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The "Now That We've Had Time To Digest This Thread"


Colorado Rockies 1976

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Interesting points by original poster on NHL. They definitely have to be wondering if Kovy was an isolated incident or first of many(or at least a few) And the fact they have no binding agreements to prevent this from happening is troubling. Although it's hard for the NHL to grab players from European leagues regardless of contracts... and then cry when it happens to them.

 

For me this only makes me feel more strongly that long-term deals are a mistake. For teams especially, but even for players. 

 

How many of these type of deals ever work out? Hossa? Chara (which I think was under 10 years). Otherwise you've got Yashin/DiPietro which were disaster for Islanders. Luongo himself said "My contract sucks" and I'm sure management agreed. Bryz was bought out. I can't think of any others at this time of night... but I'm sure other people could add to the list.

 

It is Kovy's fault that he signed the contract. He may not have known that he would change his mind about it in 3 years... but that's why you don't sign one. If you want career flexibility signing a 15 year contract is a bad idea.

 

The thing that sucks the most is that the Devils lose a pick this year for signing a player who is no longer here. 

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Honestly, what the hell is stopping Ovechkin or Malkin from doing the same thing now? This is truly a game-changing precedent that has been set here.

 

I don't think Malkin will leave yet.   Ovechkin, I'm not sure.   The four guys who were getting pressure in January were Datsyuk, Kovy, Ovechkin and Malkin.   One's jumped.   I guess we will see.

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It is Kovy's fault that he signed the contract. He may not have known that he would change his mind about it in 3 years... but that's why you don't sign one. If you want career flexibility signing a 15 year contract is a bad idea.

 

 

This. Teams are on the hook for bad contracts. Players should be too. In exchange for guaranteed money, you give up flexibility. Kovy got his cake and ate it too, and there's nothing to stop other guys from doing the same thing.

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Honestly, what the hell is stopping Ovechkin or Malkin from doing the same thing now? This is truly a game-changing precedent that has been set here.

I don't think Malkin will leave yet. Ovechkin, I'm not sure. The four guys who were getting pressure in January were Datsyuk, Kovy, Ovechkin and Malkin. One's jumped. I guess we will see.

You know that series on NHL Network, 'A Day That Changed The Game'?. Well... Today may have been one. Edited by MadDog2020
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Clearly, as far as dark days in the Devils franchise go, Kovy "retiring" ranks waaaaaay the hell up there.  Goes without saying...and even worse, as fans it was damned near impossible to see this coming.  We were all blindsided today, and as expected, we all experienced a lot of emotions and feelings, and pretty much all of them were negative.

 

I am disappointed, but now that the shock is over, I can't say that I am angry with Kovy necessarily.  Don't get me wrong, as far as CR1976 the Devils fan goes, the fvcker's dead to me forever, but the human being in me sees it this way:

 

He's not American.  He's Russian.  Clearly Russia feels right to him in a way America never did. 

 

It's easy to say, "Well, if he had any doubts about staying here, he shouldn't have signed that deal."  He signed it in 2010.  It's now 2013.  A lot can happen in three years.  People can change.  What seemed like a great idea in 2010 can feel like a lousy one a few years later.  Since Kovy clearly had a change of heart and no longer wanted to be a part of this franchise, it's a good thing that the Devils are no longer on the hook for paying him $77 million.  Yes, it's going to hurt in the short term, but Kovy's contract was a bad one the minute it was signed.  I can't imagine he could've held up continuing to carry the workload that was being asked of him.  His deal was going to be a rough one in time (same as Parise's).  With this contract null and void, new opportunities WILL present themselves, but I'm not going to pretend that the Devils became a better team today.   

 

So in short, I can't bring myself to hate Kovy.

