OT: Kovy retires? What?

[Heaton]

Right now the pressure is on Russians.
But the KHL is expanding and threatening to become a World League while Gary Bettman focuses his energy on keeping the Coyotes in the desert.


As Russians play for millions for their teams, some rich Finnish owner is going to get sick of losing 7-1 to Russian teams, and he's going to invest in the best Finnish players in the world.

And the same will happen when Stockholm gets its team eventually..

Yeah, but I tend to think the majority of players want to play against the best. The time it takes for a league like the KHL to ramp up is going to take years. Alex Radulov was/is their best player and he's barely a 1st liner in the NHL if at all.

The living conditions and opportunities are much greater in the NHL as well as opposed to Russia.

 

[RedWingsNow*]

Jokerit is the only Finnish team in the KHL and they are the only one to have the funds to do so.

How many Finnish teams does it take to hurt the caliber of Finnish talent in the NHL? I'd say about 1.

The KHL is still years away from competing with the NHL for anything.

Obviously not true, considering they're competing for talent and that they've won the bidding war for Kovalchuk.

A few years ago, Radulov went over and everyone said, "Don't worry, it's only Radulov."

And now Kovalchuk has joined him.

Kovy is the rare type (much like Radulov) that likely wanted all the publicity that came with being the star player on a good team (SKA St. Pete had the most points last year). NJ probably wasn't going to make the playoffs next year plus he gets to be a big fish in a little pond, gets more money in 5-6 years than he would in 13 (I've heard he's rumored to get 20 mil a year) and he enjoys playing in Russia.

I'm interested to see if this brings up any bad blood between the US and Russian national team fanbases because Kovy will now be on the 1st line of the Sochi Olympic team.

Note: Each team in Russia (I believe, I'm not sure about KHL rules it might be all teams) have to have a certain amount of Russians on their team. If most teams have a Russian restriction, then it can only appeal to a certain nationality.

 

[Zetterberg4Captain]

I really have no problem with all russians wanting to play in the KHL

that is their choice, see ya later

who really gives a rats as..

 

[stu the grim reaper]

Good for Ilya
He knows who he is as a hockey player and as a person

 

[Heaton]

Good for Ilya
He knows who he is as a hockey player and as a person

I think this is good for the Devils too, they weren't ever going to win with him there with his contract. Got lucky a few years ago when Parise rebounded nicely from his surgery and Brodeur turned it on. But it's hard to rebuild with that contract on the books.

 

[BeersHockey]

How many Finnish teams does it take to hurt the caliber of Finnish talent in the NHL? I'd say about 1.




Obviously not true, considering they're competing for talent and that they've won the bidding war for Kovalchuk.

A few years ago, Radulov went over and everyone said, "Don't worry, it's only Radulov."

And now Kovalchuk has joined him.

Not like any of the best Russian players in the league have ever left. Radulov - on his ELC, and not a top player in the league. Kovy - not Datsyuk or Malkin or Ovechkin. He's good, but obvi he is a diva. KHL couldn't keep Taresanko, or Nishcuskin (sp) and is close to losing Kuznetsov (unless, if reports can be trusted, his GF convinces him to stay longer). Plenty of great Russian players in the league, and will continue to play in the NHL, because there is parity in pay here, and a guarantee on contracts. Let's just wait and see if Kovy earns out on the (what I am sure will be) GIANT contract he signs. No chance. Also, again, unless there is going to be an average 30% higher payroll per team, these salaries per team are not sustainable. Good for Kovy, he is going to be the MLS/David Beckham, not going to help the league as much as he gets paid. He was a guaranteed HOF'er, not anymore.

 

[MissNHL]

Great hockey player but this "retirement" just puts a bad taste in my mouth. Won't be able to look at him the same. He just made his character look nasty.

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

Right now the pressure is on Russians.
But the KHL is expanding and threatening to become a World League while Gary Bettman focuses his energy on keeping the Coyotes in the desert.


As Russians play for millions for their teams, some rich Finnish owner is going to get sick of losing 7-1 to Russian teams, and he's going to invest in the best Finnish players in the world.

And the same will happen when Stockholm gets its team eventually..

Not gonna be quite like that outside the former USSR. The reason the KHL spends like mad is that Russia and the attached smaller countries have hundreds of men who have become very, very rich in the industrial bonanza after 1990. These newly minted tycoons in oil, gas, coal, steel etc. need status symbols and they need crowd pleasers because a lot of them got that money in, lets say, "tumultous" ways. They also deal with a mass of population still living in poverty, bread and games and all that. Those types of individuals aren't generally to be found in Sweden and Finland. There's a reason all the crazy spending soccer tycoons are Russians or Arabs as well.

