i assume by 10/80 and 10/77 you are referring to longer contracts, because a 10 year deal at that cap hit would be godawful. the first contract paid out much more money in 12 years. you are asking kovalchuk to give up like $15 million. it's easy to see why he would balk at that.
for every crosby and ovechkin to erroneously compare this deal to, there's an eric staal or vincent lecavalier.
and yeah i've been lurking HFboards during this mess and man are there a lot of single digit IQs over there.
yeah, these are 13 year, low $90M contracts, I'm just removing the pretense. he seems to be looking for 10 years and money. anything after that is up in the air, he could play it out, he probably won't. in these, if he plays it out, he either gets his money by playing or by being bought out.
as for asking him to give up $15M. it is what it is. his demands and our cap position can't be rectified. there's no one else (in this league, at least) in on him. the Kings continually are signing and using their space. so, since this is a negotiation, shouldn't he be losing something? say, $77M for 10 years, and whatever comes afterwards... it's nothing to sneeze at.
he can come back and say "that's BS. you offered me $95M, and now you want me to accept this." fine. but those demands lead to this disaster. he lost. now it's in his court. he can take that money or he can go play for SKA and take non guaranteed money and fade away. I could care less.
I just do not think this guy is a martyr, and the CW (not as much here), is that he's a big-time martyr.
Edited by maxpower, 25 August 2010 - 05:42 PM.