 

But I can hate the NHL right now.  Because today showed that the brand has been cheapened, and the NHL has no else to blame but themselves for this.  They've taken the brand for granted for too long, and because of their arrogance (thank you Gary Bettman), they allowed another game to ride into their turf and become a competitor for the world's best players' services.  This is such a sad joke.  The NHL is supposed to be the best league in the world, the league where the top players from all-around want to compete for the right to hoist hockey's ultimate trophy. That's supposed to be a fvcking NO BRAINER!  Remember, it wasn't so long ago that Russians were yearning, screaming, begging for the chance to play in the NHL...not the opportunity to go BACK! 

 

With Kovy's defection, to me, everything about the NHL took a hit today.  The league, how it's perceived, the Cup...somehow all of it seems a little less significant, a little less important, and the NHL is not a league that can afford to take hits to its credibility like this.  One of its best players willingly turned his back on what is allegedly THE friggin' PREMIER hockey league of the world.  I'm still amazed that this could even happen, regardless of the circumstances.   

 

Anywhere, just curious where others who are somewhat breathing normally again are.

Your points about the decline of the nhl have been overlooked and are very important.

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The points about the decline are BS.   The league is booming, it's just you're in a forum full of NA who follow other sports which have no competition.

 

There is nothing they can do about this.   They have a wide player pool and someone else has been able to tap in on this in the model of soccer, with stupid money and no intention of running a business.

 

The only way the NHL has reaped what they sow is in their transfer dealings where they lowball everyone.   So there is zero built-in sympathy.   And sooner or later player pool countries in Europe will all have KHL franchises in their countries.

Edited by maxpower
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You know that series on NHL Network, 'A Day That Changed The Game'?. Well... Today may have been one.

Speaking of the NHL Network, nice timing for a summer hiatus. Can't put the TSN feed on for something dramatic like this instead of rerunning old Winter Classics?

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You know that series on NHL Network, 'A Day That Changed The Game'?. Well... Today may have been one.

Speaking of the NHL Network, nice timing for a summer hiatus. Can't put the TSN feed on for something dramatic like this instead of rerunning old Winter Classics?

Meh, that's fine. I don't need to listen to reports from the Canadian media on this. I don't care what outsiders have to say about it really. I turned off SNY after the Mets Classics game ended and put Seinfeld on because I didn't feel like listening to their take. The NY media has no idea how to cover the Devils without bias. Waste of time. Edited by MadDog2020
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The points about the decline are BS.   The league is booming, it's just you're in a forum full of NA who follow other sports which have no competition.

 

There is nothing they can do about this.   They have a wide player pool and someone else has been able to tap in on this in the model of soccer, with stupid money and no intention of running a business.

 

The only way the NHL has reaped what they sow is in their transfer dealings where they lowball everyone.   So there is zero built-in sympathy.   And sooner or later player pool countries in Europe will all have KHL franchises in their countries.

I'd like to see transfer fees, like in soccer. While that might lead to the same system of haves and have nots that the North American leagues (even baseball, at least when compared to soccer) have mostly managed to avoid, it would at least feel better now. Though I guess that would wreak havoc on the salary cap. Still, however you feel about JVB, he put himself in trouble to sign Kovalchuk, and was probably counting on Kovalchuk generating some revenue to help him with that (jersey sales, butts in seats, a playoff run), and he deserves to recoup some of that loss. 

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Even though this is entirely Kovalchuk 's decision, I can't help but be pissed again about that dumb lockout.

 

At the time, some were saying that by letting it go on so long, the league was taking a chance that the fans would get used to there being no hockey and would find something else to do with their time -- even when the game came back.

 

It turns out that maybe it was the players, too, who found something else to do -- or in Kovy's case, somewhere else that they'd rather be.

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I'd like to see transfer fees, like in soccer. While that might lead to the same system of haves and have nots that the North American leagues (even baseball, at least when compared to soccer) have mostly managed to avoid, it would at least feel better now. Though I guess that would wreak havoc on the salary cap. Still, however you feel about JVB, he put himself in trouble to sign Kovalchuk, and was probably counting on Kovalchuk generating some revenue to help him with that (jersey sales, butts in seats, a playoff run), and he deserves to recoup some of that loss. 

