Welcome to an open post for the second Ilya Kovalchuk contract with the New Jersey Devils. The first contract was rejected, grieved by the union, and ultimately the rejection was sustained by an arbitrator. After additional negotiation and talks, the Devils submitted a second contract to the NHL on Friday. Per the CBA, the NHL has up to five days to approve or reject the contract. If the league takes no action at 5 PM, then the contract would be accepted as-is. Though, according to Tom Gulitti, that's not likely going to happen.
So far, the NHL has done nothing. The most recent bit information on Tuesday comes from Nick Kypreos of Sportsnet, who got a year-by-year breakdown of the contract. Here's a truncation of that list, all numbers are in millions.
6, 6, 11, 11.3, 11.3, 11.6, 11.8, 10, 7, 4, 1, 1, 1, 3, 4
I've offered my take on the whole mess last night. One way or another, there will be some conclusion - whether Kovalchuk will be a Devil for this contract, or whether this contract is deemed unacceptable by the league for some reason. Admittedly, I'm not seeing the problem with this deal; but then, I didn't see a problem with the first one - and my reasoning was thrown into the garbage can of history.
A lot of today's news with respect to the Devils if not the NHL as a whole will be focused on Kovalchuk. So, to centralize it all, please use the comments to this post to discuss any and all things Kovalchuk-related. Nothing else. Kovalchuk-only comments. Want to discuss how this is silly? Go ahead. Want to talk about Kovalchuk as a player? Fine. But no other topics as this is the Kovalchuk discussion post. As a non-exhaustive list of examples: please do not discuss about blogs, reporters, Brian Burke, calling Gary Bettman the oh-so-clever "Buttman," lamenting a lockout/strike in 2012, and so forth. A few more ground rules just to emphasize them:
Please place all updates from Twitter or other news sites about Kovalchuk in this post. Do not make a new FanShot or FanPost, link them here. This way all of this can be confined to one location. Don't link to twitter feeds or blogs, link to the actual tweet or post. The timestamp in Twitter acts as a perma-link; and use the link tool in the comments so long URLs aren't cut-off. Please only link to credible sources (e.g. Tom Gulitti, Rich Chere, anyone at Sportsnet or TSN, etc.) and ignore the fools (e.g. Eklund, NHLSourcesSay, etc.). Please link to actual news and facts, the less clutter and rumors - the better for all who read this site.
Above all, should the deal be accepted or rejected, please follow the rules at all times. That means no cursing should something not go your way. That means no inappropriate content. Supporters of other teams are welcomed, but are expected to behave too. Regulars here should treat them like anyone else. If you can't handle following the rules for whatever reason, then please refrain from commenting until you can. Whatever happens, we'll hope to get a post up during the day. Thanks for reading, I'll be checking in through the day.