With unrestricted free agency beginning tomorrow, July 1, the New Jersey Devils find themselves at a major crossroads. They have two major unrestricted free agents in LW Ilya Kovalchuk and D Paul Martin and what happens with both of them will have a significant impact on both the immediate and long-term future of the franchise.
You could easily make the argument that Kovalchuk and Martin are the top free agents at their respective positions and likely wouldn't receive much of a rebuttal from too many people. Now, the Devils have done this dance in the past with free agents like Scott Niedermayer, Scott Gomez, Patrik Elias, Brian Rafalski and many others over the years with limited success in terms of having players re-signing with the Devils that make it to unrestricted free agency.
In the salary cap era, there are only so many cap dollars to go around, so important decisions need to be made. The ball got rolling earlier today with the re-signing of RW David Clarkson to a three-year eight million dollar contract. In addition, LW Jay Pandolfo and LW Andrew Peters were ...
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Article written by levinakl
July 1, 2010: A Big Day for the Future of the New Jersey Devils
June 30th, 2010 by levinakl Leave a reply »
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