Fallout of the Kovy Arbitration Around The League

the Flyers have the most to lose should Pronger’s contract be thrown out following his Conn Smythe worthy cup run…

There’s a rumor going around that when Pronger is going to retire in a few years, Philadelphia might trade him to a team that needs help getting to the salary cap floor, like ATL or NYI.

Pronger retires so he gets no money, but his $5 million cap hit stays, which is helpful to the team that acquires him (they’d only have to actually spend $40 million of their dollars to get to a $45 million cap floor, for example.

All speculation but it would make sense. It’s shady, but that’s the landscape of NHL finances these days.

I have two ideas for how the NHL could end these shenanigans.

 Number one: Have each contract’s cap hit equal the actual amount paid that year. This would obviously stop the cap-hit reducing contracts, but would limit teams’ and players’ options significantly.

Number two: If a player retires, go back and recalculate his cap hit for past years, fining the team for every year he’s over the cap! They could grandfather in current contracts and start this with contracts signed after next year. This way, teams could frontload contracts if they wanted, but could not exploit the cap.

What do you guys think?

Here’s what I’m having trouble with …

There are reports circulating that the NHL is “still investigating” Pronger’s contract to see whether it is a cap circumventing contract.

But what the *$&# do they need to “investigate”? They know exactly what is contained in the contract, and they know how old Pronger is. So all they have to do is decide whether they want to pursue a belated rejection of the contract. That’s not “investigation”. That’s “deciding”.

Speaking of taking too much time to do stuff … how the $#$% long does it take Kovalchuk and his agent to discuss offers and decide on one? Can’t they just sit down and hash out what they want and what the offers are, then pick one? And really, haven’t they already had plenty of time to sort out what they want, etc?

And to complete my rant: While I would love to see Hossa’s contract kicked to the curb, how in the world would that be legal? He’s already been playing on it for a year, and it’s not like the league has suddenly come into new information about the contract. It seems remarkably suspect to think they could just void his contract now, when they accepted it a year ago).

I totally agree with the arbitrator’s decision regarding Kovalchuk’s contract, but the rest of the circus is kind of unacceptable in my mind. It makes me want to bash my head repeatedly against solid objects until it all goes away.

/stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid