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Islanders in the hunt for Kovalchuk, amp up the crazy with colossal offer

Ilya Kovalchuk, Tobias Enstrom

FILE - In this April 6, 2010, file photo, New Jersey Devils left wing Ilya Kovalchuk (17) skates against the Atlanta Thrashers during the first period of an NHL hockey game at Philips Arena in Atlanta. NHL free agent shoppers won’t find anyone on the open market to compare to LeBron James or Dwyane Wade. This year’s class doesn’t even stack up to the star quality of last year, but with players such as Ilya Kovalchuk, Sergei Gonchar and Evgeni Nabokov available to the highest bidder, there could be quite a bit of movement around the league. (AP Photo/Gregory Smith, File)

AP

Leave it to Islanders owner Charles Wang to know how to stir things up. While the Islanders had a busy day signing free agents today, there wasn’t a lot to really write home about as far as big names go. Perhaps that’s because the Islanders have been laying in the weeds ready to make a strike for this year’s biggest free agent prize, Ilya Kovalchuk.

Things started with a pair of virtually simultaneous tweets from both TSN’s Darren Dreger and the LA Times’ Helene Elliott saying that the Islanders are now in the hunt for the high-scoring Russian winger. Dreger then follows that information up with this blockbuster piece of info.

One source suggests the Isles offer to be $10 mil x 10 yrs. Yikes!

Now to put things in perspective here, the main thing the Isles can do regarding Kovalchuk is offer up oodles of cap space to fit his supposed desired amount of money, that being around $10 million a year. The Islanders, as it happens, are about $9 million under the salary floor.

For each good thing that this deal could do for the Isles (adding a legit stud scorer, someone to build a campaign for Wang’s Lighthouse Project around, an instant draw for fans) there’s also a negative way to look at things for the Islanders as well.

If you added up the money that Kovalchuk, oft-injured goalie Rick DiPietro and long since bought out of town malcontent Alexei Yashin would have devoted to the Isles salary cap next year, you’d have $19.255 million spoken for. Considering that DiPietro is injured more than he plays and Yashin has been getting paid by the Islanders to be a KHL star for the last few years, that’s a staggering amount of money not being put to great use.

As always, there’s someone that can help us find some justification and Islanders Point Blank’s Chris Botta gets us through the madness with this slice of logic.

If you’re an Islanders follower, you have to be intrigued. If Charles Wang was okay with giving $30 million to an unflashy defenseman like Dan Hamhuis, what’s $80 million for an every-season 40-goal scorer?

It’s sound logic when you take into consideration the Isles had all of two players score more than 20 goals last season (Matt Moulson - 30, John Tavares 24) and adding Kovalchuk to the mix with those two guys as well as Kyle Okposo, all of a sudden things are looking up for the Isles.

Factor in the amount of great youth they’ve acquired through the draft the last few years that will be on their way up to the NHL in the next couple seasons, all of a sudden getting Ilya Kovalchuk at $10 million a year looks like a drastic investment in the future of the Isles. After all, Kovalchuk is just 28 years old so when players like Travis Hamonic, Nino Niederreiter, Brock Nelson, Kirill Kabanov, and Calvin De Haan are potentially ready to jump into the NHL, Kovalchuk is the veteran leader of an army of talented young players.

For now, chalk this up for what it is: An outstanding offer from a team that doesn’t exactly fit one of Kovalchuk’s wants for signing a long-term deal. They’re not a winning team. They could be, and Kovalchuk could certainly be the spark plug in leading the charge for the Islanders future, but right now the Isles can only truly satisfy the other thing Kovalchuk wants and that is to get paid big time.