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Lou: Change of Ownership Imminent


Derlique

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I assumed the cap recapture penalty would then, for the most part, fall to the team that acquires him. Is that not the case? I just figured it works where the team that gets the benefit, gets the penalty. A trade, while it may not have helped us this instant, could definitely have given us a 1st rd pick in the next draft.

 

What?! Who is giving up a 1st round pick for that contract?  

 

A:  It has 12 years left on it.

 

B:  The Devils only ate one of the big money years.  So you've got the next 5 years at $55M.

 

C:  After paying for the privilege of acquiring $11M in salary on the books for each of the next 5 years, you will also acquire a cap recapture penalty when Kovalchuk retires.

 

All this would be great if Kovalchuk were scoring 50 goals, but he had two of his worst years as a pro as a Devil and picked up two injuries.

 

You've already knocked out all the small and mid market teams with the salary alone.  The big market teams almost all have a contract like this they're going to have to eat down the line.  None of them offered Kovalchuk a deal like this back in 2010.  How is Kovalchuk an asset?  You can trade him for another contract like his, but just trading him for assets?  Unlikely.

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What?! Who is giving up a 1st round pick for that contract?  

 

A:  It has 12 years left on it.

 

B:  The Devils only ate one of the big money years.  So you've got the next 5 years at $55M.

 

C:  After paying for the privilege of acquiring $11M in salary on the books for each of the next 5 years, you will also acquire a cap recapture penalty when Kovalchuk retires.

 

All this would be great if Kovalchuk were scoring 50 goals, but he had two of his worst years as a pro as a Devil and picked up two injuries.

 

You've already knocked out all the small and mid market teams with the salary alone.  The big market teams almost all have a contract like this they're going to have to eat down the line.  None of them offered Kovalchuk a deal like this back in 2010.  How is Kovalchuk an asset?  You can trade him for another contract like his, but just trading him for assets?  Unlikely.

 

In 100% agreement on this.  Was going to post something similar.

 

Once the initial shock of losing a guy we thought would be one of the faces of the franchise for just about forever (in sports years) wears off, we should all realize, almost to a fan, how well this all worked out in the Devils' favor.  These contracts are pretty much disasters-in-waiting the second the pen hits the paper. 

Edited by Colorado Rockies 1976
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You forgot to point out the fact the owner gets compensated fair market value, so I am not really crying for those people.  There are entire cities where I wish they were siezed via eminent domain.

 

Having fought and won an eminent domain suit with my own property, I can assure you that the compensation is not nearly market value. Also, the original purpose was to build necessary infrastructure like highways. Towns started to use it to try and bolster their tax income and that is just wrong. 

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So the only piece of what I wrote you don't agree with is the piece about the Nets.

 

Vanderbeek was negotiating long before he bought he actually the Devils and the Nets at that time weren't going to Brooklyn nor was the present of the Nets owner involved with any transaction.

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And you think Kovalchuk is an asset with 12 years left on his deal coming off a year where he had the lowest scoring rate of his career and suffered an injury (this after being injured in the playoffs the year before).

 

Absolutely. You're saying not one team would make a play for one of the premier goal scorers in the league, despite his bloated contract? Furthermore, even getting back a sixth round pick for him is more than what we got in reality. So to answer your original question, Yes, of course we would would have been better off.

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Zero teams offered the Russian merc anything close to what he got from us when they only had to pay money. They aren't paying money AND an asset to get him now coming off of a poor year. That's the reality of a cap world (especially with the lower number this year) with cap penalties looming on the contract.

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Absolutely. You're saying not one team would make a play for one of the premier goal scorers in the league, despite his bloated contract? Furthermore, even getting back a sixth round pick for him is more than what we got in reality. So to answer your original question, Yes, of course we would would have been better off.

 

I am saying that no team could take on his contract without at least shipping an awful contract our way.

 

Kovalchuk had one year in the last 3 where he was among the top 10 goal scorers in the league, and one year in the last 3 where he was among the top 10 in shots per game, this despite playing more than any forward in the league, including double shifting the power play.  He would've had the 5th highest salary in the league next year.  Oh, and he's signed for 12 more seasons.  

 

As 4978 said, no one offered him that deal when he was a free agent.  Now he's lived up to the contract in 1 of the 3 years, there's a penalty associated with the contract, and NJ has hardly eaten any of the big money years, and the salary cap came way down.  Where is this big market team not already up to their ears in contracts that can just take this deal on?

Edited by Triumph
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Absolutely. You're saying not one team would make a play for one of the premier goal scorers in the league, despite his bloated contract? Furthermore, even getting back a sixth round pick for him is more than what we got in reality. So to answer your original question, Yes, of course we would would have been better off.

