I don’t see how they can go after Hossa since he’s already played one year of the deal. If they do that, Hossa would probably have to forfeit last season’s salary, and how do you let Chicago keep their cup without it being tainted?
I still don’t see the big deal about Pronger’s contract since it has to stay on the cap even if he retires at the end of it, but it doesn’t start until the season does so I guess they could. Same for Luongo.

Can’t blame him, locking up players for long periods just beg for problems.

yeah, bad enough he had to put up with wellwood for a few yrs..

Ha! It’s all back to the drawing board. I still don’t think the Leafs chase him, because it appears that Burke has no desire to offer the term (and thus the big dollars) to Kovalchuk. I imagine if someone could wrangle him into a short (ie 2 year deal, at 8 or so per) that would be doable for the Leafs, I just don’t see him settling for much less that what the Devils offered.

During the period of time that Kovie’s contract was in limbo, a good number of FA forwards decided to sign with new teams, believing that either a) the league or the arbitrator would eventually approve the contract, or b) that they were sick of waiting. The lesser lights like Poni, Frolov, and Selanne are no longer waiting for Kovalchuk to decide where to play, so I don’t think that Kovalchuk impedes movement in the FA/trade market in the same way he initially did on July 1st. It’s tough to evaluate exactly what kind of effect this has on a Kaberle trade, but I would guess less effect than the fact that the deadline to trade him is in six days.

Furthermore, I don’t see that this process has really lead to any acrimony between Kovalchuk and The Devils, so it seems likely to me that he’ll simply re-negotiate a deal with a slightly shorter tail, and slightly higher cap hit in New Jersey again. I guess this is speculation on my part, but since a lot of other teams moved on from the Kovie sweepstakes snapping up other FA’s (and putting significant dents in their available budgets or caps) there are probably fewer teams interested in him now than ever.

No, it’s a full on shot across the bow. No more long term deals with low money tails.

btw this article has many pie charts and graphs

It’s things like this that put me in the camp of Lamoriello structuring this as a deliberate snow job. Why not just make it a NTC the whole way, even with the gap year? Just so many things criticized.

They should have nominated Ron Pink instead. Just think of the Resrvoir Dogs photoshop implications that we could have enjoyed.

Never mind the fine points, the blunt end of this one is that any team willing to pull complete shenanigans on a player contract—e.g., 29 teams that don’t employ Brian Burke—no longer have the complete approval of the League to do so.

Ten times fast

i think theres a link through bob loblaw’s law blog.

with making a level playing field for all market teams or something. I don’t really know why it was instituted in the first place. However, they can’t really change it until a new CBA is written, so we’re stuck with it for another 2 years.

this has been talked about before. if you did it that way, teams could get cute with how they structure deals so that some players have low cap hits in years other players have high cap hits.

i know it would kill hours of discussion around here (and elsewhere) , but just get rid of the f8cking salary cap already. please please please.