Always a wise move: blame the wife.

Kings get revenge on Ilya, Devils - NYPOST.com

"I've played in a lot of places where I got booed. It's their choice to boo or not," Kovalchuk said. "The Kings are one of the teams that tried to sign me, and the [recruiting] trip here was more for my wife, because she'd never been in L.A., and she wanted to go see it. So we went. [...]"

That's several different flavors of pathetic.