Twenty Reasons the NHL Rejected the Kovalchuk Contract

By now, you've likely heard the news that Ilya Kovalchuk's contract with the New Jersey Devils has been rejected by the NHL. You've probably also learned that Kovy's contract was rejected despite the NHL approving a host of similar contracts that utilize the same loophole in their current collective bargaining agreement. Wondering why this one broke the camel's back, so to speak? Well, we at PiTB did a little sleuthing, and it turns out there were at least twenty perfectly good reasons, reported (exclusively!) below:

1. Stipulation excusing Kovalchuk from the backcheck contravenes the CBA.
   
   
2. It is impossible to calculate salary cap hit of "OMG all the money".
   
   
3. Portion stipulating that play-by-play announcer Mike Emrick must call Alex Ovechkin "Bride of Kovalchucky" during all Washington visits to New Jersey contravenes the CBA.
   
   
4. Lou-Bucks are not a valid currency.
   
   
5. The sheer immensity of the contract roused Lord Chaos, who realized it had been a while since he had done anything head-scratchingly contradictory.
   
   
6. NHL learned of Lamoriello's plan to bench Zach Parise mid-season and come down from the GM's office to be Kovalchuk's center.
   
   
7. Having spent so much time calculating Phoenix Coyotes home attendance figures, numbers above 10,000 are impossible for Gary Bettman to comprehend.
   
   
8. NHL learned of Lou Lamoriello's plan to get the money by building a death ray, pointing it at United Nations, and holding the world's powers hostage.
   
   
9. Enormity of contract meant that the Devils could no longer afford to sweep the ice with zambonis; proposed cheap replacement, Lindsay Lohan's nose, deemed unacceptable.
   
   
10. "Shots Vodka Bonus" contravenes the CBA.
    
    
11. NHL announces that, just like PiTB, they have fallen in love with Kyle Wellwood, and no contract will be approved until somebody signs him.
    
    
12. NHL simply looking out for Kovy's best interests: nobody wants to spend a lifetime in New Jersey.
    
    
13. Outrage over BP oil spill made NHL brass sensitive to any instance of something circumventing a cap.
    
    
14. Upon second look, NHL discovered the last seven years of the contract were to be paid in "Itchy & Scratchy Money," which, because it's not accepted anywhere, doesn't count against the cap.
    
    
15. Gary Bettman still holding out hope for Alex Ovechkin and Ilya Kovalchuk to make the Decision to join Ilya Bryzgalov in Phoenix and form Russian superteam in 2021.
    
    
16. No-trade clause that kicks in for 2018 confused NHL war room in Toronto, as they don't understand what a kicking motion is.
    
    
17. Upon hearing Pierre McGuire announce it, Gary Bettman got scared when phrases "Jersey Devil" and "monster contract" were used so close together.
    
    
18. Contracts so long they can be considered hereditary contravene the CBA.
    
    
19. Upon learning contract was drawn up by New Jersey mafia, NHL realized that KHL is merely a truncation of "killhole", and New Jersey's plan to bury him in the KHL for the last six years of the contract were far more sinister than anybody could have imagined.
    
    
20. After forgetting how to tie his shoes, Gary Bettman decided to crack down on loopholes.

Anyway, that's all I've heard. Perhaps you've heard of some additional reasons? We'd love to hear them in the comments.

Jannik Hansen Will Re-Sign with the Canucks

Jonathan Willis made an excellent post on Hockey or Die today about the benefits of arbitration for fringe and depth players in the NHL. Essentially, the main benefit for a fringe player is not necessarily that he'll be awarded a higher salary but that his team will be forced to re-sign him if the arbitrator awards a salary below a certain cut-off point.

Right now, the Canucks have only two players going to arbitration; Shane "Pain Lion" O'Brien wisely elected to forgo arbitration and accept his qualifying offer, while Tanner Glass was headed to arbitration before Gillis stepped in and signed him, and no one's in a huge hurry to re-sign Mario Bliznak and Eric Walsky. That leaves Mason Raymond and Jannik Hansen as the two remaining RFA's, both of whom filed for arbitration. Of the two, the cut-off point clearly won't affect Raymond, who will most likely be awarded between 2.5 and 3.5 million in arbitration, well above the suspected 1.3 million cut-off.

