It’s sometimes been implied that this was more of a mutual agreement or Lou asking Kovalchuk to leave now (before the recapture was higher after that year) if he wants to leave. After he expressed desire to remain in Russia after the 2012-2013 lockout ended 6 months earlier. That story seemed to be forgotten after about a week, until 6 months later when all this went down. I forgot exactly what happened, but either someone in the Russian press leaked that Kovalchuk wanted to stay behind or maybe it was even Kovalchuk himself publicly saying he wanted to stay behind. And he even stayed for the KHL all star game and came to camp a few days late. I think one other player did that, might have been Datsyuk?
Anyway, there seems to be theories that Lou pretty much encouraged Kovalchuk to go through with this and potentially for the betterment of the financial state of the team, which was currently for sale and sold about a month later. It was a roughly $80 million commitment off the books before the sale.
While this theory seems plausible for sure, Lou didn’t exactly sound at all happy with him in the media availability on the day this happened. There’s been few times he sounded that pissed off during a presser.
I remember during a press conference for another unrelated matter, I forget if it was later that same offseaeon or the next offseason, he was asked about him again and they may have asked about the possibility of him coming back to the NHL again and playing for the Devils. Lou definitely didn’t sound pissed like he did on the day it happened, but seemed annoyed and sarcastically changed the subject to the guy asking the question by telling him how great his lunch was afternoon.
