The Puck Stops Here : Kovalchuk`s Worst +/- Rating
The worst +/- rating in the NHL belongs to Ilya Kovalchuk of the New Jersey Devils. He has a -26 rating. [...] This +/- rating is largely an indictment of the New Jersey Devils team. New Jersey has the worst team +/- rating at -53. The worst three and five of the worst six +/- ratings in the league are Devil players. Playing significant minutes on the Devils is going to get any player a bad +/- rating. Kovalchuk is third in ice time on the team. The two players who are ahead of him in ice time (Andy Greene and Henrik Tallinder) are the second and third worst +/- ratings. Kovalchuk has never been a strong +/- player. The only time he finished a season as a plus player in his career was last season. [...] Kovalchuk has only ten even strength points so far this season. That puts him second on his Devils, who have the worst offense in the league this year. [...] Ilya Kovalchuk has not been able to score as much as expected this year. It is a combination of bad luck and poor teammates.

Yes, it certainly is bad luck that Kovalchuk's own contract made it impossible for the Devils to field a complete roster of NHL-caliber players. Who could have foreseen this?

Someone on a message board somewhere offered up the possibility that Ilya Kovalchuk can always take his ball and go home to the KHL. And I wondered to myself, how would that work exactly? Oh, right.

Wouldn't it be funny if Kovalchuk retired now?

When Terry Murray scratches someone (e.g. Alexander Frolov, Brian Boyle, Teddy Purcell -- I'm living in the past, I know), it's almost always because of a specific lapse, and if it's not punitive (Frolov) then it's a kinder/gentler granting of "perspective" (Purcell). But it's always a hockey problem.

When I read this afternoon that Kovalchuk was a healthy scratch, I assumed he was being Froloved. After all, Kovalchuk is not exactly known for his two-way play. But this article from ESPN makes it sounds like something deeper:

New Jersey Devils scratch $102 million man Ilya Kovalchuk against Buffalo Sabres - ESPN
High-scoring forward Ilya Kovalchuk is in the New Jersey Devils' doghouse. The $100 million left wing was benched by rookie coach John MacLean for Saturday night's game against the Buffalo Sabres for undisclosed reasons. "He knows (why)," MacLean said after the Devils' 6-1 loss to the Sabres. MacLean refused to say what Kovalchuk did to get benched, and he wouldn't say whether the star forward will be back in the lineup for Sunday night's game against the rival Rangers in New York.

"I'll make that decision in the morning," MacLean said.

Kovalchuk, who took part in the pregame skate on Saturday morning, was not in the Devils' dressing room after the game. Team president and general manager Lou Lamoriello didn't accompany MacLean to the postgame news conference. MacLean refused to say whether his decision was related to hockey. "I'm not discussing it," MacLean said. "It was my decision. I made it. He knows. I spoke to him and that's where it's going to stay." [...] Zach Parise, who scored the Devils' goal on Saturday, found out that Kovalchuk wouldn't be playing just before the game. He had no comment on the decision. [...] None of the players seemed to know why Kovalchuk wasn't in the lineup. "You have to ask the guys who make the decisions," Devils captain Jamie Langenbrunner said.

It's going to be interesting to read the interpretations of this in the MSM and the blogs in the morning. My uninformed thoughts:

• I don't think this is about Kovalchuk's performance. He's been playing well enough, from what I've seen. And if it were a matter of correcting some aspect of his game, that's harmless enough; MacLean would just come out and say it, wouldn't he? Because this cryptic "he knows what he did" stuff makes it sound bad.
  
• If there had been some insubordination, wouldn't the players know what happened? I'm thinking back to the Sean Avery / Mark Hardy incident. Whatever happened, I don't think it happened in front of the other players. 

UPDATE on that point:

• My guess is, Kovalchuk told MacLean (or he told Lamoriello) that this whole "New Jersey hockey" (i.e. defensive system) thing wasn't going to fly. The Devils had won their last game -- 3-0 wasn't it? -- and there was much talk of the return to Devils hockey. I don't think (actually, nobody thinks) Kovalchuk has any interest in playing that suffocating, defensively-disciplined, low-scoring (if not actually a "trap") brand of hockey. 
• As I said the other day, MacLean has about six more games to claw his way back to .500, or he's going to get fired. His job is on the line. He made some changes and the team won. Why would Kovalchuk have a problem with the coach after the team won? 
• Remember Gretzky and Robbie Ftorek? Ftorek wanted his superstars to be accountable. McNall wanted his superstars to be happy. Goodbye stern-taskmaster Ftorek, hello lenient star-friendly Tom Webster.
  
• But I don't think Kovalchuk is as tight with Lou Lamoriello as Gretzky was with Bruce McNall.
  
• And Lamoriello has groomed MacLean for years.
  
• And Lamoriello built the Devils based on that boring "trap" defensive system hockey. It won him three cups. Bruce McNall didn't care about "systems." He wanted stars.
  
• (As an aside, wasn't the whole $102MM/17 years thing a total Bruce McNall kind of move?)
  
• Questions about who is steering the ship have already been raised (did Lamoriello want this deal, or was it ownership?). If Kovalchuk, just two weeks into his fifteen year tenure, is in a tug-of-war with the first year coach, I wouldn't even know where to begin to draw the flow chart of that corporation.
  
• MacLean knows he answers to Lamoriello. I don't know what the relationship between Lamoriello and ownership is. And the $102100MM question seems to be, who does Kovalchuk think he answers to?

For more, see: Coaching Hot Seat: All John MacLean Edition.

