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Archive for July, 2010

KHL Entices Kovalchuk

Jul 30

Posted by EB in News | 1 Comment

With the outlandish offer by the New Jersey Devils to All Star forward Ilya Kovalchuk still being decided upon to be fair and right, the Kontinetal Hockey League of Russia offered their own package to Kovalchuk. What is it you wonder? Not a penny more, not a penny less, but the exact contract that New Jersey offered; 17-year, $102 million. Oh, and an added bonus of picking whatever team he wants to play for.

The KHL is trying very hard to build their organization and to some extent have succeded. News headlines of more and more players leaving the NHL to play over in Russia is on the rise. Be it for a 1 year stint to get back into shape to return to the NHL or to finsih out their careers oversees.

The KHL still lacks the enormity of skilled players from all over the world that the NHL has. However, for some, the fact that it is a homeland, or having the ability to play lesser talent at near the same earnings in the NHL does offer an incentive to play in Russia.

If the initial New Jersey offer is declined, it will be interesting to see what Kovalchuk decides. Be it all about the money, the difficulty of the NHL, or other factors that may come into the mix.

Another interesting thing to ponder, with this offer from the KHL, does the NHL have a change of heart and allow the Devil’s offer in an attempt to keep a dominate figure Kovalchuk in the NHL instead of traveling oversees, or decline the Devil’s offer and allow Kovalchuk to be enticed by the KHL?

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Campbell a huge factor in Hawks cap crisis

Jul 28

Posted by Chris in Soap Box | No Comments

Brian Campbell may be the smartest man in hockey.

It wasn’t too long ago that Campbell himself was a highly coveted free agent whose skills as a puck-moving defenseman were in demand by several organizations around the league. After spending most of his career early on with the Buffalo Sabres, indications were that Campbell had interest in testing the open market in July 2008 when he was scheduled to become a free agent. Opting not to take a chance on losing Campbell for nothing, the Sabres decided to trade him to the San Jose Sharks for the remainder of the 2007-08 season. San Jose became the favorite to resign Campbell after they were bounced from the playoffs by the Dallas Stars, but Campbell instead opted to sign a deal with the rebuilding Chicago Blackhawks for just over $7 million a season.

While Campbell helped the Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup in only his second season with the club, his giant salary and cap hit are coming back to haunt the team in a big way. And there’s not a lot that Chicago can do about it. Why? Because Campbell made sure that there was a no-trade clause thrown into the contract with that hefty salary.

It’s a well-known fact that Chicago is currently in dire straights with their salary cap situation. The team needs at least one more forward and one more defenseman to adequately  round out their roster, but the team is already over the salary cap by about $400,000. And before the Blackhawks can look into signing two more players, they need to take care of another very urgent, pressing matter – goaltender Antti Niemi.

Niemi, who only made $800,000 last season, overtook the starting goaltender job from Cristobal Huet about halfway through last season and never looked back until he hoisted the cup in June. Niemi is scheduled to meet with the Blackhawks for a salary arbitration meeting tomorrow which will likely give the 26-year-old goaltender a significant raise. Some are speculating that Niemi could be awarded as little as $2 million a season or as much as $4 million a season during the arbitration hearing tomorrow. Regardless, the arbitration award will continue to put Chicago further over the salary cap.

Chicago always has the option of walking away from the Niemi award, which would probably be a big mistake. Unfortunately, it’s a numbers game at this point as the Blackhawks try to dump the water overboard to help keep the ship from sinking. The problem is that the Blackhawks have two very hefty dead-weight contracts to contend with. The first belongs to Campbell with his $7 million cap hit. But Chicago backed themselves into a wall when they agreed to the no-trade clause in the contract. Sure, Campbell could waive his no-trade clause, but he will most likely do that only for a select group of teams – most of which would be reluctant to bring on his $7 million a season cap hit. Needless to say, Chicago is stuck with Campbell.

The second contract belongs to goaltender Cristobal Huet. The former Montreal Canadiens goaltender came over the same summer as Brian Campbell when Chicago offered him a $5.625 million per season contract. However, Huet found himself on the bench more often than not during his first season with the Blackhawks as veteran netminder Nikolai Khabibulin consistently  outplayed Huet. This past year the starting job was Huet’s to lose, which he managed to do  with ease to Niemi, who officially took over the starting job about halfway through the season. Now Chicago is pretty much stuck with an overpaid backup goaltender for another two seasons with no chance of a trade because no team wants to take on that type of salary for a career underachiever.

