Bettman and the NHL officially hate the devils! Hossa, Pronger, Luongo all have the same exact type of contracts but now the devils do it and they shoot it down. The NHL is a joke!
in order for a contract to be legal, the average money per year must remain at or below the player's salary cap. what the deal for kovy said, was ~8 million for a few years, then 11.5 mill, then 6 for a few, then the final 5 were like 500K. this brought the avg salary down from say 9 million to under 6 million bucks, which is legal. HOWEVER, those last 5 years are pretty much "bogus" years because he will be in the mid 40s and probably wont play so those years will be tossed out, and the actual salary avg will rise. but technically the contract called for the other years and therefore it is still legal. its kinda like a loophole. a few other players have similar contracts (those posted above), but they arent as exploiting as this was. sucks because i was pumped for kovy to stay in jersey... hopefully they can sort **** out
i really don't think the devils would have had a slidified playoff spot last year had they not aqquired kovalchuk in the second half ot the season. they were on fire until january, and they they just dropped the ball big time. losing to all kinds of awful teams like the oilers, and maple leafs who were the worst teams in the league last year. during the second half of the season it seems the only guys who were giving it 100% were parise, broduer, and kovalchuk. brodeur just couldn't do all the work by himself though. he seemed to be the only guy on defense, but one guy could only do so much. had it been anybody else than him, any other goaltender, but broduer they probably would have done worse. though the kovalchuk contract was a little ridiculous. the guy is like 27. do they really think he's got 17 seasons left in him? he'll be like 44 when thats up. unless you're chelios there aren't many guys that age still left.
I heard on the street today the Stanley Cup will be making an appearance at the Headliner in Neptune on August 29th.
well you gotta remember the devils' defense was lacking due to injuries. around the kovy acquisition, paul martin returned...
my god anyone following the devils this year? they look like a joke out there. what happened to them? this is the worst i have seen them since their first two seasons in jersey[82-83, 83-84] they are looking like hell. i myself am a season ticket holder. they haven't won a home game this season, they aren't scoring, their defense sucks. it's easy to blame brodeur the 38 year old goaltender, or john maclean the first year coach. i don't think thats the problem. not at all. in fact broduer seems to be the only guy playing any defense at all. if he weren't behind the net they would probably be losing the games twice as bad as they already are. the guy can only do so much work on his own. they're not scoring this year either. i mean right now it looks like the 14 year playoff streak is over this year. yeah it's early in the season, but they look so awful right now. they played pretty terrible the second half of last season as well. they only won their division, because at one point in the first half of the season they were by far the best team in the nhl. had the best record too. then sometime in january things got bad for them. it seemed the game with the lighting incident at prudential center started their bad spell. thats when they dropped the ball. the game against tampa bay when the lights went out, and they had to finish the game two night later. they were already down in that game on the first night. second half of last season was bad, but this year is atrocious.
i think whats really killing us is our young defense. we lost martin which was huge and one guy is injured atm (salvador maybe, i forget). but we have like 3 rookies playing and with no veteran help to aid them. i feel like once the defense breaks down its hard to get moving on offense
Completely agree. Even with a lack of defense, no offensive support means no wins. On top of that Parise is now out indefinitely due to knee surgery... Looks like that 100m+ deal with Kovalchuk better start paying off.
ya know whats funny is that out of the 5 games this season that i have not watched nor listened to any of on the radio the devils are 3 and 2. those games i couldn't watch cause i was at my girls house, and she don't get the devils or new york sports channels she gets the philly ones. so i haven't seen them win a game this year at all. what do you think of john maclean as coach this year? it's easy to blame a new coach, but he seemed to do good when he was coaching the lowell devils if i am correct. i know it's a big stretch to go from the farm teams to the big time, but i'm not so sure the problem lies with him. i think it will be about 2 more years for brodeur. i am thinking he will retire after the 2011-2012 season. he may make it to the end of 2012/2013. i think he has another four or five seasons. i think we can get another four or five out of him, but all these losses, and shutouts are making him look awful, and i don't think it's his problem. i don't think the problem lies with him. the game johan hedberg started he got blown away, and they had to bring marty in. marty is the only guy playing defense, and he can't take the load of all that. i think it's funny that the two oldest guys on the team are marty broduer, and johan hedburg. i didn't know much about him before this season, but then i found out he's 37. yann danis wasn't a bad backup last year.
Putting the biscuit in the basket! Yo! Dateline: ORANGE N BLACK, Broad Street... You think your Lil' Debbie Devils are coming up short now...