 

Why would the NHL want a fair transfer system?   They import far more than they export.   Most exports aren't under contract.

 

And on that topic there were rumors that SKA did want to purchase Kovalchuk.   But I'm not sure that's even possible or if it was, the Devils would see very much of that money

Edited by maxpower
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Why would the NHL want a fair transfer system?   They import far more than they export.   Most exports aren't under contract.

 

And on that topic there were rumors that SKA did want to purchase Kovalchuk.   But I'm not sure that's even possible or if it was, the Devils would see very much of that money

I'm not saying it would completely benefit the NHL, I just prefer a fair, sensible system rather than getting get punched completely by surprise because there's no precedent and no rules.

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Posted this on the "news" thread....but I think it goes better here......

The fact that we didn't know, doesn't mean management didn't know about this.

 

This offseason we traded for one of the top goalies on the league and signed a couple of the best available free agents. This is what made you feel so optimistic, but these very same unusual (for us) signings and trades are (to me) a sign that LL knew what Kovalchuk would do long ago. Also, you have to think that at least Ryder ended up coming here partly because of #17. In Schneider's case...guess what, in 2 years you just became the face of the franchise.

 

He also announced it just as our cap space was small and with Henrique and Josefson still un-extended.

 

It's not his fault we lose next year's pick. First it'd be Bettman's fault for imposing that penalty in the first place, then also Lou's fault for not giving up that 29th pick.

 

It's also not his fault Parise didn't sign here. We had the cap space, the team, and the run to the Cup; he simply wanted to go play in his hometown with his boyfriend.

 

This absolutely sucks, and I understand that many feel betrayed, but I do think this was known by management before the season, before free agency...

 

I'm going to go Moneyball here and say you can't straight up replace Kovalchuk and his minutes and production, but you can build a winning team with the right pieces. This definitively got my mood down, but I'm not ready to say this is franchise ending as some have said. Let's see what happens in the next week...better yet, let's see what happens on the ice.

 

We can't go crazy and really give everything to get Vanek or something like that. PDB should know what he needs to make it happen. We won 3 Cups without a 50 goal scorer and Kovalchuk won 0 while scoring 50 goals.

 

If we add a couple guys that are improvements over what we currently have we'll be ok (and now we have the cap space to do so). We have better goaltending, Clowe is an improvement over Clarkson (imo), we can extend Henrique and hopefully he'll bounce back from his sophomore wall, Ryder will do his thing....

 

Just not ready to write this season off yet.

 

Good guess, and I know for a fact that you are 100% correct that management knew about this for a while.  I know this doesn't sound credible because to you people, I'm just some guy on the internet, but I've been on this forum for over a decade now and I've never been one to just make stuff up, but a coworker of mine is taking a class in Boston this week and one guy in his class happens to be a scout for the Canucks.  They were in the class when the news broke today and the Vancouver scout said it was "hush-hush insider knowledge" that Kovalchuk decided this move last month, and that all league executives knew about it, obviously including Lou Lamoriello. 

Also a little interesting tidbit this guy dropped is that he was in the room when the Schneider deal was completed, it happened at 2:45 AM the night before the draft.

And yeah, regardless of how people want to justify their selfish hatred of Parise, Kovalchuk's contract had nothing to do with it.  Zach even said the Devils made a comparable offer, but he just wanted to go home and be teammates with his buddy.  Also it's funny how many people on here blast Parise for wanting to play with Suter, and even Scott Niedermayer for wanting to play with his brother, but nobody throws the same criticisms toward Clowe and Ryder.

 

 

Also I've convinced myself this penalty will be removed.

Because believe me: if it isn't, I won't spend another penny on this second rate joke of a league.

I thought this at first too, but now that I think about it, I highly doubt we get to keep that first round pick.  The penalty wasn't for Kovalchuk's current contract, it was for the previous one that was REJECTED!  They punished us for a contract that they didn't even allow to go into effect in the first place, so him leaving during the current contract unfortunately has no bearing on that asinine punishment.

