LeBron James may have snubbed Jim Dolan’s NBA team on the country’s national sports television network, but the Garden CEO still can be the star of the show if the Rangers declare on Ilya Kovalchuk, the NHL’s Jamesian free agent.
The Post has learned that one of Canada’s national outlets formally has proposed that Kovalchuk, the 27-year-old goal-scoring machine who is the most luminous prime-time star in NHL free agent history, announce his Decision during a one-hour network special based on LeBron’s precedent-setting episode on ESPN.
And if Kovalchuk makes the decision to go prime-time, isn’t it about time that Dolan and general manager Glen Sather offer this marquee athlete who has spent the first eight years of his career toiling off-off Broadway and off-Broadway in Atlanta and Newark, respectively, the biggest marquee there is, the one in New York?
You bet it is.
Impeccable sources have told The Post that the Devils have a contract offer on the table to Kovalchuk for 17 years at more than $100 million, and front-loaded so that Kovalchuk would collect $100 million over the first 10 years of the deal. Yet the winger, who recorded 27 points (10-27) as a Devils’ rental while enjoying his experience in New Jersey, hasn’t accepted it.
At the same time, though Los Angeles offers the glitter Kovalchuk understandably craves plus the opportunity to compete for the Stanley Cup, the Kings’ latest offer of 12 years at $63.6 million as first reported by The Post on Twitter on Wednesday night, isn’t going to get it done.
Look, Sather continues to do a reasonably good job of building up the back of the house. Yesterday’s signing of Dan Girardi for four years at $3.325 million per in which the Rangers bought three years of the shutdown first-pair defenseman’s unrestricted free agency represented a fair deal on both sides.
And the trade in which the Blueshirts sent prospect Ryan Hillier and winger Aaron Voros to Anaheim for 26-year-old defenseman Steve Eminger, is a constructive one given that Voros was never given a fair chance to play by head coach John Tortorella and likely would have received the same treatment this year.
Nevertheless, the Rangers as currently constructed do not have nearly enough top-end talent to contend for anything meaningful in a league that increasingly is dominated by its elite players.
Plus, they are not going to bottom out for years the way the reigning Cup champion Blackhawks and the 2009 champion Penguins did in order to add people like Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Marc-Andre Fleury.
Plus, elite players don’t get to unrestricted free agency in hockey — they get “lifetime” deals coming out of their Entry Level contracts so that they never reach the market.
Except there’s Kovalchuk on the market, a singular threat every time he’s on the ice. Except there’s this marquee goal-scoring machine-41 last year, 230 over the last six years including two seasons of 52-longing for the bright lights who’s there for the taking.
The big-market, big-revenue teams that drive the NHL have two advantages in the hard-cap CBA that has two years to run. They can afford to erase mistakes by sending big-money contracts to the minors and they can afford heavily front-loaded “lifetime” deals that guarantee huge cash to the athlete yet keeps the cap hit manageable.
These teams have two summers in which to flaunt their economic power. The Rangers have this September to demote Wade Redden and they have this summer to get Kovalchuk. No one of similar value will be on the market next year.
Sather has serious issues with the summer cap that will demand creativity in order to solve. The general manager might have to surrender a No. 3 in order to get Donald Brashear’s over-35 charge of $1.4 million off the cap, but if that’s what it takes to clear the space to land Kovalchuk, so be it.
Kovalchuk is likely to make his decision within the next 48-to-72 hours. The window is open for the Rangers to sign a talent the likes of which they won’t otherwise have the opportunity to add for years.
Dolan made his play for LeBron. Now it’s time for the Garden to turn its attention to Ilya. It’s time for The Show to come to Broadway.
Tell you one thing, I bet that if Kovalchuk goes prime time across Canada with the Decision, there’s a darn good chance that Dolan’s band, JD and The Straight Shot, could even play the intro for the program.