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09/07/2010 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - It was anything but a smooth process, but Ilya Kovalchuk and the New Jersey Devils were finally able to consummate their long summer courtship in the early morning hours this past Saturday.
Two months after hitting the open market, Kovalchuk -- this summer's most sought-after free agent -- was officially signed to a long-term deal by New Jersey after the NHL approved the most recent contract agreed upon by the Russian winger and the Devils.
Of course, Kovalchuk's initial 17-year, $102 million deal with the Devils was rejected by the league because the NHL felt that contract deliberately circumvented the salary cap. The league also took a long, hard look at the 15- year, $100 million deal that was eventually approved around 3:00 a.m. (et) on Saturday, September 4th. The contract was originally submitted to the league on August 27, but as it turns out the league and the NHL Players Association were discussing much more than Kovalchuk's prospective contract.
Along with the Kovalchuk signing, the NHL and NHLPA also announced Saturday morning that they had agreed on a new set of rules regarding contracts of five years or longer in length. Basically, the new arrangement is designed to discourage teams and players from agreeing on deals that try to extend a contract well into the player's 40s. Under the old rules, a longer contract such as Kovalchuk's 15-year deal that is slated to end when he is 42 years of age, has a smaller cap hit because the average annual salary is lower.
Kovalchuk's contract and other similar deals that came before will be grandfathered in under the old rules, while the new rules will apply to any new contract going forward.
The agreement also effectively ends the NHL's investigation into contracts like those of Vancouver's Roberto Luongo and Philadelphia's Chris Pronger. The league began investigating those deals and other contracts last month and there was speculation that the NHL was planning on voiding the older contracts if the NHL felt they deliberately circumvented the salary cap.
The NHL was right to give up its campaign against the older contracts in order to gain greater control over future deals. It never seemed possible that the league would be able to void a player like Luongo's deal and make him a free agent. The Canucks goaltender is an icon in Vancouver and it simply would have been wrong to strip the city of a beloved player simply due to a legal argument. The league has a right to void contracts, but doing so retroactively would have become an extremely messy situation.
Getting back to the free agent contract at hand, we can finally talk about the impact Kovalchuk will have on the ice for the Devils this season. He began his New Jersey career last February when he was traded from Atlanta to the Garden State, but received mixed reviews during his first few months with the Devils.
Of course, the contract will have an immediate impact on New Jersey financially because the Devils will be forced to shed about $3 million from their overall team salary by the end of training camp in order to get under $59.4 million. The cap situation will be even trickier to deal with considering the Devils will have to make the necessary cuts while still adding two players to their NHL roster.
Kovalchuk is the type of rare scoring talent worth shaking up your roster for, but the big question is can the 27-year-old make the jump from goal-scorer to a proven winner. He has 338 goals in 621 career games and 10 of those came in 27 games with the Devils at the end of the 2009-10 regular season.
However, Kovalchuk's lack of playoff success has been widely discussed and some folks think a guy who has been on the winning side just once in nine career postseason contests is not worthy of taking up $6.6 million of space on the salary cap every year.
While I can see how Kovalchuk's postseason disappointments are an issue, it all seems to be blown out of proportion. Like his countryman Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals, Kovalchuk has been pegged as a highly-skilled offensive player who wilts under the pressure of the postseason. That categorization is unfair in both cases because it commits the cardinal sin of boiling down a team's successes to a single player. Certainly, guys like Ovechkin and Kovalchuk deserve more blame than their teammates when the club bows out early in the postseason, but neither player is a general manager and they can only control so much of what happens on the ice.
After all, Kovalchuk had six points (2 goals, four assists) in five games during a first-round playoff loss against Philadelphia last spring. A closer look at the series would tell you that he probably played a little worse than those statistics suggest, but he obviously wasn't unproductive or in any way a hindrance to his team beating the Flyers.
It will also be interesting to see if Kovalchuk's status as the Devils' resident superstar can take some pressure off fellow Jersey left winger Zach Parise. The 26-year-old Minnesotan notched 45 goals and 94 points in 2008-09 and followed up with a solid 38-goal, 82-point campaign last season, Having a top-flight scoring threat on each of their top-two lines for an entire season will almost certainly make the Devils more consistent on offense than they have been in recent years.
In fact, part of the reason Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello wanted Kovalchuk so badly is that the legendary GM is looking towards a near future without goaltender Martin Brodeur, who at 38 years of age is winding down a Hall-of-Fame career. With Brodeur as the centerpiece for the last two decades, Lamoriello and the Devils were able to claim three Stanley Cup titles by playing an effective, if not exciting, brand of defensive hockey.
