Searching for opinions about Kovy for feature in hockey column

[Based Anime Fan]

I think Kovalchuck was the best thing to happen to this organization in years.

Fast scoring winger who could wow the crowd and be creative. He changed his game to fit the system, and it hurt his game. Then, he played half a year in Russia during the lockout, and realized how much he missed his old run-and-gun play style, and decided to leave.

I was mad at first, but now... I'm mildly apathetic. I'm still a Kovy fan, I'll still watch him play in SKA, and I'll still root for the Devils.

 

[MartyOwns]

I think Kovalchuck was the best thing to happen to this organization in years.

Fast scoring winger who could wow the crowd and be creative. He changed his game to fit the system, and it hurt his game. Then, he played half a year in Russia during the lockout, and realized how much he missed his old run-and-gun play style, and decided to leave.

I was mad at first, but now... I'm mildly apathetic. I'm still a Kovy fan, I'll still watch him play in SKA, and I'll still root for the Devils.

agreed. and to jim's incessant points, i think we'll improve this season without him here- but not because he's gone....because lou has finally beefed up out forward lines to we're more balanced

 

[Better Call Sal]

I think Kovalchuck was the best thing to happen to this organization in years.

Fast scoring winger who could wow the crowd and be creative. He changed his game to fit the system, and it hurt his game. Then, he played half a year in Russia during the lockout, and realized how much he missed his old run-and-gun play style, and decided to leave.

I was mad at first, but now... I'm mildly apathetic. I'm still a Kovy fan, I'll still watch him play in SKA, and I'll still root for the Devils.

100% agreed with you.

 

[JimEIV]

I think Kovalchuck was the best thing to happen to this organization in years.

For ticket sales maybe, for wins that is hard to argue considering 2 of his 3 years here were the worst seasons in the last 25 years of Devil history.

Now you may not want to shoulder him with all of the blame and that is fine but how can you not put a significant portion of the troubles this team has had in the last 3 years directly at his feet?

 

[CerebralGenesis]

Kovy was the best thing to happen? We're still paying the price for what he did to the team at the draft this year not to mention all the other things lost because of him, and Lou I suppose.

Yea we had a cup run but we also missed the playoffs 2/3 years with him as our main guy. I honestly don't see how Kovy was good for this team at all, if anything it could have been even more devastating without some luck.

 

[MartyOwns]

Kovy was the best thing to happen? We're still paying the price for what he did to the team at the draft this year not to mention all the other things lost because of him, and Lou I suppose.

Yea we had a cup run but we also missed the playoffs 2/3 years with him as our main guy. I honestly don't see how Kovy was good for this team at all, if anything it could have been even more devastating without some luck.

so with kovy we had the most success we've had in what, 9, 10 years? and we also had 2 piss poor seasons. to give kovy no credit for one year but to give him the shoulder of the blame for our shortcomings is ridiculous.

why were we so bad those 2 years? mustve been kovy, unless you have the ability to fairly evaluate our failures. this was a direct result of kovy being forced to adapt, poor coaching (mac), a handcuffing contract which left us with like 4 players on the opening night roster, the inability to keep UFA's (linked to finances, possibly), goaltending (for some points, def not a huge factor), and the absolutely atrocious drafting that occurred in the years prior. you can add in the usual stuff that other teams go through like ridiculous injuries (kovy included).

its fun and easy to say that the issues were because of X, because thats simple and people like simple. but really not true imo.

and again, as you lightly touched on, any issues regarding contract should not be directed to kovy, but lou.

 

[NJDevilsZG]

I think Kovalchuck was the best thing to happen to this organization in years.
Fast scoring winger who could wow the crowd and be creative. He changed his game to fit the system, and it hurt his game. Then, he played half a year in Russia during the lockout, and realized how much he missed his old run-and-gun play style, and decided to leave.

I partially agree. KHL seems to me (compared to NHL) like a minimal-contact-almost-on-ice-ballet With this comes all world of difference on D side of the game too. Also, I personally believe that Kovy's injury is far from being behind him. Thus, to KHL he goes.

I was mad at first, but now... I'm mildly apathetic. I'm still a Kovy fan, I'll still watch him play in SKA, and I'll still root for the Devils.

