Friday Morning Open Thread: Where Is Kovalchuk Now Edition?
Well at least you can all sleep soundly knowing that LeBron James won't be mentioned here ... oh wait.
5) Rangers fans should be happy that LeBron didn’t come to the Garden. Otherwise your boys would forever be on MSG-Plus or MSG-4 or whatever on nights when the Knicks were playing
I never thought of that, but he's right. Whew, bullet avoided.
Anyway, now that LeBronathon has come to a close, we get to wait on Kovalchukapalooza. All indications were that Ilya Kovalchuk was going to be a Los Angeles King, then a New Jersey Devil, the a New York Ranger, then back to a King and now who knows.
The whispers that he and the Rangers were "interested in each other" have still not be doused, so I still wouldn't rule out Glen Sather from pulling the trigger on something like this. At the end of the day, the longer Kovalchuk waits, the better shot he has on a general manager panicking and throwing more money at him then they probably want to. Kovalchuk knows it, and his agent knows it.
Of course, on the other hand, it's a very dangerous game to play. Mainly because if Sather (and the rest of the NHL) manages not to pick up the phone and offer Kovalchuk more than they want to pay--$7.5 million a year in the Rangers case--then he looks like more and more of a headcase.
Regardless there are other free agents out there who are looking for homes. So use this as your open thread for today. Obviously if anything goes down we will update it for you here, and you can move your open thread conversation to the new story.
You all know the drill! Have at it, the floor is yours.