However, with Brodeur nearing 40 years of age, the Devils are preparing for the departure of their franchise netminder. It's possible that Brodeur still has a few good years left, after all he went 45-25-6 with a 2.24 goals-against average last, but it's clear he is closer to the end of his career than the beginning.
Also, the hiring of head coach John MacLean, who is expected to bring a more offensive style of play to the Devils, is a clear departure from Lamoriello's strategy to bring Jacques Lemaire back into the fold as the club's head coach last season. Lemaire is regarded one of the best defensive minds of his generation, but his second tour of duty with the Devils fell flat.
If MacLean can get the Devils to become an offense-first kind of club, it will be with Kovalchuk and Parise leading the way. Perhaps, MacLean's hiring was even part of Lamoriello's master plan to lure Kovalchuk into making Newark his permanent hockey home.
It's unlikely that Lou and the Devils will completely abandon their neutral- zone trapping ways, but it's obvious that the makeup of New Jersey hockey is being tweaked.
Brodeur is not gone yet, but for better or worse, Kovalchuk is now the new face of the Devils.
<< Former UCLA stars ready to shine
Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Labor Day has passed, the kids are back in
school and the leaves will soon begin to fall here in the northeast.
That means the calendar has flipped to September and most of America is gearing
up for footba
<< Youzhny reaches Open quarters
Flushing Meadows, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Former semifinalist Mikhail Youzhny
was a fourth-round winner Tuesday at the 2010 U.S. Open.
The 12th-seeded Youzhny handled former top-10 Spaniard Tommy Robredo 7-5, 6-2,
4-6, 6-4 at the USTA Billie J
<< Alabama still No. 1; Boise State gains first-place votes
New York, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Alabama remained the top team in the latest
Associated Press college football poll, but Boise State gained additional
first-place votes after its thrilling victory over Virginia Tech on Labor Day.
The
<< Top 10 holds steady through Labor Day racing
New York, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Champion mare Zenyatta continues at the top
of this week's NTRA National Thoroughbred Poll. There were no changes or
additions to the top 10 for the first time this year.
Zenyatta, 2008 and 2009 cha
Cal Poly, UC Davis to join Big Sky Conference >>
Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The much-rumored talk of the Big Sky
Conference losing the University of Montana, and perhaps other schools, took
on another twist Tuesday.
Big Sky football is expanding.
One of the top conferences in t
Magic name Foyle to front office position >>
Orlando, FL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Orlando Magic on Tuesday named former NBA
player Adonal Foyle as the team's director of player development.
The 35-year-old Foyle retired in August following a 13-year career. He was
originally selec
Orioles activate P Hernandez >>
Bronx, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Baltimore Orioles have reinstated pitcher
David Hernandez from the 15-day disabled list.
He was placed on the DL August 5 with a left ankle sprain.
The right-hander is 4-3 with two saves and a 3.29 e
Former two-year-old champ retired >>
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Michael Vick is back, Brett Favre isn't and the NFC East remains the best division in the NFC, maybe in all of football.
As players start to gather for the start of another season, some things change and some stay the same in the world of the NFL.
The NFC East has been the dominant division in the National Conference for a while, despite limited playoff success, save for the New York Giants surprise Super Bowl win two seasons ago.
Hell, there's a generation of kids in Texas who have never seen the Cowboys win a playoff game (last win was in 1996).
But collectively, the Giants, Eagles, Cowboys and Redskins (well, maybe not so much the Redskins) are as good as a division gets in an NFC conference that has struggled to stay competitive with the AFC side.
Sports bettors have both acknowledged the NFC East's dominance, as one glance at the NFL future odds menu will show.
Looking over the NFL betting odds at online sports book MySportsbook.com we see the top three teams listed to win the NFC Championship are all from the NFC East:
Dallas Cowboys - 7 - 1
Philadelphia Eagles - 13 - 2
New York Giants - 9 - 2
Slotting in behind these three are two teams from the NFC North: the Minnesota Vikings (15-2) and the Chicago Bears (10-1).
Again, despite the lack of recent playoff success, the Dallas Cowboys are popular with the sports betting community, as they hold 14% of all the money wagered on who will win the NFC Championship.
So far, the New York Giants are the bettors' favorite to represent their conference in the Super Bowl, as they have 24% of the overall NFC Championship betting volume.
And what about the Philadelphia Eagles? For the most part, the Eagles had a very productive offseason, the kind that could bring them back to the top.
