Pending league approval, Ilya Kovalchuk and the New Jersey Devils appear close to finalizing a deal worth $100 million over 15 years. This is the second attempt at a contract between the two sides after the first was rejected by the NHL.
For those of you not aware of my stance on these long-term NHL contracts, let me reiterate: I am sick of them. They let you pay ridiculous amounts of money early on in the contract and the league minimum in the later years.
According to the CBA, the cap hit is the average amount of money paid per year over the length of the contract, so the teams get a lower cap hit. This means that if the player retires before the last several years of the contract, then they were actually paid more money than the cap hit the team suffered.
Examples of such contracts are Marian Hossa, Roberto Luongo, and Henrik Zetterberg. There are more, but what amazes me is that Commissioner Gary Bettman is looking into all of them except the Detroit Red Wings' players who received most of these ridiculous contracts.
The argument to be made in their defense is that nobody knows if they will retire before their contract ...
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NHL
Article written by Edmond Dantes
Ilya Kovalchuk To Sign a 15-Year, $100 Million Contract
August 28th, 2010 by Edmond Dantes Leave a reply »
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