Circumvention includes the attempt and/or intent to circumvent. It was enough that they made a significant effort to circumvent
Devils fans agree the contract was ridiculous. The problem we have is that many teams have gotten away with their own form of circumvention beforehand and the league decided to come down on the Devils... and no other team since. Something that everyone needs to remember is that the Devils did not violate any written rules. Bettman and Daly maintained that the Devils violated the "spirit" of the salary cap.
Since then, the contracts of Brad Richards, Zach Parise, and Ryan Suter could be considered as a "spirit" violation as well.
Parise and Suter:
Year 1: $2 million base salary +
$10 million signing bonus = $12 million
Year 2: $2 million base salary +
$10 million signing bonus = $12 million
Year 3: $6 million base +
$5 million signing bonus = $11 million
Years 4-8: $9 million base
Year 9: $8 million base
Year 10: $6 million base
Year 11: $2 million base
Years 12-13: $1 million base
Richards:
2011-12 season: $12 million
($10 million signing bonus, $2 million salary)
2012-13 season: $12 million
($8 million signing bonus, $4 million salary)
2013-14 salary: $9 million
2014-15 salary: $8.5 million
2015-16 salary: $8.5 million
2016-17 salary: $7 million
2017-18 salary: $1 million
2018-19 salary: $1 million
2019-20 salary: $1 million
These contracts do the exact same thing that the Kovalchuk one did but using huge signing bonuses in the beginning and steep drop-offs in the end.
This whole thing was personal from the beginning. Bettman told Lou to hold off on the press conference and Lou went ahead and had one anyone probably trying to make the League look dumb if they decided to reject the deal.
Oh yeah how about Shea Weber's deal? This was created by the Flyers awesome management team:
2012-13
$1,000,000 $13,000,000
2013-14
$1,000,000 $13,000,000
2014-15
$1,000,000 $13,000,000
2015-16
$1,000,000 $13,000,000
2016-17
$4,000,000 $8,000,000
2017-18
$4,000,000 $8,000,000
2018-19 $6,000,000
2019-20 $6,000,000
2020-21 $6,000,000
2021-22 $6,000,000
2022-23 $3,000,000
2023-24 $1,000,000
2024-25 $1,000,000
2025-26 $1,000,000
Then the Flyers/Pronger deal. I personally don't think you should be allowed to announce that a player is never going to play again... at the same time hiding a cap circumventing deal that is also a 35+ contract on LTIR so management can make other horrible signings.
Basically the argument for us Devil fans is that we got hosed by the league AND the player... and other teams have been allowed to put out comical contracts and make ridiculous moves and not have anyone think twice about it.