Last word on the fabled Islanders-Kovalchuk bid

But I bet it involves an owner who gave out big contracts in 2001 and 2006,

Those were really ill-advised “horse balls” statements of, “I’m here, I’m gonna be here and we are gonna make this thing work”
It reminds me of the scene from The Pope of Greenwich Village where Pauly anticipating a huge score at the track tells the toll booth attendant to keep the change from a $20… after a disapponointing outcome at the paramutual windows he waits for a quarter on the way back… “what’s the matter Pauly, you don’t wanna make his day?”
Wang isn’t handing out twenties anymore.. now he refers to the “tip calculator” on his Blackberry when he goes dutch on lunch for the draft table. “Hey who got the extra tomatos, I’m not splitting this evenly, those tomatoes are twenty cents extra”
 We discussed it because we still have the a single strand of hope… but we all know he’s DONE! Hopefully [Charlie] Garth can carry the team past the Dark Ages aka Unlithouse Era.

6 months(?), and this is my first Pope reference… that’s amazing in and of itself.

Martin was still a late-round pick and overager. He had some leverage, Snow had some leverage. I like that Snow isn’t just handing out chunks of change here and there when we know he will have both future budgetary pressures and future needs to re-up their bigger young guns.

Moulson, too is a classic case of not overreacting.

… I like the way the show has been run since Garth has had autonomy. I can’t say i agree with all of the moves, but I can UNDERSTAND them… which is far better than what we’ve had for a long time. My point, however, was this is an organization who NOW errs on the side of CHEAP. That’s fine… but it also makes it LAUGHABLE that they’d offer a one dimensional scorer with very few intangibles $100M… especially when they have so much “potential” in the pipeline that can make them something Kovi has never been, a Stanley cup winner. You’d hope they’d learned from their mistakes…

COUGH***YASHIN***COUGH***DIPIETRO***.

Martin: If I rememebr correctly, as reported by NYIPB, Martin was looking for 3rd to 2nd round money, and the Isles wanted to keep him at 5th round money. If I’m not mistaken (and I probably am) that amounts to $500K v $750K which seems like a lot until you factor in the two way aspects, and the fact that you have 90% of that being AHL level money. If you pay the premium, and he plays 82 games in the NHL (MEANING HE WAS AN UBER-EFFECTIVE 5th ROUND PICK) WIN WIN… why even argue about it. What Martin had on his side was the fact that he was an after thought who turned it up in his extra year at juniors. If he fell off the map he’d be glazing donuts at Tim Hortons now. He risked injury by putting out on the line for them in Sarnia… put a little extra in the envelope…vs risking him going back into the draft next year… and going to a division rival… do we really need to live through that crap.
Moulson: I doubt they were squabbling over “potential”. We all saw what he was. he’s not faster, stronger or smarter than any other player… he’s EFFECTIVE. I think we all debated the pros and cons of long term (3+ years, moderate rate) v (1 year inflated rate)… he got 1 year at the moderate rate…. which, to me, means.. 10 goals (Isles can extend him at a bargain, big whoop), 25+ goals… adios mother f****r… That just says, "hey I was watching, and i don’t care where you spend 2011-12, we’ll have Nino, Petrov, Kabanov, Martin, Figren, Ullstrom and Joensuu on the LW depth chart next year.
Bergy: I think they had to qualify Bergy at $1.1M… there is no evidence that they would have even had to neg that higher because he settled for $700K with Tampa. I like the two-ways they signed with Sim and Hilbert, but now seeing that they hadn’t IMPROVED on Bergy unless Martin or Joensuu make the team and play 60 this year, that was ridiculous.
Again, all of those moves are understandable and can be explained… but they also are a smoking gun when it comes to WHY THE ISLES WEREN’T SIGNING JESUS OFF THE CROSS FOR $100M.

it would have somewhat made sense to have garth/wang throw out a 10yr deal to reshape the franchise, attract fans, get us back to the playoffs, and hopefully get the LH project done with. All a big possibility if kovy comes and stays on the isles. But your right, the reports could have been wrong, but I’m not sure I’d doubt it with how long kovy fought with the kings and devils and over terms and contract length.

Reading it closely, I think what Grossman meant was that the Isles (and others) offered a shorter-term max deal (maybe something like 2/22 or 3/35), but they declined BECAUSE Kovi was looking to spend the rest of his career in one spot:

“We had a number of calls of that type of nature, with teams that would have been interested if we were interested in a specific kind of [short term] contract. Our objection [to that] going in was to put Kovy in one place for the remainder of his career.”

IOW, he didn’t want to be a hockey mercenary, rented out to whatever team was making a title push at the time, so he picked a team that he felt would contend repeatedly. He may not have picked particularly well in that case: Lou’s done soon, Brodeur’s done soon, and they will probably have to sacrifice a couple of good young players on the Altar of the Salary Cap.

Actually – I admire Kovi for wanting to craft a deal like that. Maybe it means he gets it; maybe this will translate into less indifference in his own zone. He and Parise seemed to be the only Devils to give two craps in the playoffs against Philly.

PS: – “one-dimensional scorer” reminds me of Tim McCarver’s reply to the complaint that Bob Gibson “only threw one speed” – “That speed was a thousand miles an hour.” Kovalchuk may be one of the five best pure goal scorers in the league… it’s possible to craft a team to exploit that talent to the fullest and cover up his poor defense. But it won’t work as well to turn him into a 2-way, 30-goal scorer. That’s not what you’re paying for. Those guys are a lot easier to find than 40+ goal scorers, so don’t ruin the irreplaceable talent in favor of a more-common talent. You could say Stevie Y did it, and you’d have a point – but frankly, the Wings also had Federov, Larionov, Lidstrom, Shanahan; they had Coffey (for a bit), Cicarelli (ditto), Ray Sheppard (double-ditto)… they could afford to lose 25 points from Yzerman because they had a metric ton of great players and secondary scorers. The Devils have Parise and Zajac… period. They NEED him to be a dominant offensive force, even if the other guys have to pick up a little slack in front of Marty. That’s why Lou also splurged for Volchenkov and Tallinder.

If you’re sincere, I’m sorry for calling you out, and I thank you for the praise. Online/textual discourse can be funny like that.

But please understand that being “proud” of me, and thinking I didn’t “have it in [me]” — whatever “it” is, for whatever purpose — as your opening can read as condescending. Since you’ve taken me to task in the past about relaying what’s reported in mainstream media, I figured it was more of the same.

Agreed to move on past our crossed tonal wires here.