Conclusions

So Ilya Kovalchuk is a Devil, with a 15-year contract that pays him $11-11.8 million a year for ages 29-33 and will count as a cap hit of $6.67 million throughout. The NHL approved this and agreed to not investigate existing contracts (which is basically an agreement to not go back on something they already previously agreed to, the big-money adult equivalent of saying "but this time I REALLY MEAN it!!"). As part of the accord, the NHLPA agreed to two minor amendments to the CBA, to apply only to contracts signed from here through the end of the CBA (any contract signed prior to September 4, 2010 is exempt from the new amendments).

The amendments are fairly minor and a little complicated. I'll try to give the quick summary, but largely you don't have to worry about it. There are two of them. The first applies only to contracts that last for 5 or more years and that include or go beyond a player's 41st birthday. For these contracts, those years that include ages 41+ are not averaged in when the overall cap hit is calculated. The cap hit in these years is simply the player salary. So, for example, say you are signed to a 5-year contract at $8m/$7m/$6m/$3m/$1m. If you do not turn 41 until this contract ends, its hit will be $5m/year, as normal. If you turn 41 in year 4 of this contract, the cap hit will be $7m/year for the first three years, then $3m for the 4th year and $1m for the fifth year.

The second amendment only applies to contracts that last for 5 or more years and that include or go beyond a player's 36th birthday, and whose 3 most expensive years average $5.75 million or more. For these contracts, those years that include ages 36+ and that are still included in the average cap hit calculation (ie that do not include ages 41+) have a minimum cap hit of $1 million. The player may be paid a salary of less than $1 million for these years, but it will count as $1 million in the average cap hit calculation. So, for example, say you are signed to a 5-year contract at $6m/$6m/$6m/$0.5m/$0.5m. If you do not turn 36 until after this contract ends, its hit will be $3.8m/year, as normal. If you turn 36 in year 2 of this contract, the cap hit will be $4m/year instead.

All said and done, don't worry too much about these: they will only affect those few big, front-loaded contracts, and even then, they won't affect them much, except in very specific cases. But just for fun, I went back and looked at the Kovalchuk contract, to see what these new amendments (the ones that the NHL so magnanimously allowed the contract to be exempt from) would do to it. Turns out that with no salary under $1 million, amendment two doesn't affect the contract at all. Amendment one only kicks in for the last two years of the contract, in which Kovalchuk will be making $3 million and then $4 million. So for the first 13 years of this 15-year deal, under the new amendments, Kovalchuk's cap hit would be $7.15 million.

Brand new Kovalchuk contract's cap hit under the CBA as it stood before this whole debacle: $6.67 million. Same exact contract's cap hit under the CBA with the new amendments laboriously drawn up, tentatively debated over most of the off-season, and notably exempting Kovalchuk's deal in an act of apparent compromise: $7.15 million.

$487,179. This whole thing produces a cap hit difference for which you cannot legally sign an NHL player. So what the fuck have we been talking about this whole time?!?

Ah, well. At least this nonsense is over, and we can go back to our regularly scheduled nonsense. First up: by way of Puck Daddy, making fun of backup goalie Dan Ellis! Ellis finished his $3.5m, 2yr deal with the Predators and signed a $3m, 2yr deal with the Lightning. Then he made the mistake of having a Twitter account and no perspective. He commented on a chain of comments about a possible NFL labor lockout next season using both of these.

Ellis tweeted, "if you lost 18% of your income would you be happy? I can honestly say that I am more stressed about money now then [sic] when I was in college." Then (spread over 3 tweets), he continued with the following justification:

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If you don't make a lot of money I don't expect u to understand in the same way I could never understand what it is like to risk my life daily as a fire fighter or police officer...especially not a soldier. There r pros and cons to every profession. U r kidding yourself if u think money makes things any easier.
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BOOM! Twitter exploded with a lack of sympathy, which Puck Daddy does a pretty nice job of summarizing. Of note: these tweets happened on Labor Day.

And now back to reality: still no word on Staal. Training camp starts in 10 days. Is this starting to feel eerily familiar to anyone?

Finally, the Traverse City Tournament (hosted annually by the Red Wings, in which a few teams' prospects go compete against each other - the Rangers participate every year) starts on Saturday. Who's driving me to Michigan?