For Jannik Hansen, however, arbitration will likely net him a one-way deal between 600,000 and 800,000, which fits right in under the cut-off. The Canucks won't be able to walk away from that decision and likely won't want to. It will, however, give Hansen a leg-up going into training camp. With a one-way contract, he's less likely to be sent down to the Manitoba Moose, which may help him find a spot on the third or fourth line. Players on two-way contracts like Victor Oreskovich, Alexandre Bolduc, Jeff Tambellini, and prospects Sergei Shirokov, Cody Hodgson, and Jordan Schroeder may be more likely to get sent down than Jannik Hansen.

Bulis Update!

As much as we love Jan Bulis here at PiTB!, I admit that I haven't kept up with his career post-Canucks. Turns out he's doing quite well for himself over in the KHL for Atlant Moscow Oblast. Sparked by this post over at Hockey or Die, which informed me that Bulis played on the top line for the top-5 hockey team, I looked into Jan's stats over at the Atlant Moscow Oblast website.

Last season, Bulis scored 43 points in 38 games, good enough to land him at 17 on the list of top scorers in the KHL. He also grew out his hair from the odd cueball look he sported in the NHL. He now looks significantly less weird.

Applying the same equivalency numbers Jonathan Willis used for Zherdev, Jan's season translates to these NHL numbers over an 82 game season:

82GP - 30G - 22A - 52PTS

While I sincerely doubt anyone in the NHL is paying attention to Jan Bulis right now and I equally doubt he's interested in going from a top line in the KHL to spot-second-line duty in the NHL, an equivalent 30 goal season is quite nice for the former piggybacking star.

Well done, Bulis, well done. We here at PiTB! wish you all the best in your upcoming season.

Sharks Sign Niklas Hjalmarsson to Offer Sheet

Enough basketball. Here's some hockey news for you, from TSN.ca:


"The San Jose Sharks have signed Blackhawks restricted free agent defenceman Niklas Hjalmarsson to a free agent offer sheet, signing the defenceman to a four-year, $14 million dollar contract.

Chicago has seven days to match the offer. If the team does not match it, they will receive San Jose's first and third round picks in the 2011 NHL entry draft."

Whoa! I don't feel bad for Chicago, because they just won the Stanley Cup, but this has to hurt for the fans, watching a young team that could have been a dynasty just get picked apart, piece by piece. And for those saying Dale Tallon over in Florida is a tiny god, keep in mind that he is the one who mismanaged the player salaries and timing of contract renewals, as well as overspent in free agency so perfectly as to allow this to happen. And that is why he's no longer with the Blackhawks.

Thinking 'Bout Last Night... or, How Lebron James Ruined His National Brand

Awesome screengrab from Ball Don't Lie.

I watched the Lebron James trainwreck last night. Likely, you did too. I'm sure when the ratings come in, we'll all be as embarrassed as we were when we realized that we had made Titanic the highest grossing film of all time. We were duped, y'all. When Lebron announced he was going to Miami, I felt terrible about it. Not because he was leaving Cleveland--that much I expected. It was because of how he did it and where he went. It was because of what it proved about his arrogance, his immaturity, and his sense of entitlement. It was because it showed what he cared about, what he didn't, and how messed up his priorities were. I felt terrible because, in one fell swoop, Lebron destroyed his brand and his reputation. Now, I've been holding in a lot of perturbation with Lebron, his handlers, the pandering owners in Cleveland, and so much more. I wanted to let it all out. I was going to storm in this morning with a scathing tirade on the guy.

But Adrian Wojnarowski over at Yahoo! Sports said everything I wanted to say, better than I could ever say it in an article titled Easy Come, Easy Go For King James. I've never agreed with one of his articles more--this is a fantastic piece of sports journalism. Please read it. Here are a few highlights.

As the worst idea in the history of marketing unfolded, James looked trapped somewhere between despondence and defiance. His bumbling buddy Maverick Carter had walked him into the public execution of his legacy, his image, and there was a part of James that clearly wished he could turn back through the doors and hide. Only, it was too late. No going back now. James goes to the Miami Heat, Cleveland goes into a basketball Hades and LeBron’s legacy becomes that of a callous carpetbagger.

Oh my, yes. This was a terrible idea. Rather than saying goodbye to his hometown team behind closed doors, he dumped them live, on national television. Maybe he was masking guilt and maybe he was masking elation, but it was a cold, cold moment and James looked like a heartless robot doing it. It seemed careless, and could only serve to cast him as a villain. When he licked his lips just before announcing his decision, he may as well have been the serpent from Genesis, attempting to destroy humanity and steal away man's eternal joy. Legacy destroyed. And DecisionWater? Really? Let's move on.