+1 here
I'm even tempted to rock the red when he visits Zagreb to play vs. my home team. And park myself apropriatelly during warmups

 

[CerebralGenesis]

so with kovy we had the most success we've had in what, 9, 10 years? and we also had 2 piss poor seasons. to give kovy no credit for one year but to give him the shoulder of the blame for our shortcomings is ridiculous.

why were we so bad those 2 years? mustve been kovy, unless you have the ability to fairly evaluate our failures. this was a direct result of kovy being forced to adapt, poor coaching (mac), a handcuffing contract which left us with like 4 players on the opening night roster, the inability to keep UFA's (linked to finances, possibly), goaltending (for some points, def not a huge factor), and the absolutely atrocious drafting that occurred in the years prior. you can add in the usual stuff that other teams go through like ridiculous injuries (kovy included).

its fun and easy to say that the issues were because of X, because thats simple and people like simple. but really not true imo.

and again, as you lightly touched on, any issues regarding contract should not be directed to kovy, but lou.

I mean you can put the whole thing on Lou if you wanted.

But no where did I say Kovy is at fault for 2 but not 3. If anything I'm reading the opposite from other people. If somehow Kovy gets credit for 1 year's success he should somehow get the blame for the rest of the failures, which seem to be way more frequent than before we tried building a team around him. Yes we built a team around him, when you play a forward nearly 25 minutes that is happening.

No one is simplifying the argument like you proposed so I'll ignore that for now.

No mention of the fines and assets lost for Kovy though? Curious, since we haven't finished paying those yet or the cap recapture penalty we'll be paying til the aliens land on Earth.

 

[MartyOwns]

I mean you can put the whole thing on Lou if you wanted.

But no where did I say Kovy is at fault for 2 but not 3. If anything I'm reading the opposite from other people. If somehow Kovy gets credit for 1 year's success he should somehow get the blame for the rest of the failures, which seem to be way more frequent than before we tried building a team around him. Yes we built a team around him, when you play a forward nearly 25 minutes that is happening.

No one is simplifying the argument like you proposed so I'll ignore that for now.

No mention of the fines and assets lost for Kovy though? Curious, since we haven't finished paying those yet or the cap recapture penalty we'll be paying til the aliens land on Earth.

the fines and assets lost for kovy are again directly related to lou. nobody held a gun to his head..but he recognized the talent, and took the gamble...im glad he did.

and just to be clear, im not praising kovy solely for our successes, same as i dont for his failures. team game, the team didnt work. the makeup of the team, the coaching. i dont think anything i said was 'simplifying'...if anything i brought up a lot of other underlying factors in addition to kovy not playing a bigger role (again, not used right, other factors).

didnt mean to imply that you were saying he was directly responsible for our failures only. thats just a recurring theme throughout these types of threads

 

[SteveCangialosi123]

Curious who Carolina's HoF type player was? Staal? Ward? Maybe Brindamour? Who was LA's HoF talent last year? Not sure...

But an offensively talented forward by himself has never won anything. From Marcel Dionne to Dale Hawerchuk to Pat LaFontaine to Paval Bure to Wayne Gretzky himself...no talent up front wins without a team. And when you are paying a forward 100 million, it's kind of tough to assemble a team

Carolina and LA won their cups bc of elite goaltending. Ward and Quick were dominant.

I don't see how you blame Kovy for missing the playoffs twice? 3 years ago - parise hurt, horrible coach get in a big hole and we never come out. That's a single players fault? Last year - HALF A SEASON! Kovy gets hurt, Marty gets hurt we can't win a game without either. We have zero depth and got no goaltending. Again, that is singularly Kovy's fault? Your points make for great Fox News type talking points, but like those talking points, there's little truth to them when one actually looks at the facts.

 

[TrufleShufle]

I honestly think if either 1) there was not a lockout or 2) Parise never left, or possibly both, Kovy would be looked at as top 5 possibly top 3 in the league with out a doubt. I know it seems crazy but if you look at his history you could literally see him change as a player like it was a movie.

His entire time with the Thrashers he had more goals than assists every year but 1 including his last half or so 49 gp 31 - 27, then came to the devils that year and was put in our system with out time to change it for him 27 gp 10 - 17. so that last bit he had no choice but to play the system we put in place, so that chunk of games was kinda hard to consider.

The following year he went back to his Ovi style of play, only picked it up when he had the puck and very lackluster other wise, still decent numbers but more of a selfish style of play with horrible defense(minus 26) 81 gp 31- 29.

