Cornwall ON - Hockey nuts listened to the press conference yesterday announcing Ilya Kovalchuk signing with the NHL, but now Commissioner Gary Bettman has rejected the contract stating that it circumvented the rules.    A few teams have been playing with contract lengths to get cap hits down and it looks like this case was the straw the broke the diminutive camel’s back.

As this signing has a domino effect the follow up moves by other teams are now in the air as the lawyers wrangle over this one.

What do you think Hockey fans?  You can post your comments below.

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Cornwall ON - The US may be in a Depression but Ilya Kovalchuk is counting his Benjamins as the 27 year old resigned with New Jersey in what may be one of the most lucrative contracts in NHL history.

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“He signed here for a reason — to try to win a championship. This organization has a good history of that, so you know he wants to be part of the team. That’s what I’m excited about.”
– Devils’ head coach John MacLean

What do you think Hockey Fans?  Good deal? Bad deal?  You can post your comment below.

And of course now that Kovy is signed the dominoes should start to tumble.  Expect to see some big ticket contracts being moved.  Names like Lecavlier, Spezza, Gagne, and just about anyone making over $5M may be in play!

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Cornwall ON – Dontcha love texting?  I know Twitter is in vogue, but it’s so….public.   My sources have told me that there is a lot of buzz to Carey Price being shipped to Dean Lombardi with a certain Russian.    A LA goalie would be coming to the Great White North in the deal, but that both teams are waiting to see where a few more chips fall.

The San Jose Sharks are playing hardball or payback depending on your philosophy with the Chicago Black Hawks by putting in an offer on Black Hawk D Man Niklas Hjalmarsson who’s a RFA.    If Chicago doesn’t match they get a 1st and 3rd round draft pick in return.    My take is let him go as the 4 year $14M offer is a bit pricey unless you think Niklas is going to be a definite top 4 D Man.

Matching the contract means more cap woes for the Stanley Cup Winning Black Hawks.

What do you think Hockey Fans?  You can post your comments below.

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Cornwall ON - One of the men that personafied the role of ENFORCER in the NHL has passed away at the age of 45.   Bob Probert is survived by his wife and four children.   He suffered from Drug and Alcohol issues during his career, but recently had been supporting Canadian troops and raising money for charity by playing Alumni Hockey games.

He also competed on Battle of the Blades on CBC; a show the combined Hockey Players with Figure Skaters.   While considered one of the worst shows and concepts in Television history the show was renewed for a second season.

PROBERT ON WIKI

PROBERT CAREER STATISTICS

Here’s a video from You Tube showing exactly what Bob Probert did best in the NHL.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sVOIVueHGQ

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Cornwall ON – So the big fish is still on the loose.   Where Ilya Kovalchuk will call home still isn’t decided and Tomas Kaberle is still a Leaf, but an awful lot of players are changing jerseys after yesterday’s opening salvo of free agent signings.

The Sens were busy grabbing the big money D agent by signing Sergei Gonchar, 36 to a 3 year contract for fat bucks.   More than Anton Volchenkov got to sign with New Jersey of all places who lost Paul Martin to Pittsburgh for $5M per year for 5 years.

Calgary got Olli Jokinen back for a reduced price of $3M per year, and Alex Tanguay for $1.7M, and Saku Koivu reupped with Anaheim for $5M for 2 years.

Montreal settled on Alex Auld who certainly will strike no fear in Carey Price’s heart letting Dan Ellis get away and in an odd twist losing out on Marty Biron who signed for less to play for the Rangers.    Goalie $$$ are not at a premium right now in the NHL it seems.

FREE AGENT SIGNINGS

The Leafs paid a huge price in grabbing gritty Colby Armstrong for 3 years at $3 per and in a mind boggling play Vancouver gave Manny Malhotra $2.5 per year for 3 years to come west and also giving Dan Hamhuis $4.25 per year for six years.

What do you think Hockey Fans?  Did your teams do well so far?  You can post your comments below.

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Cornwall ON - So it’s July 1st.   Free Agent mania.   There are a lot of interesting goalies out there, but how many studs are available?  How many potential studs?   Yeah.   Some serviceable guys, but no studs.

Detroit showed that you could win a Stanley Cup without a STUD.   Philadelphia nearly won a cup with chopped liver.   Chicago’s Niemi wasn’t exactly paté so the question is where does Carey Price fit into this and what’s the play?

Carey Price will never be a Montreal legend.    He never really was meant to be.  He’s a West coast guy with a West coast personality.   I think he’s the real deal, but situationally in Montreal he and management are under the gun.

If the Habs and Mr. Price jump out to a slow start he not only will be butchered alive by the fans and media; his true value will be drastically reduced.

Right now; as I right this; his value will not be higher in 2010.   Right now Mr. Price could probably land a Top 6 Forward or Top 4 D man, and maybe a good draft pick if not a number one.

