Devils, Kovalchuk finally seal the deal

Hockey Betting Lines

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.

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SPORTS BETTING: NFL Football Sportsbook Betting

NFL owners, already life's biggest winners, want to try their luck with the lottery.


That was the news out of their meetings last week, where team bosses voted unanimously to allow stamping state and local lottery tickets with franchise logos, if, ahem, any governments wanted to do a deal.

A shocker: Within days the Pats announced they'd be sponsoring the Massachusetts state lottery, the Skins said they'd slap their sticker on Virginia scratch-offs and the Ravens admitted they were talking to Maryland lottery bosses. In all likelihood, it won't be long before every team is a presenting sponsor of scratch-offs or just plain old pick fives. "The change in policy was approved 32-0," said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello. "So you can expect to see more deals soon."

It's a branding opportunity too big for the owners to ignore, and one a couple of dozen baseball franchises have enjoyed for years. The fact the NFL has been slower to act than those slack-brained Seligites is indicative of its complicated relationship with all forms of gambling. Consider this: Last Thursday, as the Pats and the Redskins finalized their new lottery deals, a lawyer representing the NFL argued before Delaware's Supreme Court that the state's newly signed sports betting law should be repealed.

The NFL betting is the face of opposition to sports gambling . And as much as it would like to share that responsibility with other leagues, that's not going to happen as long as more than 40% of all money legally wagered on games is bet on football. That's why the Brewers can do a multi-million dollar deal with a local casino, or the Celtics can make their own pact with the Mass lottery, and the response is, "Sweet, let's play." But when the NFL does it the stakes are higher, and everyone from NPR's Frank Deford to the Associated Press to the guys blogging at Deadspin will line up to play gotcha.

So I asked Aiello, who surely knew there'd be piling on, how the league can rail against being bait for sports bettors, then allow its franchises to be just that for lotteries, the most insidious and addictive form of gambling around. He emailed me this response: "We are not moral crusaders. NFL personnel are permitted to engage in legal forms of gambling, except for betting on NFL games. We are making a distinction here between the spread of gambling on the outcome of our games and supporting state lottery scratch-off games, that have nothing to do with the outcome of our games."

Here's where I should rip him. But, the thing is, he's right. Not to get Obama on you, but this is a complicated, nuanced issue. As much as lotteries are considered a tax on the poor, the NFL isn't a socially obligated government program -- it's just a business. Scratch-off's help the bottom line, sports betting doesn't. Now, it's okay to call the league hypocritical when it releases injury reports, which players have told me only helps bettors … But when it supports other forms of gaming? Big Deal.

Now, it's okay to call the league hypocritical when it releases injury reports, which players have told me only helps bettors. And it's okay to mutter something obscene when the league pretends gambling doesn't help drive TV ratings and fan interest and put money in owners' pockets. But when it supports other forms of gaming? Big Deal. The Bears should put an orange "C" on every deck of cards dealt at Harrah's in Joliet; the Eagles should slap their logo on roulette wheels at the Borgata in Atlantic City; the Dolphins should hold training camp at the El San Juan in Puerto Rico.

Seriously.

The NFL's problem, when it comes to the gambling world, isn't hypocrisy, it's worse: The bosses lack vision. That's why the league is picking unwinnable fights in Delaware and taking pot shots from critics after making smart sponsorship deals. Roger Goodell and his gang are acting and thinking locally rather than globally, which is rare for them, especially compared to their professional (and amateur) counterparts.

The NBA held its All Star game in Las Vegas and David Stern's kingdom didn't crumble (although the town did bring plenty of players to their knees.) I'd say it's 6 to 5 and pick 'em that Lebron will make a road swing through Sin City before his career is over.