The Chicago Blackhawks have some very touch decisions to make, and with Niemi’s arbitration hearing coming up tomorrow, those decisions are quite imminent. Chicago will have a better idea of their predicament after the arbitration hearing with Niemi tomorrow. There is a very real possibility that Chicago will decide not to honor the arbitrator’s decision and instead opt to walk away from the contract. In that case, Niemi will likely sign with another team in the next day or two because young goaltenders with Stanley Cup rings are hot commodities right now. Rumors place San Jose and Philadelphia as the front-runners for Niemi should Chicago choose not to sign him. Don’t count out Tampa Bay or Dallas either.

What organizations all around the NHL right now are beginning to realize is that they can’t overpay for talent. It’s just part of the rules in a salary cap era. When you overpay for talent you risk getting yourself into a situation similar to that of the Chicago Blackhawks right now. But can you really blame players like Cristobal Huet or Brian Campbell for accepting big paydays? Heck no. If a general manager is willing to offer that type of contract, then why not take it and cash in while you can? Besides, the team got a championship ring out of the situation. That has to count for something, right?

We Should See Contract Limits Added to CBA

Jul 21

Posted by Eddie in Soap Box | No Comments

I am actually glad to see that the NHL stepped up and put the breaks on the 17-year, $102 million contract that New Jersey signed superstar forward Ilya Kovalchuk to. This was starting to get out of hand with the amount of long term-front loaded contracts we have seen signed since the 2005 CBA was created.

I first remember when goalie Rick DiPietro signed a 15-year, $67.5 million contract with New York in 2006. I thought this was a joke, because of several factors including A) Not many players last in the league for 15 years, B) What happens if DiPietro completely stinks in years 5-6 of the contract and the Islanders cannot trade him for a pizza? Looks like I have been right as in the last two seasons, DiPietro has been hampered by knee injuries and have played a grand total of 13 games with a 3-8 record. Contrary to popular belief, this was not a Mike Milbury signing as Milbury resigned as Islanders GM three months prior to the contract signing. But he’s not out of the water as he tried to sign DiPietro for 15 years in 2005 but the league discouraged it. Leave it up to owner Charles Wang to make the signing just after he hired Garth Snow as GM and Snow made moves to clear cap space to add more talent.

Other long-term/front loaded contracts that the league approved were when the Red Wings signed Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Franzen, but those didn’t raise as many eyebrows as when Chicago signed Marian Hossa to a 12-year deal.

According to Chris’ post that can be read here, a player’s “cap hit” is the average of the contract over the number of years. Sounds good and fair doesn’t it? Not really when you see the front loaded deals such as Kovi’s would been a $6 million cap hit in early years despite him making $11 million for said season.

A way the league can solve this developing issue is to create a “contract limit” that could be created to have a maximum number of years a team can sign a player to. This could be adjusted to a players age/number of seasons in the league.  You can have one set of regulations for players under 30 and one for 30 and over. The players age at the time he signs the contract will dictate which set of rules he will fall into.

For example, if you have a young player like Patrick Kane who will come off his current contract in 2015, he will be 26 years old. The U30 max contract could be 13 years, meaning that Chicago can keep Kane until he is 39. The Over-30 Max contract could be 10 years, putting players like Hossa under contract until he is 40 because he signed the Chicago deal last year when he was 30. If this was the rule for Ilya Kovalchuk, he would be under contract until he is 40. This would be a way to prevent contracts similar to the DiPietro signing. Also it would be a fair age for players who are in the twilight of their playing careers to either leave to win a Stanley Cup somewhere else or re-sign with their current team for less money when they are much older.

Most players, especially ones who have been in the league for anywhere between 17-20 years, retire between the ages of 38-40. Top players who retired in the last two seasons and their ages at retirement are Rob Blake (40), Rod Brind’Amour (39), Keith Tkachuk (38), Joe Sakic (40), and Jeremy Roenick (39).

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NHL rejects Kovi’s deal with the Devils

Jul 20

Posted by Chris in News | 1 Comment

The New Jersey Devils made the official announcement today that superstar free agent Ilya Kovalchuk had committed to be a Devil for the remainder of his career by agreeing to a stunning 17-year, $102 million contract. However, the NHL had different ideas regarding the deal and recently rejected the offer just hours after the official announcement.

Kovalchuk’s contract with the Devils, which stunned the hockey world after weeks of speculation about where the prized free agent would land, would give the prized free agent $95 million over the first ten years of the contract before distributing the remaining $7 million over the remaining seven years of the deal. This nifty math helps to keep Kovalchuk’s cap hit around $6 million per season for the entire duration of the contract despite the fact that Kovalchuk will earn around $11 million at the height of his contract.