 

Re-read what Tri wrote.  If Kovy was scoring at his Thrasher rate and had looked great doing it in his three years as Devil and was 100% healthy, yeah, maybe someone takes on the deal (though it would have required getting another lifetime-like deal coming back). 

 

But that's not what happened.  Two very "meh" seasons (by Kovy's standards), one good one (that required a lot of ice time), and two injuries.  That would have led what few teams that might have been able to take on a horrible contract to be very cautious, especially with several big-money years coming. 

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Re-read what Tri wrote.  If Kovy was scoring at his Thrasher rate and had looked great doing it in his three years as Devil and was 100% healthy, yeah, maybe someone takes on the deal (though it would have required getting another lifetime-like deal coming back). 

 

But that's not what happened.  Two very "meh" seasons (by Kovy's standards), one good one (that required a lot of ice time), and two injuries.  That would have led what few teams that might have been able to take on a horrible contract to be very cautious, especially with several big-money years coming. 

This. Remember, only 2 teams were willing to pay him close to what he got when he was a free agent (us and LA). Now he's a worse player with a ton of mileage. That doesn't mean losing him doesn't hurt us (at least in the short team, though i agree with what many have said about the long term benefits of losing a cap anchor), or that he's not still an all star and borderline superstar, but he's not worth the money, especially now that the cap is lower. Even stupid teams with a long history of taking bad contracts like the Rags can't take a contract like Kovy's without clearing space, which would mean we take back a new bad contract, probably of a lesser player. If you want Luongo, then yes, we could have traded Kovy to Vancouver instead of a high draft pick. I'd rather have Schneider, both because he's a better player AND because he's not signed to one of the worst contracts in the sport, so Kovy leaving for Russia rather than accepting an NHL trade helped us.

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Re-read what Tri wrote.  If Kovy was scoring at his Thrasher rate and had looked great doing it in his three years as Devil and was 100% healthy, yeah, maybe someone takes on the deal (though it would have required getting another lifetime-like deal coming back). 

 

But that's not what happened.  Two very "meh" seasons (by Kovy's standards), one good one (that required a lot of ice time), and two injuries.  That would have led what few teams that might have been able to take on a horrible contract to be very cautious, especially with several big-money years coming.

  

If Vanderbeek is bouncing player checks, he's got to be gone sometime soon.  It was reported in late June, Lou's saying it - seems like it is going to happen.

 

Also re trading Kovalchuk - even if they had managed to do that, I cannot see how that would leave NJ in better shape than they're in now.

You both need to re-read yourselves what was written. He said IF they had managed to pull a trade, that we would not be better off. This is simply not true. IF we somehow traded kovy and gotten ANYTHING back in return, then we wouldv beaten what we got back in real life - which was nothing. If you want to argue, financially, then that's a different story, but we were talking about the on-ice product.

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You both need to re-read yourselves what was written. He said IF they had managed to pull a trade, that we would not be better off. This is simply not true. IF we somehow traded kovy and gotten ANYTHING back in return, then we wouldv beaten what we got back in real life - which was nothing. If you want to argue, financially, then that's a different story, but we were talking about the on-ice product.

 

I don't know that they're necessarily wrong.  If you have to take back another bad contract then the Devils may have been better off getting the cap space freely and signing up Jagr for 1 year and whatever else they do with it then taking on someone elses headache who may have been a net negative.

 

Basically, if you think Kovy with his contract was a negative asset then getting all his cap space back was a more positive event.  If the whole league thinks Kovy and his contract was a negative asset then the only trades you could have pulled off would be for other negative assets.  Ending up with cap space is a positive, which is better than ending up with a negative asset.

Obviously the above scenario is all predicated on what you think Kovy with his contract was worth going forward.

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Disagree devlman.  Chances are Devils would've been taking a lousy contract back.  Would you have wanted Luongo or someone else's potentially terrible contract?  I sure didn't. 

 

Anything isn't always the best thing, especially in this case.  Devils got rid of a terrible contract and didn't have to take one back in return. 

 

731 just stated it perfectly.  Kovy's contract was a negative asset and looked like it was only going to get worse, in relation to the actual on-ice returns...like I've said, it was a bad deal the second it was signed.  Getting it off the Devils' books was a positive event, even with nothing coming back.   

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You both need to re-read yourselves what was written. He said IF they had managed to pull a trade, that we would not be better off. This is simply not true. IF we somehow traded kovy and gotten ANYTHING back in return, then we wouldv beaten what we got back in real life - which was nothing. If you want to argue, financially, then that's a different story, but we were talking about the on-ice product.

