Zach Parise made sure the night the New Jersey Devils honored
former captain Scott Niedermayer ended on a winning note by scoring
a goal and setting up three others in a 6-3 victory over the Dallas
Stars on Friday.
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Tag Archives: Ilya Kovalchuk
Parise helps lead Devils over Stars
NHL Trade Deadline: Los Angeles Kings
Filed under: Kings, Western, Trade Deadline
The Kings went into last offseason looking for a big-time scorer, they missed out on Ilya Kovalchuk, and they head toward the deadline still on the lookout for an elite goal scorer.
And yet Los Angeles has pretty much gotten used to the idea that it’s a grind-it-out group without a big superstar, and the Kings can get along just fine like that. At this point, obtaining a star scorer is pretty much of a stretch.
“The way we’re set up, we’re not a one-man show, anyway,” said Justin Williams (photo above), who is one of three Kings with 20 goals. “We don’t have a guy who’s going to score 50 goals or put the team on their shoulders. We’re more a team that plays together, everyone chips in and we’ll work to shut you down.”
Wouldn’t a big-time scorer look nice in that purple uni, though?
“Certainly adding a 30- or 40-goal scorer, you might want that, but it’s tough to find those,” Williams told FanHouse with a laugh. “I don’t know where you’d find that, but if the front office did that, great and if not, we’re going to keep on doing what we do best.”
Williams has been on the other side, twice traded before the deadline, and he said that this can be an unusual time for a player who’s on the block. He learned about both deals through the TV, before the team called to inform him.
Erik Johnson Trade a Rarity for Top Pick
Filed under: Avalanche, Blues, NHL Draft
Saturday’s trade involving former No. 1 overall pick Erik Johnson shocked the hockey world and could have a major impact on the short-term (and long-term) success of the two teams involved (the St. Louis Blues and Colorado Avalanche). The Blues, of course, sent Johnson and Jay McClement to the Avalanche in return for forward Chris Stewart and defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk, while the two clubs also swapped conditional draft picks.
Johnson played just parts of three seasons with the Blues since being the top pick in the 2006 Entry Draft, suiting up in just 203 games with the club (he also missed an entire season due to a knee injury). If that seems like a short period of time for a top pick to spend with a team before getting traded, it is.
Since 1963, twenty-five No. 1 overall picks have been traded at some point in their career, while only eight of them played fewer games with the team that selected them than Johnson before being dealt.
Ilya Kovalchuk End-to-End Winner, Devils Refuse to Go Away
Filed under: Devils, Maple Leafs, NHL Videos
Better late than never, I guess. After Thursday’s 2-1 overtime win against the Toronto Maple Leafs the New Jersey Devils are still 13 points out of the final playoff spot with five teams standing between them. But there’s certainly a bit of hope and belief for Devils fans as the team continues to play its best hockey of the season after an unexpected disaster of a start.
Nobody was playing well, including $100 million dollar man Ilya Kovalchuk, costing first-year head coach John MacLean his job and leading to the third return of Jacques Lemaire (the win on Thursday, it should be pointed out, was the 600th of Lemaire’s career). Since then? The Devils look like the team they were supposed to look like, winning 11 of their past 14 games and gaining at least a point (overtime loss) in 13 of them. Not only is the team playing its best hockey of the season, Kovalchuk is also starting to pick up his game with eight goals and seven assists during the current 14-game hot streak. And it’s not just his offense that’s providing a spark, as he’s also, but many accounts, working harder on his two-way play.
On Thursday, Kovalchuk flashed some of his offensive ability when he scored the game-winning goal with less than 30 seconds to play in overtime, completing an end-to-end rush through the Toronto defense by firing a wrist shot past goalie James Reimer.
Anton Volchenkov Suspended 3 Games
Filed under: Devils, Hurricanes, NHL Discipline
The NHL had a disciplinary hearing on Wednesday morning with New Jersey’s Anton Volchenkov following his elbow to the head of Carolina’s Zach Boychuk on Tuesday night. The hit occurred midway through the second period of the Devils 3-2 overtime win, and he was issued a two-minute minor for elbowing on the play. On Wednesday, he was suspended by the league for three games according to his agent via Twitter.