Details are still sketchy at this point regarding the NHL’s decision to reject the contract. All that is known as of now is that the NHL rejected the contract on the basis that it “circumvents the salary cap” because they believe that Kovalchuk will not play to the end of his contract, which means the years are there simple to lower the average cap hit of the contract.  It will be interesting to see how this story unfolds tomorrow when the league issues an official explanation of their decision, and then the Devils decide to fire back to that explanation because, all things considered, this deal follows the rules of the salary cap to the letter – it just exploits a glaring loophole left by the designers of the last CBA.

According to the rules of the last CBA, players’ salaries for a specific season don’t count against the salary cap. Instead, the average of the salary over the entire duration of the contract counts against a team’s salary cap. Despite the fact that Kovalchuk will earn more than $11 million per seasons for several seasons with the Devils, his cap hit is lower because he will also earn only $500,000 for several seasons at the end of the deal. That helps to bring the average of the salary down to a meager $6 million cap hit per year. In other words, $102 million divided by 17 years equals an average cap hit of $6 million per season. If that’s the case, New Jersey has done nothing wrong in their contract negotiations with Kovalchuk. The organization just took advantage of a loophole in order to make the contract work in their favor.

This isn’t the first time that general managers have exploited this loophole, but this is the first time that the league has rejected a contract agreement of this variety. The Detroit Red Wings were probably the first to wiggle around the cap rules when they signed star forwards Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Franzen to similar front-loaded, long-term deals a few years ago. While eyebrows were raised when these contracts became known, the league ultimately approved the contracts. However, more eyebrows were raised last summer when the Chicago Blackhawks signed free agent Marian Hossa to a 12-year front-loaded contract that would have Hossa playing into his forties. While the league reviewed the contract extensively, they still approved the contract and deemed it acceptable according to the rules set forth by the CBA.

More details will undoubtedly unfold tomorrow when the league prepares an official statement regarding the issue. The Devils could choose to refile the contract, and risk having it rejected again, or they could file a grievance. At that point, the contract would be considered dead unless an arbitrator determines otherwise.

Kovalchuk Re-Signs with Devils

Jul 20

Posted by EB in News | No Comments

All Star forward Ilya Kovalchuk has re-signed with the New Jersey Devils. The drama is finally over where the winger was to sign in free agency, a much appreciated finally.

Kovalchuk and New Jersey have agreed to a 17-year, $102 million dollar deal. Kovalchuk is currently 27, putting him in the black and red until he is 44 years old. The deals get more creative every year that is for certain.

Kovalchuk posted 27 points with the team last year in 27 games after his trade from the Atlanta Thrashers. With the two clubs combined he totaled 41 goals and 44 assists.

The acquisition for the Devils will be a good one, as Kovalchuk is an elite scorer within the league. Still though, a lengthy contract is always difficult. Kovalchuk will definitely put points up on the board for the Devils, but the Devils are known for their solid defense and two way play, something Kovalchuk lacks and showed last season.

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Demitra to Russia

Jul 19

Posted by EB in News | No Comments

Speedy forward Pavol Demitra will be hopping ponds this year to play with Yaroslavl of Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League.

Demitra had shoulder surgery that took him our for the majority of the season last year with the Vancouver Canucks. In the 28 games he did play, he posted only 3 goals and 13 assists for 16 points in total. Continuing his lack of production, come playoffs in the 11 games played, Demitra only had 6 points in all.

Demitra has been a big let down for all fans and fantasy owners last season. In previous seasons Demitra excelled, posting over 50 points 7 years in a row, a personal high of 93 points in the 2002-2003 season with the St. Louis Blues. Surely shoulder surgery limited his abilities last season, but leaving the Canucks, a strong Cup contender next year, to play over in Russia for a year is confusing and perhaps disastrous for his future career in the NHL.

The cards will play out for the veteran forward, but with the NHL getting younger and younger, do not expect Demitra to play again in the NHL.

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Bauer Vapor APX Ice Hockey Skates

Jul 19

Posted by Matt in Gear | 36 Comments

Update 4/29/11: The Bauer APX skates are now available for purchase, and ready to ship! Head over to Ice Warehouse now to buy your Bauer APX skates.

Update 12/10/10: We finally have a picture of the final version of the Bauer Vapor APX skates. A lot of people are complaining about the look, saying they like the x60 better. Personally, I think the APX skates look sick. The biggest downfall, as with the Total One, is going to be how expensive these skates are. As some of our commenters have pointed out, you can expect these skates to cost $800. They’ll hit retail store shelves in April 2011.

Bauer Vapor APX Skates

The brand new Bauer Vapor APX skates. They were released April 29, 2011.

Within the past couple days, a couple pictures have been leaked of a prototype version of the new Bauer Vapor APX ice hockey skates. These skates look the be the successor to the Bauer Vapor X:60. There is no telling if the graphics on this prototype will be the same as the production version, but they look pretty slick.