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i don't think any executives outside of NJ really knew this was coming. i can tell you for a fact that none of his teammates did up until today's announcement.

How do you know this for a fact?  I really doubt this Canucks scout is making it up.  Also, even if the players didn't know, it's one thing for the team execs to know and quite another for the players to know.  If word spread to the players it would have a much greater chance of leaking, especially considering how much time elapsed between the time Kovalchuk made up his mind and today.

Edited by devilsfan26
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How do you know this for a fact?  I really doubt this Canucks scout is making it up.  Also, even if the players didn't know, it's one thing for the team execs to know and quite another for the players to know.  If word spread to the players it would have a much greater chance of leaking, especially considering how much time elapsed between the time Kovalchuk made up his mind and today.

 

You are getting this information third-hand and ex post facto.  It sounds like utter garbage.

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You are getting this information third-hand and ex post facto.  It sounds like utter garbage.

Hey like I said I know it may not sound credible and it's always easy to call bullsh!t whenever someone says they have inside info, but I have known the guy who told me this story for a long time and have no reason to doubt him.  Also when you put it together with cubanjd's speculation it does make sense.

 

Also, just semantics but wouldn't I be getting the information second-hand and not third-hand?  Scout --> coworker --> me.  Unless I'm mistaken, the people getting it third-hand are the people I tell.

Edited by devilsfan26
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Hey like I said I know it may not sound credible and it's always easy to call bullsh!t whenever someone says they have inside info, but I have known the guy who told me this story for a long time and have no reason to doubt him.  Also when you put it together with cubanjd's speculation it does make sense.

 

Also, just semantics but wouldn't I be getting the information second-hand and not third-hand?  Scout --> coworker --> me.  Unless I'm mistaken, the people getting it third-hand are the people I tell.

 

 

No, because it goes Exec who tells his scouts everything -> scout who keeps his mouth shut along with all other scouts, not a word of this leaks to anyone in the media -> coworker -> you.

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No, because it goes Exec who tells his scouts everything -> scout who keeps his mouth shut along with all other scouts, not a word of this leaks to anyone in the media -> coworker -> you.

Fair enough, but I've been posting here for ten years and can you think of one time where I just made up some BS story?  The only part of this where it could be untrue is if the guy either isn't actually a scout, or maybe he is a scout but didn't actually have any inside knowledge.  Why someone would make up either of those things doesn't make sense to me though so until I find a reason to believe otherwise I'll believe it.  You don't think it's feasible that team execs hide info from the media until it's necessary for it to be announced?

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Fair enough, but I've been posting here for ten years and can you think of one time where I just made up some BS story?  The only part of this where it could be untrue is if the guy either isn't actually a scout, or maybe he is a scout but didn't actually have any inside knowledge.  Why someone would make up either of those things doesn't make sense to me though so until I find a reason to believe otherwise I'll believe it.  You don't think it's feasible that team execs hide info from the media until it's necessary for it to be announced?

 

I'm not doubting you at all, I'm doubting your coworker.  Indeed, if you were lying, you'd make up a much more believable source than 'my coworker knows a scout'.  You'd cut the coworker out and say that you knew the guy.

 

I do believe that's feasible and indeed, sundstrom can tell you I thought it was goofy all these signings NJ was doing, whether they were going to look into trading Kovalchuk because the money didn't seem to make sense.  I just don't see why (or how) it would've escaped the Devils' organization. 

Edited by Triumph
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I think Lou had a decent idea.    I don't think this was "out there" per se, though.   Someone would leak it because it's a groundbreaking story, not to mention you have a few sources who like to rustle JVB's sh!t for whatever reason.   And what better way than "Owner too broke to play star player, so star player QUITS."   Especially a few weeks back when they hadn't thrown money around and it would hold up to scrutiny, and also potentially harm the team.

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