Here’s the update on what’s going on with Ilya Kovalchuk.
ESPN’s EJ Hradek tweets that Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly has confirmed that a contract has been submitted to the NHL for approval. As part of the process, the NHL has five days to go over it and decide if it passes muster. Yahoo’s Dmitry Chesnokov reports that the deal will most likely be approved and Kovalchuk will officially be a New Jersey Devil.
The latest contract proposal between free-agent winger Ilya Kovalchuk and the New Jersey Devils will be accepted by the NHL, a source close to the negotiation told Puck Daddy this afternoon.
The report was confirmed by Tom Gulitti of the Bergen Record, who later added the NHL must still do a complete review of the framework and that it is “more than a formality.” We’ve already seen one press conference held for a contract that never happened, of course.
If that contract turns out to be true, the comparison between that and the 17-year, $102 million deal means knocking off two years and $2 million would mean that this whole battle reaches the absolute heights of madness. If adding $600,000 per year on a cap hit was worth all the bad publicity for all parties, I certainly hope the league can be happy with that.
Once again, however, we’ll wait to see if the NHL does, indeed, give the OK to this contract and we can put this circus of bad publicity behind us and get down to actual hockey news.