11-12 season he seems to become more of a team player. Im not sure what happened he his whole game changed. I might be seeing things or making it up but i felt as if he adapted to the devils play style more that year but was not quite a team player at the start, almost just doing what he was told kind of thing, but still doing it well. the movie like part of this was that fight in February of that year. Parise got slew footed, he went right after Rinaldo with out even thinking about it and then knocked out Schenn when he stepped in. you rarely see the stars stepping up for other stars and i believe that was a MASSIVE game changer in his career.

This is what I mean when i say i might be seeing things but i felt like like he completely changed his game after that. He was now actually a team player. Its like when he got into the zone he would stop and wait for someone to give the puck to before ever even looking at the net himself. Not too mention how much he did a 180 on his defensive game.

We all know how far they made it that season.

Then Parise left and the lockout happened (giving him time to go home and play). I don't think i even have to give details about this last season other than he was slow and looked to not give a ****.

when he was with Ska he still had good numbers, 36 GP 18 -24 compared to devils 37 gp 11 - 20. and obviously KHL doesnt have the same competition as NHL but with that you would expect him to go back to his thrashers way and destroy on his own but still has more assists, meaning he is a changed player. but when he came back here he didn't go back to his selfish play but back to his "just doing as im told" play.

so with the going back to 11-12 and how much he improved and became an actual team player i really think if he didn't have a chance to stop that increase due to either parise leaving and not being replaced or the lockout which left a bad taste in his mouth and an idea what it would be like to play him, he would be talked about as the top 3-5 in the league right now easy.

 

[MartyOwns]

the best part of all this was ‘who cares if kovy isn’t producing/happy? we’re winning! yaaaaaaay’.

turns out they aren’t robots, who knew

 

[Ripshot 43]

Didnt you guys get enough of this talk and debates in the 4 Kovy retired threads?!?

 

[JimEIV]

Carolina and LA won their cups bc of elite goaltending. Ward and Quick were dominant.

I don't see how you blame Kovy for missing the playoffs twice? 3 years ago - parise hurt, horrible coach get in a big hole and we never come out. That's a single players fault? Last year - HALF A SEASON! Kovy gets hurt, Marty gets hurt we can't win a game without either. We have zero depth and got no goaltending. Again, that is singularly Kovy's fault? Your points make for great Fox News type talking points, but like those talking points, there's little truth to them when one actually looks at the facts.

What facts? We can argue details until the cows come home, what can't be argued is results.

And the results of the last 3 seasons are among the worst since the late 1980's early 1990's.

Like I said earlier, if don't want to lay the entire blame on Kovalchuk that is fine but please don't try and tell me he wasn't a problem/cause of those results.

When we look back on these years I don't see how they can be judged as anything other than failures....really the only argument here is how much of the failure pie chart is labeled "Kovalchuk"

 

[TrufleShufle]

What facts? We can argue details until the cows come home, what can't be argued is results.

And the results of the last 3 seasons are among the worst since the late 1980's early 1990's.

Like I said earlier, if don't want to lay the entire blame on Kovalchuk that is fine but please don't try and tell me he wasn't a problem/cause of those results.

When we look back on these years I don't see how they can be judged as anything other than failures....really the only argument here is how much of the failure pie chart is labeled "Kovalchuk"

Yea when we made it to the SCF and he had the most points in the regular season and playoffs it had nothing to do with him, but the 2 surrounding years where we didnt make the playoffs...all his fault.

its hard to read your posts when they are covered in all that bitterness.

 

[JimEIV]

Yea when we made it to the SCF and he had the most points in the regular season and playoffs it had nothing to do with him, but the 2 surrounding years where we didnt make the playoffs...all his fault.

its hard to read your posts when they are covered in all that bitterness.

If it makes you happy to reach the finals 1 out of three years while missing the playoffs the other two that is your prerogative. But I am judging his three full seasons as whole...During his time here the Devils winning percentage was lower than all but two seasons in the last 22 years...

Again how much blame you want to lay on that player is up to you. But the last 3 years were some of the worst in franchise history and you would have to go back to the mid 1980's to find a worse season in terms of winning% than the 2010-11 season....Those are just facts.

 

[MartyOwns]

which was all kovy's fault, clearly. whats the point in arguing this stellar logic?

 

[TrufleShufle]

If it makes you happy to reach the finals 1 out of three years while missing the playoffs the other two that is your prerogative. But I am judging his three full seasons as whole...During his time here the Devils winning percentage was lower than all but two seasons in the last 22 years...