Montreal signing Dan Ellis I believe would put Carey in play.   The question is will the Price be right for other GM’s.   His salary; at least for another year is also extremely attractive to top level teams that not only want a Stud in goal, but a long term stud.    Philadelphia would be a perfect fit, but then so would a lot of other teams.

I hope that Pierre Gauthier does much better than he did in the Halak deal if he does pull the trigger; but a tandem of say Dan Ellis and Marty Biron isn’t totally attractive, and there are a lot of other interesting names out there that could complement Dan Ellis if the Habs get him signed at the right…….price

What do you think Canada?

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Cornwall ON - Hey at least it gives us something to write about.   Montreal today traded enigmatic (that’s fancy for waste of time) Sergei Kostitsyn for the rights to about to be Free Agents Dustin Boyd (if you actually wanted to replace Sergei a good fit without the headaches) and Dan Ellis who is a pretty good goalie, but may price (get it, price?) himself out of the Habs budget….or could this be a prelude to Carey Price being shipped off for that top six Forward the Habs need and maybe a Dan Ellis Marty Biron tandem?

The real story today for Habs fans is that Mike Modano will be a free agent and what better place to land than a young and exciting team, yes the Habs, where his veteran leadership and size could come in very handy and his relationship with former GM Bob Gainey would add a touch of home in the last hurrahs of his Hall of Fame career.

While Mr. Gainey isn’t the GM he’s still a part of this team and it was Bob Gainey that picked up Kirk Muller for his last hurrah.   The move potentially makes a lot of sense as Montreal still doesn’t have a big body up the middle and short of making a major move Mr. Modano may be the right fit in a salary cap world.

I still like the theory of Saku Koivu coming back to Montreal along with his bud Teamu Selanne.   Koivu also would make a good 2B or 3rd line Centre for this team and Selanne would be just what the doctor ordered replacing Andrei Kostitsyn.

What do you think Hockey Fans?  You can post your comments below.

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Cornwall ON - Remember Georges Laraque?  He may play in Sweden!    That was more surprising than the NHL Draft Friday night.   The internet was abuzz with chatter of teams trading down, up, all around.   Edmonton was going to trade its entire team and all their draft picks.

In the end they chose Taylor Hall first overall from the Windsor Spitfires.   Boston chose Tyler Seguin because in Boston you can never have enough Centres!

Dan Hamuis saw his rights flipped to the Penguins for a draft pick as the Flyers couldn’t get the D man signed.

Vancouver landed a D-Man, Keith Ballard, in a multi player deal with the Panthers.

The Habs made a move giving up a 2nd round pick to move up and draft Mark Tinordi’s son Jared with their first round pick.   The 6’6 205 pound blue liner may just be the right medicine for the Habs future d-corps.

Ottawa swapped their 1st round pick to the Blues for David Rundblad, a former 1st round pick from Sweden.

PLAYERS SELECTED IN ROUND ONE

So hockey fans are you happy with your teams picks in the first round?

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Cornwall ON - With the draft hours away there’s a lot of chatter and poo flinging going on.  The big buzz is coming out of Ottawa as the Sens seem about to trade away the rights to Anton Volchenkov; while the smart money is on Jason Spezza heading off somewhere, anywhere from Ottawa.

Rumours of Mike Fisher being traded don’t really make much sense; and of course there’s no word of trading Alex “Big Dawg” Kovalev and his $5 one year deal.

Ottawa is a mess right now.   The Goal tending isn’t fixed.  The D is a mess, and the offense isn’t much better.   Trading Spezza makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons, but if the Sens can get it done it’s going to be a step deal which allows them to reload and seek the future.

As hard as it sounds Ottawa really does need to blow it up and start from scratch with Daniel Alfredsson in the twilight of his career and not a lot of solid pieces to build on.

Montreal is making a lot of chatter too, but I don’t see any sensible deals popping up before Draft time.

What do you think Canada?  You can post your comments below.

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Cornwall ON - The hockey world is busy.  In this cap world the NHL has become the biggest Rotisserie Hockey League in the Universe and that makes for some fun.   For long time Roti owners “Cap Space” is a way of life and of course the value of players comes down to bang for the buck.

You need to get the most out of the least for long term survival.   Scott Gomez for example is a heck of a hockey player.  Scott Gomez at $7M….well if you have a lot of cap space and it’s situational.

Today the Sharks announced that they are ending their 10 year relationship with Evgeni Nabokov.   Not because he had such a bad year, but if you read between the lines it’s about Cap space.   Chicago won the cup with a lower priced goalie,and Detroit’s been using the low priced goalie system for awhile now.