Volchenkov joined the Devils as an unrestricted free agent this summer, signing a six-year contract worth over $4.2 million per season after spending the first seven years of his career with the Ottawa Senators.
Here’s a look at the hit that resulted in the three-game banishment…
Jeff Vanderbeek, Devils Owner, Denies Report Team Is for Sale
Filed under: Devils, Eastern, NHL Economics
The NHL has seen quite a bit of volatility in terms of ownership since the lockout ended in 2005. Since then, franchises in Atlanta, Montreal, Tampa Bay, Minnesota, Nashville, and Phoenix, among others, have either been sold or put up for sale.
The New Jersey Devils are reportedly next up on the list.
Michele Steele of Bloomberg News is reporting that Devils owner Jeff Vanderbeek has hired a firm to oversee the sale of his team.
2010 NHL Free Agent Review, Part II: Best of Worst of the East
Filed under: Devils, Lightning, Maple Leafs, Penguins, Rangers, Sabres, Senators, NHL Free Agency, NHL Economics
Funny thing. When you look at the list of the top 30 scorers in the National Hockey League, not a single one is on a new team after signing as an unrestricted free agent last summer. Same thing for the NHL‘s top 20 goaltenders in any category. As for the top 20 scoring defenseman in 2010-11 … okay, there’s one team-changing unrestricted free agent from last summer. Yet on July 1 we wait breathlessly to see which teams are going to buy the top UFAs. On July 1 many general managers cannot wait to contact player representatives.
On Tuesday, we graded all of the major free agents signings of 2010 in the Western Conference. The teams in the Eastern Conference snapped up so many, we couldn’t possibly get to all of them. Instead, we present the best five and the worst five signings of the summer in the East. To give you an idea of the lack of high quality, they were more than three dozen unrestricted free agent signings in the East — and we stretched to declare five as very important.
The Devils Season Summed Up In 1 Play
Filed under: Devils, Wild, NHL Videos
If you were still wondering what’s wrong with the New Jersey Devils this season, currently the worst team in the NHL, the goal they allowed to Minnesota’s Cal Clutterbuck late in the first period of Tuesday’s game pretty much explains the past two months in one 10 second stretch of complete failure. After taking over 12 minutes to record their first shot on goal of the night, $100 million man Ilya Kovalchuk attempted to carry the puck out of his own zone before tripping, falling flat on his face, and blindly tossing the puck backwards in the direction of a defenseman that had also fallen down.
The result: Clutterbuck picked up the loose puck for an easy breakaway and beats Johan Hedberg for his 11th tally of the season.
The Devils Season Summed Up In 2 Plays
Filed under: Devils, Wild, NHL Videos
If you were still wondering what’s wrong with the New Jersey Devils this season, currently the worst team in the NHL, the goal they allowed to Minnesota’s Cal Clutterbuck late in the first period of Tuesday’s game pretty much explains the past two months in one 10 second stretch of complete failure. After taking over 12 minutes to record their first shot on goal of the night, $100 million man Ilya Kovalchuk attempted to carry the puck out of his own zone before tripping, falling flat on his face, and blindly tossing the puck backwards in the direction of a defenseman that had also fallen down.
The result: Clutterbuck picked up the loose puck for an easy breakaway and beats Johan Hedberg for his 11th tally of the season.
NHL Year in Review: Ilya Kovalchuk for Person of the Year
Filed under: Devils, NHL Free Agency
There have been a lot of big stories in the NHL during 2010, but there isn’t a person who has been talked about, tweeted about or written about as much as Ilya Kovalchuk of the New Jersey Devils. It was the year of Kovalchuk after his trade from Atlanta in February, through the summer of Kovalchuk and his seemingly never-ending quest for a free-agent contract, its subsequent rejection by the league, and now the hand wringing over what’s gone wrong with the Devils this season and how much (or little) it has to do with him.
On February 4, Kovalchuk was traded to the New Jersey Devils; the beginning of a free-agency saga that would last long into the summer. Before he could hit free agency, there was still hockey to be played as the Devils won the Atlantic Division and earned the second seed in the Eastern Conference. Their playoff run would end with a thud though, as they were ousted in five games by the Philadelphia Flyers. Kovalchuk did have 27 points in 27 games down the stretch for the Devils including a 2-4-6 line during the post-season.
