All accounts are in that the NHL has approved the latest Devils offer of 17 year $102 million deal with Ilya Kovalchuck. The initial report a few days ago still had the deal with some big years and some small years but it was nothing near the idiotic deal that was initially rejected last month. This one made some more sense and was huge but acceptable. I cannot find right now what it is on paper but all reports just say “a cap hit of 6.66 Mil per year. (If I get the entire breakdown inthe next few days I will update this with what it looks like.

   So right now this puts the Devils at 3.5 or so million OVER the salary cap and 21 players. You must have 24 players on the roster legally as a minimum. So if you factor this in you are looking at roughly 6 million (at most) the Devils will have to clear before opening day to get under the cap. Who benefits? The Devils? Well you Can make this argument since they got one of the best snipers (on paper) in the league, even if he is one of the biggest whiners and 150%  non-team guy. In the GeekJock’s opinion there will be 3 other teams who will really be the benefactors here. These will be the  teams who get the Devils scraps for next to nothing. You see, the Devils are in a huge pickle. They have to shed cash and have to do it when everyone in the whole league knows they have to. So don’t expect any huge offers for these players they get rid of. Also they won’t be able to get this done in one deal either. All the players who make substantial money have some sort of no movement clauses in their deals or they are just unmovable b/c no one would (or should ) want them. This basically eliminates Elias (6mil), Rolston 5.06 mil) , Langenbruner (2.8 mil), C. While (3 mil) and Arnott (4.5 mil). Obviously this doesn’t completely eliminate these guys but it makes them a bit more unlikely.

   So who’s left? Zubris (3.4 mil)  , Clarkson (2.67 mil ), or Zajac (3.887 mil )  have immediate value and even with the Devils in the corner one of these guys might actually fetch a decent offer. Hard to deal away any one of these guys but stranger things HAVE happened.  On Defense Volchenkov’s contract (4.25 mil) is just unmovable to any team with a common sense, Bryce Salvador (2.9 mil) is most likely to go from the blue line, and it’s possible Tallinder (3.375 mil) is a bit too much to move as well.

  An out of left field idea is to move Hedberg and his 1.5 mil contract, to a team and go with a entry level minors guy as the backup for Brodeur. Hey the guy is going to play close to 70 games anyway so why not let a kid or a 500K do it. 1 mil difference might not seem like much but when you need to get under cap every penny counts.

I can’t wait to see who ends up taking one of these guys. It could be one of the really big cap shy teams that is offered one of these players + a pick or just gives them away for a 4th round pick. There are about 10 teams who have 10+ million in cap space (including both the Canes and the Isles) so there at least are some teams who have the room.

Stay tuned to see what deals come of this…

GJ out

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