I sincerely cannot believe there are people in 2019 who still think this player at his age has value. But...here we go...
How did we get here?:
Ilya Kovalchuk was, in the not-too-distant past, part of a Devils team that could reasonably call itself “Good at hockey”, and one of the main pieces in an increasingly forgotten piece of hockey ephemera known as the “Thrashers”. It was an interesting time!
Anyway, Kovalchuk was also one of the last truly gobsmackingly dumb contracts given out before the last lockout, and would’ve been playing for New Jersey until his body decomposed, until he decided to return to Russia for a “stint” with SKA St.