won't be any problems.

all these contract play by the rules which are outlined in the current cba....obviously bloch doesnt know how to read them

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I'm on the border of Roxbury and Mt. Olive.

I was pretty much born a Jets fan, as my Dad was into them from when he was little. And I can say I will be a fan till I die. :cheers:

I always go down to Miami for one game a year- this year's game: 9/26 against the Jets. Its on bro. Can't wait!!

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they must've done so during the case, because it's not in the summary of the league's position on the case (but bloch does mention it, and a rebuttal to the claim by the NHLPA)

fine, how's this for a strawman? you are basically arguing that the league should reject none of these deals or all of them. that's ridiculous on its face. the zetterberg deal has two years at $1M per, when he is 39 and 40. but the red wings have osgood playing for 1.5M, and they had chelios playing for relative peanuts, and it's not out of the realm of possibility that these contracts will be played. the deals last off-season is probably where the league should have stepped in, but they didn't, for reasons that are unclear - perhaps they were waiting for a challenge like this one.

the league is still acting in a reasonable, if not necessarily principled way in my view - they have taken the most damning contract and gotten precedent to reject it. they've effectively stopped anyone from signing a multi-year deal before the age of 35 that takes them to age 43.

also don't forget they allowed league-wide darling tampa bay vinny lecavalier on a front-loaded deal, but again, that takes him until 39/40.

over under on voided deals next off-season is 1.5. and i'd take the under on that one. the league doesn't want voided deals. play by the rules and there won't be any problems.

lol - don't know my first name, i guess

Sorry Triumph. I don't agree that the league is acting in a reasonable way.

There is no "you can cheat a little bit and everything's alright". Cap circumvention is cap circumvention no matter how you slice, dice, and quarter it.

You've got Boston, Philadelphia, Vancouver, Chicago, Detroit, NYI ALL circumventing the cap. I don't freaking care that Pronger's contract is a 35+ contract or that he MAY play until he's 43, it's still cap circumvention.

And whether anyone will admit it or not, NOW the NHL has an age limit. When you reach 42 years old, you''re now going to be too old to play further and you have to take one year contracts if you want to play longer? If you don't want to do that, then you have to retire at 42 whether you want to or not?

That's how my thought process roles.

The arbi, Bettman, and the NHL created this situation, now they get to clean it up.

Oh and one more thing, if I were the players, I'd fire every buffoon that represents them in the NHLPA and replace every single one of them. This union has been bent over the proverbial stump not once, but TWICE. And they will again when the CBA becomes an issue again shortly. They're totally ineffective and aren't capable of representing a dog and pony show.

Edited by IceThief
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i'm not going to address the conspiracy points as those are impossible to argue. i will address your point about age limits - that's not true, and it's a point i've been making throughout this process. the percentage of 27 year old players who play until 41 is tiny. the percentage of 39 year old players who play until 41 is much greater. the CBA already has safeguards in place to ensure that old players don't sign contracts that they have no intention of completing. if you want to sign a 42 year old player to a multi year deal, that would definitely go through. it'd probably be stupid, but the league would not challenge a deal like that.

plus if kovalchuk signed a 17 year deal at 102 million that paid him 6 million a season with an NMC throughout, the league would've likely allowed it.

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i'm not going to address the conspiracy points as those are impossible to argue. i will address your point about age limits - that's not true, and it's a point i've been making throughout this process. the percentage of 27 year old players who play until 41 is tiny. the percentage of 39 year old players who play until 41 is much greater. the CBA already has safeguards in place to ensure that old players don't sign contracts that they have no intention of completing. if you want to sign a 42 year old player to a multi year deal, that would definitely go through. it'd probably be stupid, but the league would not challenge a deal like that.

plus if kovalchuk signed a 17 year deal at 102 million that paid him 6 million a season with an NMC throughout, the league would've likely allowed it.

Yeah it goes back to Bloch's point about not viewing contracts in a vacuum. Even though players can, and Kovalchuk absolutely can play until he's 44, and he's a good enough player you know he's not going to fizzle out in say, 4 years or so. However, the reason he was signed to that contract length was not because he is assured to be playing that late into his career, but rather because it exploited the cap to make a $10 million deal into a $6 million deal. And that's the core reason why the grievance is denied.

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they must've done so during the case, because it's not in the summary of the league's position on the case (but bloch does mention it, and a rebuttal to the claim by the NHLPA)

fine, how's this for a strawman? you are basically arguing that the league should reject none of these deals or all of them. that's ridiculous on its face. the zetterberg deal has two years at $1M per, when he is 39 and 40. but the red wings have osgood playing for 1.5M, and they had chelios playing for relative peanuts, and it's not out of the realm of possibility that these contracts will be played. the deals last off-season is probably where the league should have stepped in, but they didn't, for reasons that are unclear - perhaps they were waiting for a challenge like this one.

the league is still acting in a reasonable, if not necessarily principled way in my view - they have taken the most damning contract and gotten precedent to reject it. they've effectively stopped anyone from signing a multi-year deal before the age of 35 that takes them to age 43.

also don't forget they allowed league-wide darling tampa bay vinny lecavalier on a front-loaded deal, but again, that takes him until 39/40.

