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ORIGINAL: It took him 19 days to make his decision and he didn’t need a flashy one-hour primetime special to let the world know about it. On Monday afternoon, it was announced that Ilya Kovalchuk will remain with the team he finished out last season with and return to the New Jersey Devils on a lifetime contract. No official terms have been disclosed, but it has been widely reported that the agreement is for 17 years and will pay out a total of $102 million. This is just the latest contract intended to circumvent the current collective bargaining agreement by utilizing a greater number of years to stretch out the overall salary for the purposes of lowering the annual cap hit, while still paying the player the amount of money he wishes to accumulate during his playing tenure. Kovalchuk, who was believed to be seeking an annual salary in the $8-10 million range, will now represent a $6 million annual cap hit to New Jersey.
“This was a long arduous process that has taken frankly a little longer than I thought,” agent Jay Grossman said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “But you know what, nothing is worth anything unless you work for it. I can tell you he is very happy to be with the New Jersey Devils.”As is the case for most contracts of this nature, it is safe to assume that Kovalchuk will be paid on a frontloaded basis to accommodate the years he will actually be playing. Then the financial terms will take a sharp decline when he is expected to be retired. Since he will not be 35 years old by June 30 of the upcoming season, Kovalchuk will cease to be paid and his cap hit will be erased from the Devils’ books should he retire before the completion of the deal. Kovalchuk, now 27, will be 44 years old when the contract expires in 2027, making it unlikely he will honor it in its entirety.
With no official terms announced and the Devils planning to re-introduce Kovalchuk to their fans in a press conference tomorrow at 1 p.m., there still has yet to be firm indication into how this contract breaks down on a year-by-year basis. Two unconfirmed figures have been reported, however.
Dmitry Chesnokov, knower of all things Russian for Yahoo! Sports Puck Daddy, has heard Kovalchuk will make $10 million per season in the first eight years of the deal and then $7.5 million in each of the following two. Chesnokov did not expand beyond that, but those figures would leave $7 million on the table for the remaining seven years of the deal.
Michael Russo of The Minnesota Star Tribune reported different terms for the duration of the contract, and they are as follows:
- 2010-11: $6 million
- 2011-12: $6 million
- 2012-13: $11.5 million
- 2013-14: $11.5 million
- 2014-15: $11.5 million
- 2015-16: $11.5 million
- 2016-17: $11.5 million
- 2017-18: $10.5 million
- 2018-19: $8.5 million
- 2019-20: $6.5 million
- 2020-21: $3.5 million
- 2021-22: $750,000
- 2022-23: $550,000
- 2023-24: $550,000
- 2024-25: $550,000
- 2025-26: $550,000
- 2026-27: $550,000
According to Russo’s numbers, Kovalchuk will see $98.5 million over the first 11 years of this deal, which will take him to his 38th birthday. By that point, he would likely retire at the conclusion of the 2020-21 campaign and leave $3.5 million behind. It’s hard to imagine he would hang around six more years for $583,333 in average compensation.
Tom Gulitti reports that included in the deal is a no-movement clause for Kovalchuk through June 30, 2017. A no-trade clause begins one year later on July 1, 2018. That leaves New Jersey with a one year window to move him and the remaining nine-10 years of his contract.
All along, the Devils were one of three NHL teams and one KHL organization in the mix for Kovalchuk’s services.
The Los Angeles Kings were figured to be the odd-on favorite to land him. They had the money, cap flexibility and desire for a scorer of Kovalchuk’s stature since as far back as last season’s trade deadline. But discussions between the parties were of an on-again, off-again nature, making it seem less and less likely with each passing day that Kovalchuk would don a Kings sweater next season. Rich Hammond reports that the Kings’ last offer to Kovalchuk was made on Thursday and included total compensation of $80 million for 15 years. General Manager Dean Lombardi was told that Kovalchuk wanted until Monday to think about it. As far as Lombardi knew, they were still in the mix with Kovalchuk. As it turns out, they were not in the ballpark.
The New York Islanders were also supposedly in the mix for Kovalchuk, but that was entirely based on speculation that they were prepared to throw a 10-year, $100 million offer his way. No actual conversation between the parties were revealed and it was long believed that Kovalchuk’s desire to play for a contender would supersede any hail mary offer from a basement team. Otherwise, he would have just signed one of the two extensions offered to him by then-Atlanta Thrashers General Manager Don Waddell – either seven years for $7 million or $101 million for 12 years. As it turns out, his annual salary with New Jersey is far less than either of those offers.
And then there was the longshot that he would head back to his native Russian and explore offers with the KHL, primarily SKA St. Petersburg. It was rumored that he could sign for about $9 million a season over there. But playing in the NHL was believed to be his preference and $9 million was not enough to change that.
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Now that it’s complete, this can be viewed in two different ways for the Devils.
On the one hand, they accomplished what was considered to be fairly impossible. General Manager Lou Lamoriello managed to retain a high-priced player with very little cap flexibility and their number one star entering restricted free agency next summer. Lamoriello worked out a deal with a manageable cap hit and a contract that will keep Kovalchuk a Devil for a long haul without penalty if he calls it quits early. In bringing Kovalchuk back into the fold, Lamoriello keeps the most highly-decorated offensive threat the Devils have likely ever had. And with a little more offense expected to be infused into the team’s game plan by new Head Coach John MacLean, Kovalchuk should have a bit more room to flex his scoring muscle.
However, it’s hard to see the Devils stray too far away from their defensive roots. Just how much more room for offense will be opened up at the expense of D is not yet known. Aside from Kovalchuk, the Devils did sign three key defensive assets to their roster in Anton Volchenkov, Henrik Tallinder and Johan Hedberg. If MacLean takes the Devils’ offensive prowess up a smidge instead of a couple of notches, Kovalchuk could continue to have the same problems scoring and fitting is as he did last year following the trade from Atlanta. Then, he’s just a pretty good scorer with non-existent defensive play and a temper that can easily be taken off its game.
Plus, there is that dark cloud of Parise’s restricted free agency hanging over the organization's head. He is entering the final year of his current deal at $3.125 million and is fully expected to command a healthy raise of more than double that price. That’s a daunting task for a team that, with Kovalchuk’s re-signing, brings them $1.8 million over the current salary cap figure of $59.4 million.
Right now, Parise is playing things very cool. He is excited about Kovalchuk being brought back and feels it was a necessary move for New Jersey at the relatively low cap hit.
However, that tune can change quite quickly once his time for negotiation comes up. Parise is still the most important forward the Devils possess from both a skill and marketability standpoint. He is a home-grown talent with good two-way skill and the capability to come up in the clutch. He is the Devils’ franchise player behind Martin Brodeur, who could conceivably be finished at the end of his contract in two years. Parise knows his value, for which a precedence could have very well been set late last week with a seven-year contract extension afforded to Minnesota Wild’s center Mikko Koivu. Koviu will earn an average of $6.75 million per year during the duration of that deal. And Parise is just as important to the Devils as Koivu is to the Wild.
Lamoriello is known to do the impossible, largely with the utilization of loopholes in the CBA. And perhaps he goes the same route with Parise and inks him to a 52-year contract that averages out to $500,000 per season. Who knows? It just doesn’t seem like re-signing Parise is going to be a cakewalk, which it wasn’t considered to be even before the Devils ran out of cap space.
Time will tell if this was a situation where Lamoriello was choosing either Kovalchuk or Parise, or if it’s just an issue of him figuring out some way to keep them both. If it plays out that he can only keep one, he made the wrong choice and should have held onto his funds for Parise. He will much sooner get the Devils past the one-round-and-done hump in postseason play than Kovalchuk ever could.
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