Management has consistently shown themselves to be reactionary. Coming off the poor road trip, they could see the low attendance forecasts for the upcoming games and choose to escalate the situation with Kovalchuk in the hope he would choose to retire early. Saving the Kings cash out the door.
Low attendance is a real problem for management. In game parking, concessions, advertising & merch add up in aggregate. And when attendance is cratering early in a season, it makes the rest of the year look very long and bleak. That could cause management to do things which look weird to outsiders.
Given Kovalchuk is still owed over $5M in salary, it's easy to see why he would push back if the GM told him that he wasn't part of the team anymore and not even welcome to practice. Kovy isn't going to do anything on his side to allow BLuc to "Mike Richards" him and get out of paying him money.
Lucky for Kovy, Bluc aren't as smart as Dean Lombardi and aren't qualified to even come close to making that happen, seeing how easy it was for the story to leak. Best case scenario is that Jeff Solomon is given the task to clean up this mess. He's the only smart management left who isn't part of scouting.
A lot of fans seem fixated on the on ice issues with Kovalchuk. That is playing into management's spin. Objectively, based on his performance, there is no real reason to single out Kovalchuk over Carter, Quick and given there cap busting salaries, Kopitar and Doughty, for public shaming by the coach and benching. All are paid highly to make this team competitive, going by BLuc's own public statements.
I think sooner Kovalchuk leaves the better. Same for Carter, Quick and almost every single vet outside of Doughty. Once again Rob Blake needs to put on his big boy pants and just buy out Kovalchuk for some significant chunk of his remaining salary.
He missed his opportunity to do so over the summer. Same for making trades. It looks like he only had the appetite or political capital to get rid of Phaneuf. Too slow, too little, too late.
