toby91_ca

Living in Toronto, it's nice to know that the Rogers Centre and the ACC both had perfect records. Really interesting though, when you look at the locations of those that had violations in the 75-100% range, you have 8 locations, the Verizon Center in Washington and then the other 7 all in Florida....weird.

What about 1979 or 1988? I think 2003 could very well end up being one of the best ever, I just think it's too early yet, wait until most of them retire and then assess. My general comments though. The bolded players, I don't think they have ever been on an all star team in the NHL. And the second list, I say a lot of those guys are far from franchise players. Some are good players, some are very good, but franchise? Not so sure. Zherdev isn't even in the league anymore.

Why do you say that? Best ever? I guess when all is said and done, one might be able to look back on it as such, but right now, not sure why anyone would consider that draft year better than some others. Edit - forgot to metion, Hugh Jessiman was taken 12th overall that year.

Maybe the closest, but when it comes right down to it, no one dominated the way Gretzky did. You can try to twist and turn everything anyway you want by talking about illness and injuries and what ifs and on pace, etc., but at the end of the day, what you are left for is what actually happened. Lemieux probably the had the potential and skill to challenge some of Gretzky's totals, but he never really did in the end. Lemieux won the scoring title 6 times and the total margin he won by for the 6 years combined was 95pts. That compares to Gretzky's maring of 70+ pts, 5 years in a row and 79pts in a single year. I undestand some of those years Lemieux may have still won the scoring race even missing a ton of games, but like I said, all I can go by at the end of the day is what actually happened. Gretzky probably would have had a lot higher career stats too if he didn't seriously injur his back in the middle of his career.

No kidding. There were 4 seasons where his assist total alone would have won him the scoring title. This aren't actual recognized records, but Gretzky feats I'm sure will not be reached again: - 5 years in a row winning the scoring title while leading the 2nd place guy by 70+ points - Winning the scoring title by scoring 79 more points than anyone else Just throwing it out there, Gretzky did play in a high scoring era, but he dominated the competition like no other.

A lot of Gretzky's records that are not listed there are pretty unreal. 50 goals in 39 games, 92 goals in a season, 215pts in a season, 1,963 career assists, 163 assists in a season.

Why should Kovalchuk expect Crosby or Ovechkin money? He's a good player, but not on their level. Also, Crosby only gets $8.7M for 5 years, quite a bit different than $9.5M for 10 years. It is comparable to Ovechkin though, who's getting $9.6 million for 13 years. Stats wise though, Kovy doesn't compare. Crosby and Ovechkin both have 4 - 100pt seasons out of 5 career years. The seasons they missed, Ovechkin had 92 pts and Crosby missed like 30 games, he was on pace for well over 100 and to lead the league. Kovy has never had a 100pt season. Career ppg stats: Crosby - 1.364 ~ 112pts over 82 games Ovechkin - 1.336 ~ 110pts over 82 games Kovalchuk - 1.034 ~ 85pts over 82 games I agree with whoever asked why this guy thinks he's worth so much. Even if you think he's one of the best goal scorers, pure sniper, well, compare him to Crosby, a guy that most think doesn't score that much......their gpg stats are not that different.

The only contract you can really compare to this is the Hossa deal, which didn't exactly pass through with flying colours. If I was investigating the Hossa contract, I'm not sure I would have approved it, but going to the Kovalchuk contract, not approving is easy. Hossa's contract ends when he is 42 (too old if you ask me, but not 44 like Kovalchuk's). It's 12 years vs. Kovalchuk's 17 years. This is an issue, but not as big of an issue for me. The next issue is that Kovalchuk gets a larger % of the money in the deal earlier than the Hossa deal. So, in summary, I think the NHL could have easily nixed the Hossa deal, but approving that deal shouldn't not give rise to consistency questions by not approving the Kovalchuk contract, there are enough significant differences.

I wonder if a new deal will be announced quickly. You have to wonder if NJ might have worked out a couple deals. Try this one and because there was a huge risk of having it not approved, work out another one as well.

Do you think it makes sense to have a guy paid $95 million and have the team only have to absorb $60 million for cap purposes?

How is it bulls***? How would you really see this different than a 50 year contract that the player gets paid most of the money in the first 10 years? Easy to say a 50 year contract is absurd, but this contract is just as absurd. You can point to other "similar" contracts, but with those, there is at least a reasonable chance the players will play out the deals. There is a zero chance this contract would be played out. Also, 95% of the cash is paid a little over half way through the contract......just stupid and obvious circumvention.

No other contract took a player to the age of 44 and no other contract trailed off in later years quite as significantly. Rejecting this deal was an absolute no brainer to me.

IS that really a good deal? I thought an Yzerman rookie card in mint condition was quoted at around $80-100 and you'd normally be able to buy for 50% of the quoted price.

I collected cards during the 1990-91 and 1991-92 years. I have some cards from other years (Gretzky rookie, Messier rookie, Messier 2nd year autographed, etc.), but packs of cards I bought were those years. I have several copies of rookies like Fedorov, Belfour and Forsberg. I must have 15+ Forsberg cards, there seemed to be a lot more of those than Fedorov or Belfour. Problem is, none of those cards are really worth anything at all, too many produced.

Don't you think that missing 20+ games in 3 seasons out of 10 is pretty bad? Here is a summary of his 10 years in the league: Years missing 3 games or less - 4 Years missing 6-13 games - 3 Years missing 24+ games - 3 On average, he's missed 16 games per season. 6 out of his 10 years in the league he's missed at least 6 games, 5 out of 10 he's missed at least 10 games. Not saying he's going to continue to miss more, but to suggest he's injury prone is certainly not a stretch.