They had a good draft adding the likes of WR Jeremy Maclin and RB LeSean McCoy.
Unfortunately, the team received a blow when long-time defensive coordinator Jim Johnson passed away on Tuesday.
But this team will make a real run at the division title this year. Going into the regular season, Philly is listed at +240 to win the division.
Last season the Eagles were 9-6-1 SU and 10-6 ATS.
Teams from the NFC East will play teams from the AFC West in the regular season and the Eagles haven't really been a good bet in the last 20 games against the likes of San Diego, Oakland, K.C. and Denver, only going 8-12 ATS.
Two seasons removed from that Super Bowl title, the New York Giants see themselves listed as the odds-on favorite in NFC East championship futures at +162.
Plaxico Burress is gone and with him all the bad publicity surrounding the gun in the sweatpants incident, but can they replace him in the offense?
Last season the Giants were a very reliable bet going 12-4 ATS.
In the Giants' last 20 games against fellow teams from the NFC East; they are 13-7 ATS.
Dallas is listed at +240 to win the division.
Dallas went 9-7 SU and 7-9 ATS last season and with the amount of talent the Cowboys have, a similar performance won't do.
The Cowboys have been atrocious against divisional rivals, going 6-14 ATS in their last 20.
The Washington Redskins are longshots to win the division at +550.
Visit MySportsbook.com for free sportsbook odds RSS feeds go to MySportsbook.com for all your betting football needs.
Chicago, IL - New Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler and star linebacker Brian Urlacher shot down reports of a rift, saying they're simply not true.
"There's nothing between us," Cutler said Thursday, when he reported to training camp. "I just want to put that to rest. There never has been anything between us."
Urlacher added: "I never said what I was quoted as saying and that's it. I have a lot of respect for Jay. I think Jay knows that."
Former Bears receiver Bobby Wade caused a stir when he told Minneapolis radio station KFAN-AM that Urlacher used a profanity while questioning Cutler's manhood during a conversation in Las Vegas last weekend. Wade, who now plays for the Vikings, said Urlacher used a profane version of the word "wimp" during the interview that had to be edited out.
go radio station WSCR-AM also reported that Urlacher had to be restrained from confronting Cutler during organized team activities.
"I wouldn't go face-to-face with Brian, anyway," Cutler said. "No, that's never happened. I've hung out with Brian away from the facility numerous times and we've always gotten along."
Urlacher, noting he was limited by a groin injury, denied the reports in an interview with the Chicago Tribune and did it again when he reported to camp.
"I didn't practice this summer, so I don't know how I would fight the guy if I didn't practice," Urlacher said. "We have no problems. I'm excited about football starting. I'm excited to have him as our quarterback."
Why would Wade say that?
"I don't know," Urlacher said. "Maybe he's jealous because we have a good quarterback now."
Cutler said the first he heard of any friction was when he got a call from Urlacher to clear the air. Urlacher, however, said he had already taken several calls from teammates wondering if the reports were true when Cutler phoned.
"He called me and I said, What's up (expletive), what are you doing?'" a grinning Urlacher said, uttering the same word he allegedly used with Wade. "It's so dumb to me that this even got to this point, but it did and then here we are."
better place after going 9-7 and missing the playoffs for the second straight year. They have a franchise quarterback for the first time in decades after acquiring Cutler in an offseason trade with Denver. But there are questions about his attitude following a fallout with Broncos management and new coach Josh McDaniels.
His critics include former Bears coach Mike Ditka and former Indianapolis and Tampa Bay coach Tony Dungy, one of Smith's mentors. Smith, however, said Cutler has been a model teammate so far while denying any animosity with Urlacher.
"There's no issue with Jay and Brian, except Brian and Jay are both excited about being teammates for our club this year," coach Lovie Smith said. "No more than that. We can't spend a whole lot of time on something that isn't true. I have talked to the players. Whenever something comes out, you have to address it, but it's a non-issue."
In some ways, Cutler is getting a second chance in Chicago, an opportunity to repair his reputation.
Smith said another quarterback - Michael Vick - deserves one, although he doesn't see it happening with the Bears, who lack an experienced backup. The former Atlanta Falcons star, who served a 23-month sentence for running a dogfighting ring, said Thursday he is getting close to signing with a pro football team.
"A second chance, like everyone in society who has paid their debt to society," Smith said. "He deserves a second chance. As far as we're concerned, we like this team that we have right now."
Particularly the new quarterback.
"Me and Brian have been on a good relationship since I've been here, and I expect it to continue that way," Cutler said.
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