If the New Jersey Devils Don't Improve Soon, Is John MacLean's Job in Danger? | Bleacher Report
Is John MacLean feeling the heat already? [...] GM Lou Lamoriello is no stranger to bold moves behind the bench. He fired head coach Claude Julien in 2007 when the team led their division and was second in the conference towards the end of the year and took charge himself, unhappy with the team's "lack of readiness to challenge for the Stanley Cup." He took the careful approach with MacLean, allowing him to groom himself as a coach as an assistant and AHL coach before giving him the reins, perhaps a year or two earlier than planned after Lemaire's surprising retirement.  [...] MacLean's Devils have looked sluggish in their first six games. They have managed only 10 goals and won just one of those games, none at home. For a team with three solid lines of offensive contributors, that kind of production is inexplicable.

Firing Coach John MacLean Wouldn't Solve New Jersey Devils' Problems - Instant Opinion - NESN.com
The Bruins handed the Devils their fourth loss in six games on Sunday, and some people are already calling for coach John MacLean’s perfectly shaved head. [...] The Devils should certainly be concerned with their effort so far, but it’s much too soon to start panicking. The real problem with the 1-4-1 Devils is [...] that the Devils' roster is not set. The Devils are still over the cap, and there are too many players who know that they could be shipped out at a moment’s notice. [...] There's also the fact that the Devils have a young lineup, with five rookies (two forwards and three defensemen). [...] MacLean coached most of these rookies in the Devils’ AHL affiliate last season and he knows which ones are ready to see time in the NHL. Since the Devils will have to have a few rookie players on the team to stay under the cap, who better to take charge than the coach who knows them best?

I agree that the coach is not the problem in New Jersey. I don't even think Lamoriello thinks the coach is the problem. But firing him, from Lou's perspective, may be the solution. Well, not the solution. Just the latest short-term fix in a series. Given MacLean's history with, and loyalty to, the organization, I would hope Lou would give him a longer leash. My guess is, the leash is exactly as long as the Devils' up-coming road trip.

@MTL BUF @NYR @SJS @ANA @LAK @VAN @CHI

One home game. Seven on the road. Any worse than, say, 4-3-1 over those eight games, bringing the Devils back up to within sight of .500, and MacLean should probably start looking over his shoulder for Ken Hitchcock.

Or will a big, cap-correcting trade come first?

San Jose's loss means that the pick we got from them in last year's pick swap moves up from #149 all the way to #148. Woot. Philadelphia's win means that the pick we got from them in the Denis Gauthier trade, which had already been on the move from #45 down to #57, now drops further to #59. It's the only Kings pick that could still change. If the Flyers win the cup, the pick becomes #60.

The silver lining in Philly winning the cup is that they traded their first round pick to Anaheim, in the Pronger trade. That pick was one shoot-out away from being #13 overall. Getting into the playoffs made it drop to #15. Now that they're in the cup finals, the pick is at #29. And could go to #30.

Here are the Kings picks, as it stands. They have nine: one in the first, two in the second, two in the third, one in each of the last four rounds.

1. Kings 1st -- pick #22 #19
2. Kings 2nd -- pick #52 #49
3. Flyers 2nd (Denis Gauthier trade) -- pick #45 #59.
4. Rangers 3rd (Brian Boyle trade) -- pick #70
5. Kings 3rd -- pick #82 #79
6. Kings 4th -- pick #112 #109
7. Sharks 5th (pick swap 2008) -- pick #149  #148
   
8. Kings 6th -- pick #172 #169
9. Kings 7th (Fredrik Modin trade; Kings keep pick due to not winning the Cup) -- pick #202 #199

Kings 5th -- pick #142 #139 was sent to the Avs in the Ryan Smyth trade.

Good: The Flyers' victory causes their first round pick to drop from 15th overall to 28th. I wouldn't care about this, except they traded this pick to the Ducks for Chris Pronger.

Bad: The Flyers' victory causes their second round pick to drop from #45 to #58. (I previously said this was the #43 pick, because they had the 13th worst record over-all, failing to take into account that making the playoffs already bumped them down to #45.) This is the pick the Kings acquired in the Denis Gauthier trade.

Both picks, the Ducks' and the Kings', have the potential to drop down further, either one or two spots, one if the Flyers lose in the cup finals, two if they (ugh) win the cup.

I think I might actually want Montreal to win this thing.

As I woke up this morning and was making my cup of coffee thinking about the errands I had to run, I was hit with the sudden revalation that the Kings are still playing meaningful games this late in the season! I actually have a game that matters to look forward to tonight! As a result, that insane thought will carry me through the day.

Nervous for the game against the Ducks? I think not.

Today's games and what you want and why (you're a Kings fan, by the way). In descending order of importance.

1. Los Angeles Kings vs. New York Islanders. You want the Kings to win. Why: click here. Also, you want Scott Parse to do what he's doing in that picture.
2. Nashville Predators vs. Columbus Blue Jackets. You want the Preds to lose. Why: because we are fighting with them for a 4-8 spot. You really don't want them to end up in 4 or 5, if the Kings are going to be 5 or 4. 
3. Phoenix Coyotes vs. Chicago Blackhawks. You want the Yotes to lose. Why: (1) same as Nashville logic above, want to avoid 4 v. 5 matchup. (2) Phoenix being invincible is freaking out Kings fans and maybe the Kings too.
4. Detroit Red Wings vs. Vancouver Canucks. You want the Wings to lose. Why: because the Wings are within shooting distance of the Kings now, and that must stop. You want to avoid playing Vancouver in the playoffs, but now it's unclear whether the Kings are going to finish 4-5 or 6-8, therefore you don't know whether you want Vancouver or Colorado to win their division and grab the 3rd seed. 
5. Dallas Stars vs. Ottawa Senators. You want the Stars to lose, but it's not urgent. Why: they're too far back be much of a problem. Yet. 
6. St. Louis Blues vs. New Jersey Devils. Same as Stars/Sens. Why: ditto.