There’s a glut of goalie’s available of good quality so you’re going to see some good bargains and deals out there too.   Top teams need to find cap space for studs.    Sure one of the reasons that the Habs gave Halak away was cap space as they knew in arbitration he’s going to get a big fat salary, and Carey Price is still not ready for arbitration, but they also know they can pick up a good alternative for under$2M.

In other hockey news Scotty Niedermyer ended his career, again.  Boston went wild and gave up a top 4 D in Dennis Wideman, a 3rd, and the number 15 pick in the draft and grabbed Nathan Horton from the Panthers, along with fill player Greg Campbell) ending a lot of net chatter as to who was going to get the forward.

Matt Cooke resigned with Pittsburgh as well as Matt Darche in Montreal, which brings me back to the cap.

Did the Habs do better with he Darche deal or the Plekanec one?  I write from from a very interesting spot.  I created one of the first Rotisserie style Hockey leagues and worked as a video statistician for the Habs.  As a matter of fact much of my system still isn’t used in the NHL.  When I left the Habs to go to Los Angeles in the film business I kept most of my dedicated system with me.

Tomas Plekanec is a good NHL player.   He has pluses.   My system essentially used the thesis that hockey is a game of templates.  Play by play you lay your offensive and defensive template down and random opportunities come into play.

For instance we discovered in 96 that Adam Graves took over 65% of  his attempted shots from essentially a single spot.  If you could communicate that to your team you could impact his effectiveness.

Using players in the best combination and situation always gets the best results.   Sometimes a players stats look much better and even worse based on their usage.   Mr. Plekanec had a career year playing mostly with a hot Mike Cammallieri who templated well with him.   In the play offs though Tomas offensive numbers went poof.  Why?

Well things changed.  Everything generally changes in the play offs and that’s why way back in 96 I shared that the strongest team designs was to build a strong, bigger core team that inflicted a lot of punishment on the opposition and had amazing special teams.    Get a 2 minute penalty?  If you have a super stud or two on the PK you can actually turn that into goal scoring time as most PP units are weak defensively.  Same for your PP.  You need players to draw penalties so that you can use your PP to suck the life out of opponents.

Some teams get that more than others.    Montreal this past season didn’t draw enough penalties because they spent way too much time in their own zone.   That’s another thing.  Spending more time in Zone 3 than Zone 1 always leads to more Stanley Cups.

You need to spend time in the kill zone to attract those penalties that keep you in the kill zone.

Getting back to Mr. Plekanec and the Habs if you’re going to keep Scott Gomez I’m not sure if he’s the best number 1, 1A, or 2 Centre for your team template.  Of course  if you’re Pierre Gauthier and don’t feel confident that you get a comparable Centre then you take the safe way out and pay Tomas, but in the long term you may not be helping your team.

For instance if you could sign Saku Koivu as old as he is you’d probably get comparable numbers and results for about half the salary which would allow you to focus some cap space elsewhere.

The Habs biggest need right now is a number one goalie.  I’m not convinced that Carey Price is the guy in Montreal.  He may be the guy in another city, but he just doesn’t seem to have HABS in his eyes.

Next Montreal needs a big power forward to round out either one of the two top lines.   Travis Moen isn’t the solution.  You need someone to create some net havoc and bump and grind ala Dustin Byfuglien.   They don’t have to be a 30 goal scorer, but simply be able to complement the Gomez/Gionta pairing or Plekanec/Cammallieri one.  A Colby Armstrong I think would look good in Montreal right about now…

Montreal’s defensive corp has a lot of question marks too.    I suggested trading Markov two years ago at the peak of his value.   He’s in a contract year coming off of very serious knee surgery which impacts his trade value and long term value to Montreal as well.  His injury means that you really can’t trade Roman Hamrlik who I really like, but not as much at his current salary.

In this situation though it may work out and perhaps Roman wants to stay in Montreal at a lesser salary afterwards?   PK Subban will need veteran support.

Gorges and Gill are fine and perhaps Ryan O’byrne will be able to fill Gill’s shoes by the time Gill is done.  Spacek should also be good for another year, but the Habs D Corps is in an odd transition and needs to be stablized.  Right now it’s not that strong defensively or offensively.   They’re one good D man away from really being effective.

Final note on the cap.   Ilya Kovalchuk.   He’s the hot buzz guy out there.  Almost everyone wants him and the salary starting point I’m hearing is $8M.

I don’t care if your name is Ovechkin, the greatest player in the game today, $8M in today’s salary cap is dangerous waters.   You need a full team to win the Stanley cup and that’s not easy to do when you focus that high an amount on one player.

And agents can do a disservice to their clients when they reach for those glory dollars.   The bragging rights in the short term can impact the players long time earning power (see Scott Gomez) as the expectations and needs of a contract that size are rarely realized.   Is Ilay at $8M plus really worth more to a team that two $4M players?

What do you think Hockey Fans?  You can post your comments below.

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