 

[FlashyG]

Source. I don't believe this statement at all. For example, the English Premier League is the second most profitable soccer league in the world. Its profits as a league are fourth in the world in any sport, trailing only the NFL, MLB and NBA - and it is run primarily a country that is roughly the size of Michigan. Sure, there are teams in every league that run at a loss, but they are making bets that if they spend and win a championship they will make all that money back and more - and they would be right if successful. That can happen on a team by team basis, but not on a league wide basis. The Russian billionaires that own these teams didn't become billionaires because they love to give money away. They want to turn a profit.

I'm not sure what the leagues debt is, but many teams themselves operate at huge losses and are deeply in debt.

Here is some of the teams debt as of April this year.

Real Madrid £600million (Appx 911 Million US dollars.)
Manchester United £359.7million (Appx 546 Million US dollars)
Barcelona £369.5million (Appx 560 million US)
Arsenal £104million (Appx 156 Million US)
AC Milan £298.8million (Appx 454 Million US)
Juventus £48.65million (Appx 74 Million US)
Liverpool £237million (Appx 360 Million US)

The Billionaires that run the KHL teams don't seem to care that they are losing money on them, they are status symbols like yachts and incredibly expensive cars...they are acceptable losses considering the amount of money they make from their businesses.

KHL owners seem to be treating that league the same way, although on a far smaller scale.

With the payroll of some of the rich teams combined with the size of most of their arena's you would have to charge insane amounts per ticket to even have the possibility of turning a profit.

 

[Run the Jewels]

Not sure I buy that Kovalchuk willingly retired, particularly when Lamoriello has had so many issues staying within the cap structure over the history of the salary cap. He's buried NHL players in the minors and couldn't ice a full hockey team due to his incredibly pathetic attempts at managing a salary cap.

The irony is he's one of Gary Bettman's flunkies who has supported handicapping the franchises that actually make money. So yeah, rather than use a compliance buyout and let one of the dominant teams in the league sign Kovy he gets him to retire back to Russia. Oh and the Devils are more than willing to let their best player "retire" when he has no health issues to speak of.

**** Lou Lamoriello and **** Gary Bettman. The best players in the world should play in the NHL and if you're too ****ing stupid to sign them to a contact you can honor then at least have the ****ing balls to buy them out - after all you negotiated a way to renege on contracts you willingly signed, **** head.

The Devils deserve to have every talented player on their roster basically tell them to go get ****ed when they hit free agency. Of course Lamoriello and Bettman are doing their best to cover that angle by delaying free agency and giving the team with a player's rights an additional year to sign their own players.

This is a ****** day for the NHL. And once again it's Lou Lamoriello who is making the league a ****ing embarrassment. As if I needed another reason to hate that piece of **** franchise.

 

[RedWingsNow*]

He was a guaranteed HOF'er, not anymore.

What's this need to punish the player?

By the way, HHOF is the hockey hall of fame. Not the NHL HOF.

 

[RedWingsNow*]

Not gonna be quite like that outside the former USSR. The reason the KHL spends like mad is that Russia and the attached smaller countries have hundreds of men who have become very, very rich in the industrial bonanza after 1990. These newly minted tycoons in oil, gas, coal, steel etc. need status symbols and they need crowd pleasers because a lot of them got that money in, lets say, "tumultous" ways. They also deal with a mass of population still living in poverty, bread and games and all that. Those types of individuals aren't generally to be found in Sweden and Finland. There's a reason all the crazy spending soccer tycoons are Russians or Arabs as well.

The owner of Ikea can't fund a team? There are no Finnish tycoons in the oil business? Norway sure pumps a lot of oil from the sea.

 

[crashman]

Not sure I buy that Kovalchuk willingly retired, particularly when Lamoriello has had so many issues staying within the cap structure over the history of the salary cap. He's buried NHL players in the minors and couldn't ice a full hockey team due to his incredibly pathetic attempts at managing a salary cap.

The irony is he's one of Gary Bettman's flunkies who has supported handicapping the franchises that actually make money. So yeah, rather than use a compliance buyout and let one of the dominant teams in the league sign Kovy he gets him to retire back to Russia. Oh and the Devils are more than willing to let their best player "retire" when he has no health issues to speak of.

**** Lou Lamoriello and **** Gary Bettman. The best players in the world should play in the NHL and if you're too ****ing stupid to sign them to a contact you can honor then at least have the ****ing balls to buy them out - after all you negotiated a way to renege on contracts you willingly signed, **** head.

