Ilya Kovalchuk Question

I know you are talking about Winnipeg, but when we still had the Thrashers I never booed Kovy. Some did. Anytime a big name player leaves, it creates resentment, especially in hockey fans. Kovy did offer to re-sign. I’m not saying that the Thrashers should have accepted his offer, not at all, but there WAS an offer. That was more than Marian Hossa did, who rejected the only (admittedly low ball) offer he got to re-sign and never gave a counter proposal.

The Thrashers leaving is very complex and actually one of the reasons Kovy asked for the league maximum to stay in Atlanta is that he thought they might move to Winnipeg and he wanted to be compensated for taking the risk that they would leave Atlanta. To be blunt, we fans in Atlanta had had enough of our sorry ass owners. They have managed to turn the Hawks, one of the best teams in the NBA, into a team that nobody wants to see (20th in attendance last I checked). The only way we could let our owners know that their decisions and ownership were unacceptable were to stay away to force them out. Unfortunately the bad economy got us as the NHL gave our owners 4 months to find a local buyer. Phoenix has had YEARS and STILL can’t find a local buyer. What chance did we have in 4 months? It sure didn’t help that a local big name sports talk show host promised us all that a guy he knew was totally going to buy the Thrashers, the Hawks and the arena. His talk got a lot of publicity and may have scared off real owners. Who knows? But the dumbass talk show guy didn’t do his due diligence on the buyer. By the time the local press finally figured out who it was, in 5 minutes the guy was totally debunked as an owner in the press as he simply didn’t have the funds. But that didn’t happen until about 1 week before the sale :-(

I believe that the NHL feared that our owners would declare bankruptcy and potentially sue the league so our owners had to go. With no local alternative, there was no choice but to take the only offer on the table. Kovy would be a Jet and we’d still be out of a team had he re-signed here. The Kovy trade, like the Hossa trade before it, was absolutely horrible. The Devils pawned off a bag of pucks to get Kovy. Next season the only piece left of that trade will be low scoring, 4th line center Patrece Cormier. But life goes on and Atlanta has more or less adjusted to the realities of not being an NHL city.

Some of us Atlanta people actually like the Devils because you have Kovy, Hedberg and Boulton. Your SB Nation blog is a good one. I wish no evil to the Devils and I hope that one day you get to see the 40-50 goal Kovy who played for us in Atlanta. That guy was amazing.