Deal gets rejected

By Scott Antoszewski

The NHL announced early this morning that it had rejected the 17 year, $102 million deal that the New Jersey Devils and Ilya Kovalchuk had signed yesterday. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman advised Devils GM Lou Lamoriello early in the day yesterday that he may want to hold off on the press conference announcing the deal, but the Devils chose to go through with it.

The NHL rejected the deal because they felt that it was a direct circumvention of the salary cap, and a “retirement contract”, where neither party expected the contract to progress all the way to completion. It’s back to the drawing board for the Devils and Kovalchuk.

I’ve never seen this happen before, so I have no idea what the next steps are, but I’m sure it won’t be quick or easy. We’re going to be hearing about this for weeks. I thought I was going to struggle to find hockey news to write about this summer, boy was I wrong.