I hope you're being ironic with the "straw man" thing, because that again is not what I've said. What I've said is that the league should have been rejecting "retirement deals" when they first arose, or at the very least enunciating some sort of objectively based guidelines where it would not challenge a deal. It didn't, but instead huffed and puffed with vague pronouncements of "investigations" until it could sandbag a team that was doing nothing different in principle than other deals that had been registered. And you better believe that the league is taking advantage of the ambiguities in Bloch's decision, so that it can raise the specter of rejecting a deal it doesn't like. Even if that other deal gets past the arbitrator, the uncertainty is enough to get teams to back off and kowtow to the front office. This is not good faith.

(And yes, the league is free to issue its own interpretative guidelines that merely say what deals it will register and which ones it won't. An arbitrator would ultimately decide if the guidelines are invalid if a deal is rejected.)

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i'm not going to address the conspiracy points as those are impossible to argue. i will address your point about age limits - that's not true, and it's a point i've been making throughout this process. the percentage of 27 year old players who play until 41 is tiny. the percentage of 39 year old players who play until 41 is much greater. the CBA already has safeguards in place to ensure that old players don't sign contracts that they have no intention of completing. if you want to sign a 42 year old player to a multi year deal, that would definitely go through. it'd probably be stupid, but the league would not challenge a deal like that.

plus if kovalchuk signed a 17 year deal at 102 million that paid him 6 million a season with an NMC throughout, the league would've likely allowed it.

flat deal would definately be allowed. if he wants the money, he has to play for it. if he doesn't want to retire and is diminished, the team has to buy him out.

nothing wrong with that at all.

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flat deal would definately be allowed. if he wants the money, he has to play for it. if he doesn't want to retire and is diminished, the team has to buy him out.

nothing wrong with that at all.

Lou would probably do it but there ain't no way Kovy is taking 6 mill a season in his prime.

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I hope you're being ironic with the "straw man" thing, because that again is not what I've said. What I've said is that the league should have been rejecting "retirement deals" when they first arose

so in other words what i said. that none of these deals should have been allowed.

or at the very least enunciating some sort of objectively based guidelines where it would not challenge a deal.

this would have been much, much worse than what it ended up doing. i hope you can understand why. first, that's not in the CBA at all. second, it would just create an artificial line under which all of the contracts would slide.

(i see what you are saying parenthetically at the bottom, but that's still total bullsh!t, and the NHLPA would be able to challenge that and possibly win)

It didn't, but instead huffed and puffed with vague pronouncements of "investigations" until it could sandbag a team that was doing nothing different in principle than other deals that had been registered.

in principle doesn't matter, in principal does, and this deal is far different in principal.

And you better believe that the league is taking advantage of the ambiguities in Bloch's decision, so that it can raise the specter of rejecting a deal it doesn't like. Even if that other deal gets past the arbitrator, the uncertainty is enough to get teams to back off and kowtow to the front office. This is not good faith.

(And yes, the league is free to issue its own interpretative guidelines that merely say what deals it will register and which ones it won't. An arbitrator would ultimately decide if the guidelines are invalid if a deal is rejected.)

the NHLPA should have gotten a better arbitrator or made a better argument. it did neither. cue price is right losing music.

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this would have been much, much worse than what it ended up doing. i hope you can understand why. first, that's not in the CBA at all. second, it would just create an artificial line under which all of the contracts would slide.

(i see what you are saying parenthetically at the bottom, but that's still total bullsh!t, and the NHLPA would be able to challenge that and possibly win)

There wouldn't be anything for the PA to challenge until a deal is actually rejected. A team/player could choose to abide by guidelines or not. The league would reject the deal per its own guidelines and it goes to the arbitrator. The arbitrator doesn't really rule on the guidelines as such, he just determines if the deal complies with the CBA.

There is nothing in the CBA that I am aware of that prevents this. And it actually is quite preferable to the league arbitrarily rejecting deals with zero transparency.

EDIT: And one last thing about the cap being about competitive balance. The league would in all likelihood be in violation of the antitrust laws if it was actually designed to be a revenue sharing device. The only reason a sports league can get away with a salary cap is because the product is competition. A group of widget manufacturers could not.

Edited by Daniel
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Exactly. It is like he was ruling based on what the CBA SHOULD say, not what it actually states.

