The Summer of Kovalchuk continues

Lately, the NHL off season seems to generate more interest than the regular season. Last summer it was the Phoenix bankruptcy case. This summer it’s the Kovalchuk contract. Last year it was Bettman butting heads with an owner fed up with losing money. This year Bettman is butting heads with the NHLPA.

You got to love this guy. If he was in charge of BP, he would deny the well was leaking oil until the oils slick hit the shore. Then he would hire a team of lawyers to argue that it was the government’s fault.

Most people seem to believe that the NHLPA will win the arbitration case and the Devils will get away with significant cap savings on a huge contract. After all the league has allowed similar contracts to be signed in the past and clearly the CBA does not cap the length of player contracts. And maybe Ilya Kovalchuk turns out to be one of those exceptional athletes and will play 26 years in the NHL. You can’t prove that he won’t.

I actually think that the NHL has a good shot at winning the arbitration case. The goal for the NHL is to draw a line in the sand and signal how far the salary cap can be manipulated. Maybe the NHL regrets the Hossa contract. But the league did review that contract and eventually accepted it. So perhaps the decision last summer was that the Hossa contract would be the line in the sand. The question is whether the genie is out of the bottle.

So how can the league win this case? Well the NHLPA will argue that this contract is consistent with past practices but is it really? No contract has ever been drafted to cover this many years and no contract has ever had as many “throwaway” years (low salary years in which it is expected the player will just walk away). If it was the same as the Hossa contract or the Luongo contract then you can defend this contract as consistent with past practice. I don’t think so. If this contract is okay then how about a 20-year contract with 9 throwaway years? The arbitrator will have to consider where to draw the line otherwise you will eventually reach an incredibly absurd situation.

The second argument is that the there is no intention to for the parties to fulfill the full term of the contract and therefore it was designed solely to circumvent the CBA. Not many NHL players play beyond the age of 40. With each year beyond age 40 you just stretch credibility of the contract that much farther. Franzen and Zetterberg will be 40 at the end of their contracts. Hossa and Luongo will be 42 at the end of theirs. Statistically the probability falls sharply with each year. So will the arbitrator accept that the parties both believe that Kovalchuk will be playing at age 44? Not likely.

One thing for sure, this is a landmark case and will become the basis for the next round of CBA negotiations.