The Devils deserve to have every talented player on their roster basically tell them to go get ****ed when they hit free agency. Of course Lamoriello and Bettman are doing their best to cover that angle by delaying free agency and giving the team with a player's rights an additional year to sign their own players.

This is a ****** day for the NHL. And once again it's Lou Lamoriello who is making the league a ****ing embarrassment. As if I needed another reason to hate that piece of **** franchise.

This is actually a pretty interesting angle. It makes more sense than him just deciding to call it quits out of the blue.

They probably wanted to buy him out but couldn't afford to, so Kovy did them a huge solid and decided to bounce to the KHL and make his money there. It's a win/win for both sides, financially.

 

[DetBigWangs]

In terms of the NHL's Russian roulette, Datsyuk is an empty barrel and Kovy is a loaded one. So glad we have Dats.

 

[JmanWingsFan]

Wow... This is insane.

 

[Amyklas]

It's pretty simple:

-Kovy wanted to go anyway
-Reports of 15-20 million/year offers for KHL
-Devils have roughly zero dollars in actual cash
-After this year, Kovy retiring before the end of his contract would be a MUCH bigger hit of recapture dollars
-"Loophole Lou" gladly obliged and agreed they wouldn't raise an eyebrow at him playing in the KHL right away

 

[ricky0034]

What's this need to punish the player?

By the way, HHOF is the hockey hall of fame. Not the NHL HOF.

tell that to Sergei Makarov

 

[ricky0034]

Not sure I buy that Kovalchuk willingly retired, particularly when Lamoriello has had so many issues staying within the cap structure over the history of the salary cap. He's buried NHL players in the minors and couldn't ice a full hockey team due to his incredibly pathetic attempts at managing a salary cap.

The irony is he's one of Gary Bettman's flunkies who has supported handicapping the franchises that actually make money. So yeah, rather than use a compliance buyout and let one of the dominant teams in the league sign Kovy he gets him to retire back to Russia. Oh and the Devils are more than willing to let their best player "retire" when he has no health issues to speak of.

**** Lou Lamoriello and **** Gary Bettman. The best players in the world should play in the NHL and if you're too ****ing stupid to sign them to a contact you can honor then at least have the ****ing balls to buy them out - after all you negotiated a way to renege on contracts you willingly signed, **** head.

The Devils deserve to have every talented player on their roster basically tell them to go get ****ed when they hit free agency. Of course Lamoriello and Bettman are doing their best to cover that angle by delaying free agency and giving the team with a player's rights an additional year to sign their own players.

This is a ****** day for the NHL. And once again it's Lou Lamoriello who is making the league a ****ing embarrassment. As if I needed another reason to hate that piece of **** franchise.

uh....what?

gonna have to elaborate on that one

did someone hold him at gunpoint? kidnap his family? what are you even saying

 

[Frk It]

uh....what?

gonna have to elaborate on that one

did someone hold him at gunpoint? kidnap his family? what are you even saying

He did in the rest of his post. Just in an extra emphatic way

 

[ricky0034]

He did in the rest of his post. Just in an extra emphatic way

I see no real elaboration,a bunch of whining about Bettman and Lamoriello but no actual evidence to support the quite frankly insane theory that the Devils somehow forced Kovalchuk to retire against his will

 

[RedWingsNow*]

Watch for Datsyuk to get an insane offer that he considers after year 1 of his 3 year deal...

 

[kuick]

uh....what?

gonna have to elaborate on that one

It's no secret that Kovalchuk enjoyed his time with SKA during the lockout and wanted to go back.

I don't think it would surprise anyone here if Lou encouraged it for financial reasons.

Also, for all those talking about the 1st rounder, I truly believe the Devils have a strong case to appeal it now. But we'll see if they end up getting it back. Probably another reason Lou isn't too upset over this situation. Maybe I'm just thinking crazy on this.

Without Kovalchuk they are probably a lottery team, but don't forget they also added Schneider. A strong goalie rotation like that alone could push them back to a middle of the pack team.

 

[ricky0034]

Watch for Datsyuk to get an insane offer that he considers after year 1 of his 3 year deal...

weren't you one of the people that repeatedly insisted that Datsyuk wouldn't sign an extension at all and would be heading to the KHL after next year?

 

[Frk It]

Watch for Datsyuk to get an insane offer that he considers after year 1 of his 3 year deal...

Watch Datsyuk play for Detroit until 2017. Because he will.

 

[kuick]

Watch for Datsyuk to get an insane offer that he considers after year 1 of his 3 year deal...

Detroit wouldn't terminate his contract and allow him to play overseas. No chance.

Kovalchuk was an anomaly because his contract was a monstrosity.