 

But again, that isn't correct.  You can get back less than nothing in a trade, if the commodity you are trading for is not scarce and overpriced.  If the Devils traded Kovalchuk for Mike Rupp, they are worse off, because Rupp is a terrible hockey player being paid almost 3 times the minimum.  

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I was thinking more along the lines of getting back a low draft pick. I would assume Lou is a good enough GM where he would be able to get something of value back IF a trade were to have happened. For example, despite his contract, im sure there would have been a few teams that would consider Kovy for a 6th round pick (Isles, any team trying to reach the floor). But yeah, obviously if we are getting back someone like Ilkka Pikkarainen or a traffic cone with skates on, then sure we'd be worse off. I agree, that financially, it was good not taking anything massive back for Kovy's departure.

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In a perfect world, Lou probably would've like to have gotten a mid-round pick or two, maybe even a low second-rounder...problem would've been any team that was daring to take on Kovy's albatross (I'm guessing, had Kovy remained, that's what we would've been calling his deal by Year 5 or so) would've tried to pawn off at least one bad shorter-term contract on the Devils, maybe even two. 

 

That's where Lou won big-time...he didn't have to haggle or try to fit in any bodies and salaries that he didn't really want.  He was able to decide what HE wanted to do with the newfound space. 

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Right, but the thing is there are several teams well under the cap without really ugly contracts to send back our way. So, it could have been possible to entertain the idea of trading Kovy and get, say, a low draft pick in return.

 

Did it work out in the end in our favor? I think so. The extra cap space is nice. I was only replying to the notion that if we had traded Kovy that it was absolutely certain that we would not have been better off, to which i still cant agree because there were possibilities that existed to which we could have benefited.

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Right, but the thing is there are several teams well under the cap without really ugly contracts to send back our way. So, it could have been possible to entertain the idea of trading Kovy and get, say, a low draft pick in return.

 

Did it work out in the end in our favor? I think so. The extra cap space is nice. I was only replying to the notion that if we had traded Kovy that it was absolutely certain that we would not have been better off, to which i still cant agree because there were possibilities that existed to which we could have benefited.

 

Teams looking to get to cap floor aren't going to be willing to take on a contract with a 6.67 cap hit and 11.4 million real money. It would defeat the purpose. They would want him at the tail end, when he's making 3 million with a 6.67 hit.

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Do we have any idea who the potential buyers are yet? Last one I remember was a guy from South Jersey or something. Wasn't there a Canadian group from Calgary too? Wendy's guy? Russians?

Yeah the new potential buyer is a lawyer who runs a big firm down in South Jersey. I Forget his name now. Edited by MadDog2020
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Right, but the thing is there are several teams well under the cap without really ugly contracts to send back our way. So, it could have been possible to entertain the idea of trading Kovy and get, say, a low draft pick in return.

 

Did it work out in the end in our favor? I think so. The extra cap space is nice. I was only replying to the notion that if we had traded Kovy that it was absolutely certain that we would not have been better off, to which i still cant agree because there were possibilities that existed to which we could have benefited.

Also, under the new CBA, with an uncertain cap going forward, I don't see many teams wanting to take a bad long term contract. Much as the Isles might take a bad short term contract, they should be assuming that they'll be competitive someday, and won't want an aging, overpaid, Kovy dragging them down (the same concern, we had until he left that kept many of us from being happy about his contract, even when he played well). These contracts are a thing of the past, and we just got out of one, something certain teams would kill for. That we did so without sacrificing any flexibility is a plus, though IMO we'll still feel the sting for a year or two, since he's a big time scorer to replace.

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Yeah the new potential buyer is a lawyer who runs a big firm down in South Jersey. I Forget his name now.

 

Okay well at least the team stays with a NJ resident. That's cool to me even if it's not very relevant. Not that I think it's still a threat that the team relocates but I'm much more comfortable with the team being owned by someone in state. Does anyone know if this new guy this new guy a native of NJ?

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I know someone who works for him and he is apparently a big philly sports fan. So take that as you want.

I think I heard that too, but I doubt he would or the NHL would allow him to move them to Philly. Hell the devils are already considered to be in their territory anyways.

Plus many owners of teams are from other areas of the Country or world and grew up rooting for other teams

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I think I heard that too, but I doubt he would or the NHL would allow him to move them to Philly. Hell the devils are already considered to be in their territory anyways.

Plus many owners of teams are from other areas of the Country or world and grew up rooting for other teams

yeah, the owner of the Minnesota Vikings grew up a Giants fan in Jersey

maybe this new owner (as a Philly fan) will want to knock down the rags as much as we do !

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