Curious About Kovalchuk

I was actually thinking of doing a quick blurb on how I thought the Ilya Kovalchuk free agency situation may go down this Summer and I was kind of derailed by the word that a KHL club has come down adding fuel to the fire.  If there is any truth to the reports that SKA St. Petersburg has given Kovalchuk a 3-year/$30 million offer, it really blows the socks off a little bit, doesn't it?

SKA St. Petersburg doesn't have to wait until Kovalchuk's contract is officially up to start throwing numbers at him, unlike the rest of the NHL clubs, which gives them a full month of a head start to tempt the Russian superstar back home for the near future.  Of course, I don't think anyone will be putting any pens to paper until the current deal expires, since that would create a bit of a stir, even after a reported memorandum between the NHL and KHL, in regards to transfer agreements.

In the blurb I had half-prepared, I was going to go on about what kind of value Kovalchuk was going to get from clubs, if he makes it to unrestricted free agency and to his own benefit, I think he can really write his own meal ticket with a new deal.  There have been rumours that Kovalchuk was looking for somewhere near the salary cap maximum and there have also been reports that he'd take significantly less money if he can play for a winner, which does make a lot of sense, since a lot of those Cup favourites are already tightly wound to their budgets and pressing up against the cap ceiling.  I, personally, picture the whole situation more like a sliding scale, where you can lump a lot of the rebuilding teams together and call that a cap maximum for his services, while some of the better teams can have him at a reasonable discount of a long-term cap hit of $6.5 or $7 million.  I don't doubt there is something in between those numbers as well, but that's me just being creative.

This offer to Kovalchuk does open the door to all sorts of conclusions we can all jump to and read about over and over and over again.  If Kovalchuk takes the deal, we should be able to conclude that he went for the money, because he couldn't get the right combination of winning and money in the NHL or he's just plain greedy.  If he stays in the NHL and takes less money, we can turn our noses up on the KHL and all believe that we cheer for the best hockey league in the world.  Sure, there is plenty of in between in there, but I wanted to make sure we all know what we were up against, because what we read doesn't believe in the in-between.

Nevertheless, I could really care less about where Kovalchuk wants to play and I couldn't really be bothered either way if he stays or goes.  The NHL, on the other hand, should be greatly concerned with how Kovalchuk decides his own fate, because once the KHL poaches a former number one overall pick like Kovalchuk, despite being Russian and so forth, what's to say that the KHL doesn't start poaching more top end talent for their league... despite most of them also being Russian?

Somewhat of a Mission Statement

I really love the internet for hockey purposes, I think its just the greatest tool in the world. You have the flexibility of people in every place where hockey in prominent and they do very well to keep everyone updated, if they so choose, of what's going on in their market, city or broad area (state, province or country).

I like to look at a lot of places for just generalized hockey news, just to collect for my Hockey Pool Domain blog, which is meant to service the people who are taking part in my hockey pools, combing out some of the usual information you might see in a regular news blog. Why should my poolies have to worry about players that don't necessarily impact their fantasy teams, which they may or may not have invested money in?

I also really like to collect rumours from the rumour mill, a few different websites that collect thoughts and quotes from "contacts" or "sources" around the league. Working the Rumour Mill takes some of the more complete rumours that I've seen around the blogosphere and turn them into a bit more of a discussion. It does really frustrate me when people assume that these rumours are meant to be the "sure thing" and they get all pissed off when they don't happen. Who cares, frankly? I like the idea of discussing the possibility that a certain player might be scouted by a certain team and then possibly building something around it. It's fun and it fills the bulk of the time that there isn't a game being played.

The invention of Twitter has been a wonderful tool as well, especially for short bursts of information and links to broader bits of hockey information, which is useful, fantastical or downright absurd. It's fun though. From Twitter, I like to gauge the reactions of controversial plays, trades and quotes and get a feeling of what the hockey world thinks. Granted, its a shaded microcosm of what the "whole" hockey world thinks, but it can give a rough idea. My Twitter feed does a lot more work surrounding the Canucks, but that's because I'm a huge Canucks fan. Let's face it though, you can't talk about one team the whole time or else you're just going to become stale and repetitive. So, I like to talk about other teams, taking the vantage point of the objective hockey fan... hell, I'll even respect the Flames and Oilers a little bit from time to time. It happens.

Overall, my goal with this blog site is to be a bit more of an objective hockey fan, just throwing thoughts and ideas out into the blogosphere, just for the sake of using more than 140 characters to do so. I do want to get some good hockey discussion going on this site, maybe even try to host a couple live blogs with friends, just so we can debate some more hockey in its more general form.

I don't want to be a hater, I just want to be a well-informed and well-rounded fan. Anyone care to join me?

share this: facebook