Check out the pictures below and let us know what you think!

Bauer Vapor APX Skates

Bauer Vapor APX Skates

Bauer Vapor APX Ice Hockey Skates

Bauer Vapor APX Ice Hockey Skates

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Zherdev’s Fantasy Profile

Jul 14

Posted by EB in News | No Comments

Forward Nikolai Zherdev has been signed by the Philadelphia Flyers for the upcoming year. Will he produce or will he flop? Here’s my take and why.

Zherdev played last season over in Russia and posted 39 points in 52 games. With only a +3 rating and a team leading 79 penalty minutes leave not much to be desired. Yet looking at the previous two seasons in the NHL, Zherdev posted a team leading 58 points in a Rangers uniform and 61 points for Columbus, 8 points less than NHL All Star Rick Nash. And in both seasons his penalty minutes were much more curved than in the KHL. His NHL seasons are much more like his 1st round 4th overall draft in 2003 prediction of talent.

Zherdev is a solid player despite the naysayers. Sure he needs to be whipped every now and then to make sure he is playing day in and day out, but who better than the Philadelphia Flyers? Captain Mike Richards and big veteran defenseman Chris Pronger are just the players to do it, not to leave out beastly Scott Hartnell for backup. What so many fans fail to realize is that prior to his trade to the Flyers, backbone of the playoffs Ville Leino only put up 7 points in 42 games with the Detroit Red Wings. Leino’s poor production was a direct result of his lack of effort on the ice. Leino, in a nutshell, was transformed once he went to the Flyers into a hard working, corner digging offensive powerhouse in clutch times. Zherdev will follow suit.

So, my overall prediction for the newly acquired Flyers Zherdev: Pick him late in the draft. He will put up at least 60 points this season, perhaps even more depending on who he plays with, although I foresee him winging with Leino forming a one two punch that will contest with any second line in the NHL. Factor in his previous seasons production, as well as only being signed to a one year “tryout” season, Zherdev will be looking to increase his pay of 2 million to much more.

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Nabby off to Russia, Sabres sign Neidermayer

Jul 7

Posted by Eddie in News | No Comments

Fans of SKA St. Petersburg hope Evgeni Nabokov can make saves like this for them beginning this fall.

Fans of SKA St. Petersburg hope Evgeni Nabokov can make saves like this for them beginning this fall.

The last few days have been quiet in NHL Free Agency. There was a splash made today when news broke that former San Jose Sharks goalie Evgeni Nabokov has signed a six-year deal worth $24 Million with SKA St. Petersburg of the KHL. As EB first speculated last week, this wasn’t much of a surprise because it was an option should Nabby not catch on with a club in the NHL. He’s spent all 10 of his seasons in San Jose, which drafted him in the ninth round of the 1994 NHL Draft. Despite his disappointing showing in the conference finals against Chicago, Nabokov has one of his best seasons when he posted a 44-16-10 record with a 2.43 GAA and .922 save percentage. He also played in the Vancouver Olympics with Russia, where he had a 2-1 record.

In news stateside, Buffalo has added depth up front as they signed veterean Rob Neidermayer. Neidermayer is 35 years old and has been in the league for 16 seasons. He spend last season with New Jersey where he had 10 goals and 12 assists in 71 games. His career statline reads 181 goals, 269 assists in 1082 regular season games. His contract was reported to be worth $1.15 Million for one season.

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Modano to Detroit?

Jul 5

Posted by EB in News | No Comments

Once I heard Mike Modano possibly being signed by Detroit this I had to take a double take. Could it be, the player I grew up watching and loving, a home grown Michigander, possibly playing for my home team? The thought still makes me tingle with anticipation.

Mike Modano is on the verge of retiring as the Dallas Stars have decided to part ways with their once franchise player. Modano is no spring chicken anymore, this is not contested, but he has plenty left in the tank. Modano played only 59 games last season and the majority of that on the third and fourth lines but put up a respectable 30 points. Modano’s strong suit is on the power play where he posted 3 goals and 7 assists. Ok, I know right now you are saying 10 points is pretty low, but factor in he did not play much on the power play, he did just fine.

Detroit currently, as always, waits on free agency to see who they can get for cheap and under the cap space. With Detroit losing a few free agents by will,  most likely including Jason Williams who did play point on the power play, it would make sense not only from a cap space opportunity to sign Modano, but also because he can work with young up and coming stars like Justin Abdelkader and Darren Helm.

Please Detroit, I know I have criticized you for signing old and over the hill players, but please sign Modano, I guarantee I will purchase a jersey with his new number on it. (9 is retired, 19 is retired, what other combination with 9 could he take?)

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