This is more than a couple times: 2010/05/07 Missed 4 games (right foot surgery). 2009/12/19 Missed 24 games (hernias in right groin). 2009/01/06 Missed 2 games (shoulder injury). 2008/10/24 Missed 1 game (flu). 2008/05/18 Missed the last 27 games of the regular season and all 17 playoff games (concussion). 2008/01/10 Missed 26 games (dizzyness). 2007/11/05 Missed 4 games (dizzyness). 2007/03/24 Missed 6 games (groin). 2006/03/06 Missed 3 games (bruised knee). 2006/02/10 Missed 1 game (stomach virus). 2006/01/02 Missed 1 game (flu). 2005/12/22 Missed 5 games (groin). 2003/10/25 Missed 2 games (bruised right shoulder). 2003/04/01 Missed 13 games (groin). 2003/03/07 Missed 13 games (groin). 2003/02/04 Missed 3 games (groin). 2003/01/07 Missed 5 games (cut above right eyebrow/concussion). 2002/12/02 Missed 2 games (abdominal injury). 2002/04/17 Missed the last game of the regular season (virus). 2002/01/08 Missed 2 games (shoulder injury). 2001/03/24 Missed 12 games (left shoulder subluxation). 2001/02/22 Missed 1 game (back injury).

A quick suggested solution: ensure all $ paid to the player end up counting against the cap. This is how it works: - If you sign a guy to a $50 million, 10 year contract, paying $5 million every year and he retires at the end of the 7th year, the cap would have been hit by $35 million (7 yrs at $5M per) and he would have been paid $35M, therefore, no issues. - However, if you want to try and get sneaky and front load a deal, then you could get stuck with this: Kovalchuk as an example. He'll get paid $95M in the first 10 years of his 17 year contract. If he retires at the end of the years, the cap would have only been hit by $60 million ($6M cap hit per year). Therefore, they would need to take the $35M paid that didn't hit the cap and spread it over the remaining years of the initial contract (35/7yrs = $5M cap hit per year). I understand you can't say you are stuck with a cap hit regardless of what happens because players will retire before the end of their deals and it's not fair, etc. However, if you choose to front load a contract and pay a guy all kinds of $ up front, it should count against the cap at some point. If you want to sign a guy to a 15 year contract, fine, if you pay him $6 million every single year, no problem, if he retires early, no cap hit after he's gone. However, if you get cute and pay him almost everything upfront, if he retires early, you are stuck with a cap hit and no player.

My issue is this: What's to stop a team from signing a player to a 30 year contract? Of course the easy answer is to say that is unreasonable, there is no way a player would play for that long, etc. However, where is the line drawn? How reasonable is it to expect Kovalchuk might play until he is 44. Consider that there has only been 1 player in the last 36 years to play to that age. The answer is that there is a 99.99% chance he doesn't play out the contract, which to me, makes it an unreasonable one.

Why would he be thinking about Crosby? What does his contract have to do with any of this? I thought he must be thinking of Bettman, but who knows.

If I was the NHL, I'd have no problem disapproving this deal. I think it is a clear circumvention of the cap. All the other long term deals at least ended no later than a player being 40 years old (I think). How can you justify a contract that has very, very close to a 0% chance of being completely fulfilled, especially with $98.5M of the $102M contract being paid out after the first 11 years of the 17 year deal. I'm not a fan of the contracts bringing guys to 40 either since the average player retires way before then, but at least with 40, you can point to several examples of players that have played to that age. At 44, other than Chelios, I can't think of any of the top of my head that have played to that age in the last 30 years.

If it is true, as being reported, I'm not sure how the league can approve such a contract. A 17 year contract would mean he is 45 at completion. It is obvious that they have no intention of paying him until he is 45, clear circumvention of the cap.

I too saw this and thought huge overpayment, but if you want to compare to Datsyuk, I look at it this way: - at the time Datsyuk signed his contract, he was a better player than Koivu is now, however, he was also 2 years older - at the time Datsyuk signed his contract, the cap was about $44 million, for Koivu, it's about $57 million (this is the cap from the season just completed in each case). So by comparison, that's about a 30% difference. I think this is the most significant difference, which is probably being overlooked by most. So, still overpayment today and risk involved, but with these types of deals, you hope the player continues to develop and make the cap hit look low later in his career. When Datsyuk signed his contract, I thought it was overpayment, but now, not so much. Same thing can happen with Koivu.

His numbers probably would have been better had he stayed, but you would have saw a similar decline over time, as you do with pretty much all players. However, a player like Fedorov would tend to decline more than a guy like Lidstrom for example. Much of Fedorov's game was built around speed (he had many assets, but I think speed was most important). As you age, you get slower, it's that simple. A guy like Lidstrom (hard to compare to a defenseman, but whatever), his game is not built around speed and not built around being overly physical. Had his game been based on those types of assets, you probably would have seen significant decline in his abilities. Since his game is mostly positional and smarts, he's been able to keep up a high level of play as he's aged. There's obviously been some decline, but not as much compared to other players whose game hurts when they get slower or when they can no longer be as physical.

Sakic has had his issues with injury as well, but I don't think it really matters. Is Crosby better than Ovechkin because Crosby has had to deal with a serious injury while Ovechkin has not? Taking it even further, you could use Lindros as an example. He'd likely be an all-time great if not for injury, instead, we're left with many wondering if he even deserves the hall of fame, while guys like Neely are in there.

The reason it's only a 3rd rounder is because he may very well sign somewhere else on July 1st (few days from now) if Pittsburgh is not able to sign him. So, could be giving up a 3rd rounder for nothing.