So now people are cheering Dan Gilbert’s manifesto tearing apart James, but no one contributed more to what the world witnessed on Thursday night than the owner’s enabling of James and his inner circle for seven years. Gilbert is the biggest con going, a man who makes his fortune peddling mortgages, and he’ll make his next on casinos in downtown Cleveland. He sells illusions for a living, and now he’s selling the biggest of all: that he’s a victim here, that James betrayed everyone. That’s a lie, and no one ought to dare buy it.

Yes! Dan Gilbert's idiotic manifesto is classic revisionism, desperate to vilify Lebron before people realize he enabled this giant jerk. Over the last seven years, to hear Lebron tell it, Gilbert owed it to him to surround him with talent. It's garbage, and somebody should have told him that years ago. The Cavaliers weren't Lebron's team. They were Cleveland's team. Lebron simply played for them. Gilbert owed it to Cleveland to surround Lebron with talent. But, he held Lebron up over the city, and Lebron held him hostage for it. Lebron talked about the things he's done for Cleveland. What things are those, Lebron? You didn't deliver the championship, and you quit on the team two postseasons in a row. But nobody stood up to you, and that's not your fault. Don't you think, Cleveland, that you should have been told that Lebron wasn't returning a single phone call or text from Cleveland ownership? Gilbert should have exposed Lebron years ago. This is like being dumped by a boyfriend with a penchant for violence. If the relationship was so terrible, why did you stay? Because the sex was good? Gilbert looks like Stella Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire: Abused, ignorant, careless, and equally at fault for what happens to Stella, the naive and melancholy dreamer who only wants to be happy again. And while Stanley was the aggressor, Stella deserved blame for enabling the attack on Blanche. Sound familiar? Let's move on.

So there was LeBron James, the MVP, the man of the hour, sitting in the middle of his own “Truman Show” on Thursday night. His personal network ran his commercials and celebrated his greatness and let him hijack a platform to build his brand and break hearts. He can never go home again now, and he can never completely rebuild what he let his cast of buddies talk him into losing that night. He’s taking his talents to South Beach, and the kid going away for the first time will have some party down there. After all these years, it was clear he had been coddled and protected and ultimately prepared to do one thing: Take the easy way out. Wherever he was going, he looked conflicted, lost and completely confused.

Preach it, Woj. Everyone, please do yourselves a favour and read the whole thing.

I Watched This Summit: Canucks Summer Summit, July 7, 2010

The Vancouver Canucks held their annual Summer Summit tonight, making several big announcements and answering the questions of season ticket holders. On-stage were Orland Kurtenbach, Mike Gillis, Victor de Bonis, and Stan Smyl with John Shorthouse and Jim Robson asking the questions to start off the evening.

And, because it's the off-season and I care way too much about the Canucks, I took the time to watch the summit live on Canucks.com. Let's face it, I'm starved for Canucks news and I hope that you are too. Otherwise, no one would bother reading this post.

A couple of the announcements were expected and anticipated, such as the reveal of the 40th Anniversary sweater and the introduction of a couple of the new arrivals to the Canucks for the 2010-11 season. Others were more surprising. Here's a quick recap of the event and some thoughts on the announcements.

The Big Announcements

• The biggest announcement, of course, is the retirement of Markus Naslund's #19 on December 11th of the upcoming season. While I'm sure this will spark many debates among Canucks fans as to whether the honour is deserved, personally, I'm thrilled. Naslund revived the franchise when he arrived from Pittsburgh, becoming one of the most important Canucks of all time. He's the all-time franchise leader in goals and points, and was the key component of one of the most exciting scoring lines Vancouver has ever seen in the West Coast Express. But equally important, he played a big role in the community, along with his wife Lotta. They gave freely of their time and energy, much of it to Canucks Place and BC Children's Hospital. Markus is a special player who is very deserving of having his number retired along Smyl and Linden.

• Like many other NHL teams, the Canucks will be establishing a Ring of Honour for those players who may not be ideal candidates for a sweater retirement but still contributed to the history of the Canucks organization. The first to be honoured on October 26th will be Orland Kurtenbach, the Canucks first captain and former head coach. This is a great move by the organization, as there are many players that could be honoured. Orland is a great choice to be the first inductee. Three other players will be inducted this year. Possibilities could be Richard Brodeur, Kirk McLean, Thomas Gradin, Pavel Bure, and Wayne Maki. The one player that the Ring of Honour should take out a restraining order on to ensure that he has no contact with it, whether in person or by phone: Mark Messier.

