Jim Kelley

Jim Kelley writes regularly on the NHL for Sportsnet.ca and can be heard on Primetime Sports on the FAN590.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

Does the NHL have a case in rejecting Kovalchuk's deal after approving similar ones in the past?

The issues regarding the disputed Ilya Kovalchuk contract with the New Jersey Devils are clear and concise due in large part to a well-reasoned commentary by colleague Mark Spector elsewhere on these pages, but you might be wondering exactly why it falls to the National Hockey League Players’ Association to grieve a disallowed contract when the issue appears to be one between the National Hockey League and one of its member franchises, the Devils.

After all, it is the Devils and specifically team general manager Lou Lamoriello that crafted the deal that the NHL feels is subverting the spirit if not the very letter of the rules set forth in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. One would think this is their fight.

One would think they would be right in thinking that, especially when the CBA sets boundaries but allows wide latitude for dealings between players and clubs when it comes to money, length of term, no-trade and no-movement clauses and the like, but the technicality is that it's left to the Players’ Association because the league is contending a PA member has violated the CBA by signing a deal that the league feels is outside the boundaries of the contract between the league and the NHLPA.

"The contract has been rejected by the League as a circumvention of the Collective Bargaining Agreement," NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said in a tightly-worded statement that did nothing to clarify exactly what article in the CBA he might be talking about.

The remark seems in direct contrast to one by Lamoriello who is quoted as follows: "We are extremely disappointed that the NHL has decided to reject the contract of Ilya Kovalchuk. The contract complies with the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. We will have no further comment until the process outlined in the CBA is complete."

The process, arbitration, we get. What exactly there is to arbitrate is hardly a given.

It's a more than safe bet to assume that Lamoriello knew that if the league was going to have any objections to a contract that pushes the salary limits and the number of years in an agreement to seemingly absurd heights it would be with the organization that conceived it. Yet the league is going to go the tried and true CBA violation route. Far be it from the league to slap down a member organization even if it has, from time to time, had serious disagreements with said organization.

The PA is always a much more likely (though not necessarily easier) target in that if the league wins it doesn't just win against one perceived rogue member of its own organization, it wins against the PA and for its view of how the CBA should be interpreted. If that happens, everyone else has to fall in line.

The PA, like everyone else involved, has issued its own terse statement pretty much saying nothing more than the situation is being taken under advisement and that the PA will respond in a timely fashion, but it would appear the union has precious few options and will have to go the arbitration route to get a final decision.

In that arena, it would appear the PA has a strong case. The league might think the contract is too rich and too long, but the battle is likely to be fixated more on the idea that the Devils so seriously downplayed Kovalchuk's compensation in the final years of the agreement that it can't be viewed as a bonafide agreement. It seems likely the league will argue that the Devils did the late-year discounts for no other reason than to make the total salary cap hit a manageable $6 million per season over the life of the agreement.

In essence, the Kovalchuk deal calls for $98.5 million for Kovalchuk over the first 11 years of the agreement, years that most practical people would consider the limits of Kovalchuk's time as an effective player in the NHL. The remaining six years are for a "paltry" $3.5 million, a sum that could easily be bought out or just placed in the "necessary expenditures" column no matter what the state of both the CBA and the league salary cap might be at that time.

Where the league has a fight on its hands is in having to prove is that such a deal is a violation of the CBA as currently written and that would seem to be a difficult thing to do given that the league has approved similarly-structured agreements, admittedly over slightly shorter periods of time.

In recent seasons the league has indicated it laments long-term contracts for variously-structured seasons, but it has approved virtually all of them. Chicago's Marian Hossa has a 12-year deal with the Blackhawks that is supposed to end when Hossa is 42. Along the way it goes from $7.9 million in the early front-loaded years to $750,000 in each of the final two seasons. Detroit's Henrik Zetterberg also has an approved 12-year contract that could keep him with the Red Wings until he's 40 and it drops from $7.75 million to $1 million in each of the last two seasons. Philadelphia's Chris Pronger has a complex seven-year deal with the Flyers that ends when he's 42 and it goes from $7.6 million to $525,000 in the final two seasons. Vancouver's Roberto Luongo's has a similar12-year contract extension with the Canucks, an extension that technically envisions him still playing goal for the Canucks when he's 43. Of course all this started just a few years back when the New York Islanders extended a 15-year deal to goalie Rick DiPietro, a deal that raised quite a few eyebrows when it was first submitted to the league but one that was, after a few tweaks at least, approved.

It's worth nothing that shortly after the DiPietro approval, commissioner Gary Bettman made a rare public statement saying it wasn't the way he envisioned contracts going when the salary cap was ushered in via the current CBA.

Going out 17 years apparently has the NHL thinking that things have gone way too far.

The problem for the league appears to be something akin to getting the genie back in the bottle after so many other agreements seemed to not only let it out, but to run freely through the league.

Equally as important is where the push is coming from. GMs in small and mid-sized markets might be bothered by this because their cash resources are not the same and many can't or won't do such a deal.

But even those who did these kinds of deals -- and that includes the Washington Capitals who wrote long-term, big-money deals for star forwards Alex Ovechkin and Niklas Backstrom -- seemed to be incensed as well.

"I don't like the structure of the deal," Capitals owner Ted Leonsis said Tuesday while being interviewed on talk show host Jim Rome's syndicated radio show. "I don't think it's right, but I don't have a say in it. But I don't know of other wings that are playing when they're 44-years old, so we'll see what happens."

Seems a bit of an odd statement from a man who signed Ovechkin to a 13-year deal and Backstrom to 10 years, but those deals are a distance away from 17 seasons and in Leonsis' defence, they don't drop off in the closing years. It's also not outside the realm of possibility that both players will still be contributors as their deals come to a close.

So is it just posturing on the NHL's part or do they have a case they think they can win?

"Difficult to say," a player agent told sportsent.ca upon the condition he went unnamed simply because agents never see themselves in a position to speak of contracts constructed by fellow agents. "In terms of precedent, you would think no, but what if the league appeals to an arbitrator with an argument that says the commissioner is ‘acting in the best interest of the league’ and that he has that ‘authority’ via the league constitution?"

One would think that wouldn't hold sway against a signed contract between the NHL and the NHLPA, but stranger things have happened in the NHL, a league that allowed the Calgary Flames to play games with a 15-18 man roster when rules call for 20 players and where the league can finance and run one of its own teams (Phoenix) with nary a hint of a complaint about the competitive aspects of such a situation and then give its employee, general manager Don Maloney, an award as Executive of the Year.

With that kind of history, who can honestly say where this might be going?