Again how much blame you want to lay on that player is up to you. But the last 3 years were some of the worst in franchise history and you would have to go back to the mid 1980's to find a worse season in terms of winning% than the 2010-11 season....Those are just facts.

the only year out of those three that we did good is when we had parise for the full year.... so if you look at it logically,

1st year- no parise most of the season, miss playoffs. 2nd year- full year of parise, SCF. 3rd year, no parise, no playoffs.

so if you want to go by the facts i think your blame is being put on the wrong player.

 

[MartyOwns]

i just tried to put together a pie chartm but its impossible. how much % do you give to 'kovy's play'? 15% but to me, all of that dealt with his role on the team- he did what he was asked.

what do you give lou? that entails everything from contracts to drafting.

the kovy years were an experiment, and based on a lot of factors it didn't work out. to place the majority of the blame on kovalchuk for that is downright silly.

yes, kovy being a devil coincided with 2 bad years, but thats a 'simple jack' way of looking at that. soooooooo many other factors

 

[SteveCangialosi123]

What facts? We can argue details until the cows come home, what can't be argued is results.

And the results of the last 3 seasons are among the worst since the late 1980's early 1990's.

Like I said earlier, if don't want to lay the entire blame on Kovalchuk that is fine but please don't try and tell me he wasn't a problem/cause of those results.

When we look back on these years I don't see how they can be judged as anything other than failures....really the only argument here is how much of the failure pie chart is labeled "Kovalchuk"

No one is arguing that TEAM'S failure to make the playoffs twice in the last 3 years is acceptable. The issue is whether or not it was Kovy's fault. Even your own points(Kovys ice time, his contract) are not Kovys fault, it's the GM/owner and Pete's fault. And to be honest his contract was perfectly reasonable(dollars wise not length). He is an elite winger, there's no question about that. You ignore the other factors relating to our team's inability to make the playoffs and pin it on one guy. That's very naive(you're very knowledgable, you can't really believe that). I hope that this is just some shtick that you really don't believe a la Colbert.

 

[TrufleShufle]

i just tried to put together a pie chartm but its impossible. how much % do you give to 'kovy's play'? 15% but to me, all of that dealt with his role on the team- he did what he was asked.

what do you give lou? that entails everything from contracts to drafting.

the kovy years were an experiment, and based on a lot of factors it didn't work out. to place the majority of the blame on kovalchuk for that is downright silly.

yes, kovy being a devil coincided with 2 bad years, but thats a 'simple jack' way of looking at that. soooooooo many other factors

yea but Lou didn't leave the team to go run another one for more money in another league. so there is no anger towards him blurring the vision of people critiquing his performance.

"she left me, well she was fat anyways" thing going on here.

 

[Feed Me A Stray Cat]

I'm not mad at Kovalchuk. If his heart is not here, it's not here. What do you want him to do? Sacrifice the happiness of the next ten plus years of his life and play uninspired hockey for the Devils?

Devils got out from under a potentially onerous contract, and Kovy gets to go home and be happy.

 

[Feed Me A Stray Cat]

What facts? We can argue details until the cows come home, what can't be argued is results.

And the results of the last 3 seasons are among the worst since the late 1980's early 1990's.

Like I said earlier, if don't want to lay the entire blame on Kovalchuk that is fine but please don't try and tell me he wasn't a problem/cause of those results.

When we look back on these years I don't see how they can be judged as anything other than failures....really the only argument here is how much of the failure pie chart is labeled "Kovalchuk"

Kovalchuk's tenure here was not a failure. In 11-12 we came within two wins of the Stanley Cup. That certainly counts more than the first round exits we had in 97-99 and 07-09.

 

[MartyOwns]

yea but Lou didn't leave the team to go run another one for more money in another league. so there is no anger towards him blurring the vision of people critiquing his performance.

"she left me, well she was fat anyways" thing going on here.

right, thats not on lou. that parts on kovy. and the coaching staff, for not utilizing him to the fullest. my point is, you cant blame one person, because of the million underlying factors. he was asked to play devils hockey and he did. didnt work. he was asked to play RW, and he did. less said about that the better. etc etc. nothing is as simple as some are making it

 

[JimEIV]

Kovalchuk's tenure here was not a failure. In 11-12 we came within two wins of the Stanley Cup. That certainly counts more than the first round exits we had in 97-99 and 07-09.

Doesn't his tenure equate to 3 first round exits? Its 3 series wins in 3 years...no trophy for that, is there?