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Kovalchuk Could Reach The $100M Category
by Paul on 10/21/09 at 05:22 PM ET
Comments (8)
from Elliotte Friedman of CBC,
According to sources, Atlanta is going to offer him the chance to become the NHL’s second $100 million man. (Alexander Ovechkin was the first.) Under the CBA, the maximum per-year salary he could receive is $11.36 million per season, so it would have to me a minimum nine-year deal. (Thrashers GM Don Waddell would not comment. Same goes for agent Jay Grossman.)
First thing you should know: Other GMs would do the same thing if they were in Waddell’s chair. The comment you hear both inside and outside the organization is the same: “We/They cannot afford to lose him.”
For Atlanta, it goes beyond Kovalchuk’s on-ice performance, which has come a long way since former coach Curt Fraser benched him in Toronto to send the loudest possible message.
Filed in: NHL Teams, Atlanta Thrashers | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: Ilya+Kovalchuck,
Comments
Actually, I don’t think they are in danger of losing the core by giving Kovalchuk a generous contract. The cap space is there. It should be even less of a problem with the proper construction of the contract, eg. eight or nine years with a salary around $10-11M and some cap reducing years tagged to the end of it. They don’t have to be at minimum salary to reduce the cap hit to around $8.5M a year, which is just a bit more than $2M above his current cap hit.
If Atlanta wants to pay Kovalchuk a lot of money within the salary cap, they can. And I think they should regardless of deficiencies on defence because he brings people into the building at game time. They know what they have, not what they might get.
Posted by Moq from Denmark on 10/22/09 at 06:05 AM ET
Signing Kovalchuk to that kind of contract will functionally obilterate any chance that Atlanta will ever have to be a consistent playoff team.
Eventually, people aren’t going to turn out to see Kovalchuk when the team is constantly south of 10th in the standings.
Posted by HockeyinHD on 10/22/09 at 07:09 AM ET
FYI, gotta lose the second “c” in Kovalchuk.
Posted by michaelsmith1994 from New Jersey on 10/22/09 at 08:22 AM ET
Signing Kovalchuk to that kind of contract will functionally obilterate any chance that Atlanta will ever have to be a consistent playoff team.
No, it won’t. Basically, they could just add three million a year to the Hossa contract template. That’s entirely doable for a team like Atlanta with their current cap expenditure.
Posted by Moq from Denmark on 10/22/09 at 08:23 AM ET
No, it won’t. Basically, they could just add three million a year to the Hossa contract template. That’s entirely doable for a team like Atlanta with their current cap expenditure.
Here’s the problem, Moq. Atlanta is not just going to spend more on the team to keep Kovalchuk. They may end up paying him more, specifically, but their total salary costs aren’t going up. They’re already paying over 53 this year (projected), and there is no way in the universe that franchise can sustain that level of salary.
They already have 25.6 comitted to next years cap, and that’s without Kovalchuk, any goalies, or replacing Kubina, Kozlov or Armstrong.
If they make Kovalchuk’s cap number 8-9, they may as well do two directly related things: a) kiss their chances to be legitimately good so long and b) kiss Kovalchuk goodbye, because he will leave the Thrashers to go make just as much money, except tax free, in Russia before he serves out a 10 year sentence playing for a perennially bad club.
That’s exactly how this will play out. Kovy will get his money because the Thrashers are too stupid to do anything else and have put themselves in this situation, and then in two or three years tops Kovy will go to Russia and play there until his contract is traded somewhere else.
Posted by HockeyinHD on 10/22/09 at 12:31 PM ET
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He MAY not be worth it. Honestly, for that clip you can get a free agent (or trade for one) that will match his skill and output. Kovalchuk still can’t play defense, he’s like a Gaborik that doesn’t get hurt. If they pay him that much they’re going to lose the core of their team. If he wants to win then he’ll accept less and be happy…if not, his whole “I want to stay in atlanta” deal is bullcrap.
Posted by stoneman from vegas on 10/21/09 at 11:04 PM ET