Oh what a can of worms the NHL opened with its arbitration victory over the New Jersey Devils and star forward Ilya Kovalchuk. Arbitrator Richard Bloch ruled last week that the star’s 17-year, $102 million contract violated the league’s collective bargaining agreement.
It was a pretty blatant attempt by New Jersey to circumvent the NHL’s salary cap with Kovalchuk earning the majority of that money over the first 11 years and both sides having clear escape routes when the Russian sniper reached the downside of his career. He would be 44, after all, when the contract finally expired.
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Of course, the reasoning used to invalidate that contract could also apply to others signed in recent years. Vancouver goalie Roberto Luongo (12 years, $64 million), Philadelphia defenseman Chris Pronger (7 years, $34.45 million), Boston forward Marc Savard (seven years, $28 million) and Chicago forward Marian Hossa (12 years, $63.3 million) all inked similar contracts and each had the same affect as Kovalchuk’s — a smaller cap hit and a term neither the team nor the player intended to finish.
An NHL spokesman told ESPN on Tuesday that the league still is “looking” at each of those recent extensions to see if they, too, need to be invalidated. The league was clearly emboldened by its victory — no one had a real handle on which side would prevail before Bloch ruled in the NHL’s favor. Now that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is the winner, he can clear out these long-term deals even before the collective bargaining agreement expires after the 2011-12 season.
Which side holds the moral high ground here is debatable. But it’s also fair to say there are a limited number of NHL teams capable of handing out contracts like Kovalchuk’s — a disparity the last collective bargaining negotiations sought to eliminate.
But don’t worry Caps fans. No one is going after the deals signed by stars Alex Ovechkin (13 years, $124 million) or Nicklas Backstrom (10 years, $67 million). Both were so young that in another decade their deals would still make sense.
