Enjoy!<\/p>\n
After going quiet for a few weeks, hockey returns to the daily news in a big way today. Free agency\u2019s biggest fish finally has a new pond. Or should I say swamp?<\/p>\n
NHL news: Kovalchuk signs 17-year deal with Devils; Flyers trade Simon Gagne to Tampa Bay<\/strong><\/p>\n That big domino is finally down and most NHL general managers expect free agency to open right up again as a result.<\/p>\n Prolific scorer Ilya Kovalchuk, who has more goals than any other player since 2001, has decided to stay with the New Jersey Devils after all. Yesterday, he signed a league-record 17-year deal worth $102 million.<\/p>\n The ridiculous contract is just one more example of how messed up the current salary cap and collective bargaining agreement are. Because a player\u2019s cap hit is the total money divided by the numbers of contract years, more and more teams are signing guys to super-long deals.<\/p>\n They can front-load the contracts to give the players higher salaries \u2013 Kovalchuk will probably make $10 million for his first several seasons \u2013 but the cap hit is much lower.<\/p>\n In Kovie\u2019s case, it\u2019ll be $6 million.<\/p>\n Predictably, Kovalchuk\u2019s signing opens things up for other teams to start exploring secondary offensive options. Tampa Bay Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman acquired Simon Gagne, his former Olympic teammate, from the Philadelphia Flyers for defenseman Matt Walker and a fourth-round draft pick in 2011.<\/p>\n Gagne is a four-time 30-goal scorer and will make $5 million this season.<\/p>\n Is it just me or are the media already looking to punish the Miami Heat trio in any way possible for signing together? First, there was His Royal Airness. Michael Jordan spoke out about the trio\u2019s decision Sunday, referring specifically to LeBron James. Jordan said:<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no way, with hindsight, I would\u2019ve ever called up Larry [Bird, called up Magic [Johnson] and said, \u2018Hey, look, let\u2019s get together and play on one team.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He added that he can\u2019t say the move is a bad thing but that the game is different today. And, comparing Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to Larry and Magic again, he added, \u201cIn all honesty, I was trying to beat those guys.\u201d<\/p>\n The fun didn\u2019t end there for the Miami Heat early this week. Dwyane Wade got himself into hot water during an interview at a charity basketball game on Sunday. When asking how fans will react if the teams struggled, Wade said some people will overreact and make it seem like \u201cthe World Trade Center just went down again.\u201d<\/p>\n AOL Fanhouse incorrectly reported that Wade said \u201cIf we lose, it will be like the World Trade Center went down.\u201d So people ended up thinking Wade said the opposite of what he actually said. Wade ended up having to apologize for some reason.<\/p>\n Ironically, everyone\u00a0did <\/em>react as if the World Tra \u2013 uh, forget it.<\/p>\n NFL news: Chris Johnson agrees to revised deal with Titans<\/strong><\/p>\n The Chris Johnson drama is over.for now. The explosive little running back settled for a one-year raise after he and the Tennessee Titans couldn\u2019t negotiate a long-term deal. Johnson will make $2.5 million this season instead of $550,000. Gotta admit, he deserves at least that.<\/p>\n He rushed for 2,006 yards last year and has the third most total yards (3,234) ever for a back through two seasons.<\/p>\n <\/strong> Sports water cooler headlines and sports gossip for Tuesday July 20th, 2010. Shea Matthews weighs in with his analysis and opinions on today\u2019s sports action\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":24145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1141],"tags":[30779,158,5296,22161,28800,24055,628,5229,31303,2765,28496,22116,30777,748,28211,839,3971,31251,9637,28805,1157,22112,1825,31302,22942,2149,22678],"class_list":["post-24143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-2010-nba-free-agents","tag-bet-on-sports","tag-chris-bosh","tag-chris-johnson","tag-dwyane-wade","tag-ilya-kovalchuk","tag-las-vegas","tag-lebron-james","tag-matt-walker","tag-miami-heat","tag-michael-jordan","tag-mlb-news","tag-nba-free-agency","tag-nba-news","tag-new-jersey-devils","tag-nfl-news","tag-nhl-news","tag-pga-tour-news","tag-philadelphia-flyers","tag-simon-gagne","tag-sports-handicapping","tag-sports-headlines","tag-sportsbook-com","tag-steve-yzerman","tag-tampa-bay-lightning","tag-tennessee-titans","tag-todays-sports-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24143"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108721,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24143\/revisions\/108721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Ilya-Kovalchuk.jpg\")
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\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"