Imo he messed up the decision. He made a decision based on rules that werent concrete. His decision was based on like what you said the Cba should say. on another note do you think the ruling would have been more in favor our way if lou would have switched the nmc to the back end of the deal instead of the front end of the deal? Seems to me that played a significant part in the decision

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Imo he messed up the decision. He made a decision based on rules that werent concrete. His decision was based on like what you said the Cba should say. on another note do you think the ruling would have been more in favor our way if lou would have switched the nmc to the back end of the deal instead of the front end of the deal? Seems to me that played a significant part in the decision

It's clear that he felt the contract was wrong and wanted to find a way to reject it, even though virtually every principle of contract interpretation says the deal is valid.

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Between the Kovy-mess and all the Revis stuff with the Jets, I am sick of all this discussion about contracts. I find it amazing that two of my favorite teams are facing a situation where their respective best players are currently not playing for them. :argh:

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There wouldn't be anything for the PA to challenge until a deal is actually rejected. A team/player could choose to abide by guidelines or not. The league would reject the deal per its own guidelines and it goes to the arbitrator. The arbitrator doesn't really rule on the guidelines as such, he just determines if the deal complies with the CBA.

There is nothing in the CBA that I am aware of that prevents this. And it actually is quite preferable to the league arbitrarily rejecting deals with zero transparency.

you mean there's nothing in the collective bargaining agreement that prevents the league from inventing arbitrary rules by which to reject or accept contracts? i wish i knew more about the history of collective bargaining in sports in general, but from what i understand, this would be way out of line. the league has absolutely no basis for inventing such a thing.

EDIT: And one last thing about the cap being about competitive balance. The league would in all likelihood be in violation of the antitrust laws if it was actually designed to be a revenue sharing device. The only reason a sports league can get away with a salary cap is because the product is competition. A group of widget manufacturers could not.

it's a tiny part of the league's overall argument. the phrase competitive balance appears twice in the final decision.

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you mean there's nothing in the collective bargaining agreement that prevents the league from inventing arbitrary rules by which to reject or accept contracts? i wish i knew more about the history of collective bargaining in sports in general, but from what i understand, this would be way out of line. the league has absolutely no basis for inventing such a thing.

It's not a principle that's unique to collective bargaining agreements. The best analogy I can make is the Department of Justice issuing its own guidelines about when it will choose to prosecute a case, which involves interpretation of the US Code, court precedents and so forth. On their own, the Guidelines don't mean anything. The DOJ chooses to prosecute pursuant to its guidelines. The accused can then goes before a judge and argues the DOJ lacks the power to prosecute the particular case, or something else.

It doesn't even have to be anything formal. Bettman/Daly could have had a meeting with the PA, the owners, the media, or no one at all, and just said, we consider deals that do X, Y and Z to be in violation of the CBA, and we will reject them. The more specific the better. A particular team, player or the PA can say you're wrong and do a deal anyway and take a chance with the arbitrator, or voluntarily decide not not to rock the boat.

A transparent and well-defined arbitrary rule is much better than an arbitrary rule that is vague and kept under wraps, which is what is actually the case now.

EDIT: Or better yet, the league can make an announcement in the positive, that says this type of long term deal is ok. In fact, they have every opportunity to affirmatively say, for instance, the Hossa deal is ok. The league can't even do that, but instead limply say "we're still investigating it." It's essentially a cover to go back on a precedent it now finds inconvenient.

Like I said, it's bad faith, pure and simple.

Edited by Daniel
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Thanks for posting this. Good stuff from Greg.

Kovy's mom has got it going on

She's all I want and I've waited for so long

Baby can't you see, you're just not the girl for me

I know I might be wrong but

I'm in love with Kovy's mom

:clap2:

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After reading the entire 20 page report, there is an easy way to redo this existing contract and it would pass.... though I don't think Lou would want to.....

Give all 17 years a No Movement Clause.

We would be on the hook for 6.whatever for the entire 17 years to the cap, but it would still mean we could add Kovy for only 6.whatever for the time he would be here! I am ok with this... but pretty sure Lou wouldn't be.

(In looking at people still speculating about the decision, please go read the 20 page report. It was actually really well written and made sense. They found the loop hole to screw over the loop hole we found.....)

Edited by thighway
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After reading the entire 20 page report, there is an easy way to redo this existing contract and it would pass.... though I don't think Lou would want to.....

Give all 17 years a No Movement Clause.

We would be on the hook for 6.whatever for the entire 17 years to the cap, but it would still mean we could add Kovy for only 6.whatever for the time he would be here! I am ok with this... but pretty sure Lou wouldn't be.

(In looking at people still speculating about the decision, please go read the 20 page report. It was actually really well written and made sense. They found the loop hole to screw over the loop hole we found.....)

The League wasn't against the NMC or the years directly after it. They had a problem with the last years of the contract. NMC or not the Devs could still buyout the contract at the end or Kovy could retire and there would be no cap hit.

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