• As expected, the Canucks introduced a special 40th Anniversary sweater, which will be worn on opening night and four additional nights. The sweater is a match for the original they wore for their first seasons in the NHL from 1970-78 with the addition of the 40th Anniversary patch that had already been scouted out. I'm guessing the other four nights this jersey is worn will be the nights they induct the four members of the Ring of Honour, but that's just speculation on my part.

Smaller Announcements and Answers to Questions

• The team formally introduced Manny Malhotra and Dan Hamhuis as members of the Canucks. It's a good thing they showed up, as John Shorthouse was looking dangerously under-dressed in his polo shirt amongst all the suits. Fortunately, Manny and Hammy were appropriately casual. Hamhuis slipped in a jab at Nashville, noting that the attendance at the Summer Summit was awfully similar to the attendance at a Predators home game in November. Shortly after, while drawing a ticket for a prize, a fan jokingly booed when he announced it was a red rather than green ticket. Shorty jumped in, "Your first boo! No, no, it was Hamhuuuuuis."

• Shorthouse used the opportunity of the announcement of Naslund's jersey retirement to ask about the possibility of Pavel Bure receiving the same treatment in the future. Gillis clearly was not expecting the question and gave a classic GM's non-answer. To be fair, Bure could be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame and would be the first player who played the majority of his career in Vancouver to receive that honour. I don't see it happening; it's more likely he'll find a place in the Ring of Honour.

• Then came the questions from the season ticket holders, the majority aimed at Mike Gillis. The first was about Russians and the KHL: no Russians other than Shirokov will be competing for a spot on the Canucks and it appears that Kirill Koltsov won't be coming over from the KHL any time soon. Gillis went as far to say that the risks with Russian players and the KHL mean that he'll be likely to pick more Western Canadian kids than Russian kids in the future.

• Best line of the evening easily goes to Gillis. A fan asked "Why don't we have a cool intro like the Flames or Oilers?" Gillis's response: "I'd rather have a hockey team." Killer line.

• Gillis was actually quite funny all night, with a number of great one-liners. He really seemed to enjoy himself.

• Alex Burrows, according to Gillis, is ahead of schedule after his shoulder surgery and may be back in time for the beginning of the season. His agent had previously suggested Burrows might not be back until October or November, so hopefully Gillis is right.

• Who will wear #2 next season, Ballard or Hamhuis? Hammy suggested that in these types of cases, it usually comes down to the number of games played. Convenient.

• Unfortunately, our favourite weirdo, Kyle Wellwood, is on his way out. Gillis wished him the best and hopes that he finds a place to play through free agency.

• And finally, Gillis confirmed once again that Cory Schneider will be the backup in Vancouver, but also expressed the desire to sign a "veteran, young goaltender" to be their third-stringer/starter for the Moose. It's kind of difficult to get someone who's both veteran and young. Yann Danis might work; he's been a respectable backup at the NHL level. He's 29, but he could be a decent pickup. Barry Brust is younger, but has less NHL experience. Thankfully, I'm not the GM of the Canucks.

From the 'What If' Files: GM Place Renamed Lebron Place!

It was a typical day in Vancouver when Mike Gillis approached the podium. The media had gathered for the surprise press conference, expecting to hear only the mundane news that GM Place, the Canucks home since 1995, would be rechristened for another major sponsor. Telus Place. The Pattison Pavilion. Any number of names would have appropriately underwhelmed. But then Mike Gillis dropped the bomb. "Effective immediately," he announced, "GM Place will be known as Lebron Place."

The sudden explosion of hundreds of flash bulbs kicked off a frenzy of activity. Voices rang out from the crowd. Gillis was asked to explain himself. And that's when the walls came tumbling down. "Lebron James has signed a max, $200 million, ten-year contract to play with the Vancouver Grizzlies." And, as though anticipating the next question, he added, "Yes, the Memphis Grizzlies will be coming home." Lebron James emerged from behind a curtain. "I am the greatest," he said. "I'm so great I can resurrect the Vancouver Grizzles. People of Vancouver. I am yours. Love me." It was the greatest day in the history of Vancouver.


*sigh* It's a slow news day.