Our first and last article on the Kovalchuk Sweepstakes

There’s a guy who plays for the Atlanta Thrashers and you may’ve heard of him lately. His name is Ilya Kovalchuk and Atlanta GM Don Waddell is looking for a trading partner to dish the highly skilled superstar. The problem here is, if you remember the whole Jay Bouwmeester situation of yesteryear, Waddell is asking for entirely too much in return.

Eklund has been going rumor crazy as of late saying that there are several big name hockey markets in on the Kovalchuk deal, and a select few “mystery teams”. That’s probably just Eklund being a downright retard, as usual, but we can confirm that the Flyers are one of the big market teams in the deal. The Chicago Blackhawks, Boston Bruins, Philadelphia Flyers, Calgary Flames, New Jersey Devils, Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers are teams suspected to be involved in the trade talks for the Russian sniper.

If the Flyers were to be involved in a deal for Kovalchuk, they’d have to trade a lot of talent and salary; about $6.5 million worth. Names that are being thrown around the hockey world are Danny Briere, Simon Gagne, Claude Giroux, James Van Riemsdyk, Jeff Carter (even though Homer’s already said he wouldn’t be moved), Scott Hartnell, Braydon Coburn, and Matt Carle on top of some other prospects and players from the Phantoms. Briere, Gagne, and Hartnell all have no movement clauses, so they would have to waive those clauses in order for any of this to come to fruition, and there haven’t even been rumors of Paul Holmgren asking any of them to do so.

I, personally, wouldn’t want to see Simon Gagne waive his no trade clause and be sent away to a terrible hockey market such as Atlanta. It’d be terrible to see a guy who’s been a Flyer his whole career just shoved away like that. Gagne’s always been my favorite hockey player, but if I had to send him away along with one of Carle/Coburn, I’d do it in a second. Gagne wouldn’t do that, though. His family is growing and developing here in Philadelphia, and he’s on record a number of times saying he doesn’t want to leave.

Kovalchuk would likely be acquired as a rental player since it’s rumored that he’s going to be asking for anywhere between $9-9.5 million next season, but that could just be Waddell trying to up his value. NHL.com broke a story today that states Kovalchuk turned down, what would have been, the biggest contract given to any impending NHL free agent player ever.

Waddell said the club offered Kovalchuk a 12-year, $101 million deal, but it was rejected. Waddell said it would have been the highest contract ever signed by an impending free agent in NHL history.

In a nutshell: While it’d be great to have a guy of Kovy’s offensive capabilities on your team, he is too much of a defensive liability on the ice. And for as much money as he wants, it just wouldn’t be worth giving away your future stars for someone who may not even get you to a Cup final. Hockey is a team game made not of one player.

At this moment, it’s hard to say what’s going to happen. Yesterday, Kovalchuk was told that he would indeed be moved within the coming hours or days, but nothing has developed since then. Is Don Waddell asking too much for Kovalchuk? Is Kovalchuk being a greedy NHL player, or do you think he’ll take a paycut just to play in a big hockey market? What do you think the Flyers should/will do? Leave us your opinions in a comment down below. It’ll be good to get some discussion going on here!

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