Even the NCAA College Football Betting is more progressive on this issue than the NFL. Several years ago Rachel Newman Baker, college sports' gambling czar, opened a dialogue with Vegas bookmakers to learn about how they do business. She's visited Nevada sports books, studied their operations and listened to how they regulate action. Now she knows she can expect a call from bookmakers, who lose money when sports are fixed, if they think something sketchy is going on in NCAA games. She's not in favor of sports betting, but, as she once told me, "I know it's not going away, either."

The NFL can't seem to accept that. And until it can find peace with the idea, it'll get flack, even when it's right.

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Elite 8 NCAA Tournament Betting at online sportsbook MySportsbook.com

In what should be an outstanding Saturday of March Madness betting action, the top four teams in the South and West Regions square off in what should be extremely close match-ups. Three of the four teams are coming off extremely close games on Thursday evening, only UCLA won semi comfortably over Pitt 64-55.

Ohio State is coming off their second game in a row where in all reality they should have lost. Of course that doesn’t matter now since the name of the game is “survive and advance” but as the tournament continues, they can’t afford to keep getting down to their opponents early. Kansas also avoided a scare by holding off a scrappy Southern Illinois squad. In the third thrilling game of the evening Memphis pulled off the minor upset (+3.5) despite being the higher seed to Texas A&M.

Although the spreads are fairly small for Saturday’s games, MySportsbook.com continue to bet against the underdogs. Despite OSU’s two scares, 86% of the “betting public” feels the Buckeyes (-1.5) have what it takes to make the Final Four. In fact, so much of the early money is on OSU that the line has already moved from -1 to -1.5. In the second game of the doubleheader, Kansas and their high-powered offense are 2 point favorites as they take on UCLA and their effective defense. About 63% of the early money thus far is once again backing the favorites. If those percentages stay that high, don’t be surprised if this line moves as well. If you like Kansas (-2) you might want to jump on it early.

Memphis vs. Ohio State

Both squads were involved in thrillers on Thursday evening and should come out fired up. OSU can ill afford to get behind early like they did versus their previous two opponents (Xavier, Tennessee). Greg Oden needs to stay out of foul trouble; the Buckeyes are a completely different team when he is on the court. Memphis definitely has the athleticism and length to match-up with OSU. Of Memphis’ five leading minute earners, the shortest of the bunch is 6’5”. Each team has a very effective defense; Memphis surrenders 62.3 PPG whereas the Buckeyes give up only 61 PPG. With those type of numbers, it isn’t surprising that Memphis covered the UNDER almost 69% of the time this season. As a favorite, OSU has covered the UNDER almost 66% of the time over the last three seasons. The major concern for Memphis which is magnifies this time of the year is their brutal foul shooting (62%). This season, OSU is 17-11 ATS versus teams with a winning record and 7-2 ATS in all tournament games. Memphis has been an extremely reliable cover in tournament play in recent years with a 23-8 ATS record over the last three seasons.

UCLA vs. Kansas

In the second game of Saturday’s doubleheader, UCLA will play in a role which they are very unfamiliar with that of the underdog. Only twice this season have they been getting points from the handicappers and both times they covered. Over the last three seasons UCLA is a reliable 23-7 ATS in this unfamiliar role. UCLA has not fared well against Big 12 opponents recently going 1-7 ATS since 1997. Giving up only 59.6 PPG, UCLA will definitely look to do what they do best: keep this game as low scoring as possible. Their defense has been especially tough during the tournament. UCLA opponents have been able to muster up only 48.7 PPG while shooting a combined 34.5% from the field. UCLA definitely has a challenge at hand with a Kansas team that is capable of putting points on the board in bunches. As a team, they average 79 PPG and shoot an impressive 49.6% from the field and 39.4% from beyond the arc. During the tournament Kansas has been “lights out” from the field having shot 56.2%.

With Friday -105 juice on Basketball betting, MySportsbook.com is the place to bet on all of the “March Madness” action.  Don’t forget to monitor who the public is backing at MySportsbook.com’s “Betting Trends”.  By doing so, you have the best chance of predicting a possible line change, thus getting the best value for your wager.

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