NHL trying to cover their tracks

The NHL has overturned the obnoxiously enormous contract that the New Jersey Devils awarded to Ilya Kovalchuk.

Now the league is looking into every ludicrous deal that was agreed upon over the past couple seasons. Among the players whose deals are being reviewed are; Philadelphia’s Chris Pronger, Vancouver’s Roberto Luongo, Boston’s Marc Savard and Chicago’s Marian Hossa. Here is the TSN story with all the details.

I think the NHL is wise to take a look at these contracts. The problem here is that they were agreed upon and awarded over a year ago. It is a little too late for the NHL to say these contracts circumvent the CBA – regardless if they do or not.

In fact, these deals are all probably subject to review and if the league had taken a closer look when they came up originally they may have found fault with the contracts.

The agents and teams were taking advantage of the CBA and it wasn’t right. Hey, the Blackhawks had to have the fire sale of all fire sales after winning the Cup this year because they didn’t manage the cap well enough. Now the NHL is setting teams up to properly manage their salaries in order to build teams that can compete for more than one year at a time. Of course, the ‘Hawks will still be solid, they just won’t have the ever so important role players necessary for a serious Cup run. That is why it is so important to have good cap management.

Now it is simply too late. The NHL proved their point to the owners, players and agents. They will not stand for anymore huge deals that pay little money over the final four or five years. Unfortunately, the deals that are being re-reviewed are too old to be taken back, and I’m ok with that.

Now everyone should know, players aren’t going to get a 11-year $105 million deal that pays $500,000 per season for the last three years. Hopefully the league can uphold their end of the bargain.