Wanted to explain “The Current State…” feature real quick. Every week, School of Block is dedicated to a team’s goalie depth chart. I post a poll in the forums and you guys pick the team. Once chosen, you all leave questions related to the goalies in the team’s system. Check out the current thread on the Predators and leave your questions for next Monday’s article! 

I think Ilya Kovalchuk is disappointed with his free agent experience. I believe he’s kicking himself for turning down Atlanta’s big offer – and I think Atlanta in hindsight is glad that he did. Now they have cap flexibility, return on their asset, and have moved on. Kovalchuk is finding that in a cap world where a lot of greedy agents push GM’s as far as they can, there is a lot of the pie already spoken for. Kovalchuk won’t be able to get the piece that he wants (probably 10 years, $100 million was his original goal) and perhaps not even the piece that he deserves (I think he’d be worth a seven-year deal at $50 million). The Devils have an offer of seven years $60 million – that’s the report that’s out there. But the only competition with them for any long-term deal is the KHL.

Kovalchuk wants to win and he wants to sign a long-term deal. But it is hard to have both. Detroit will win for the long term. So will Pittsburgh, Washington and Chicago. After that – who really knows? Atlanta could win their conference in three years for all we know. Devils could finish dead last in three years. You just don’t know. He could turn down the long-term deal in Atlanta because he wants to win…and 10 years from now kick himself after the Thrashers win five division titles and a Stanley Cup while the Devils go through a rebuild. One way he could help would be to lower his price and thus his cap hit, which would allow the team to add better pieces to the mix over the course of the contract.

There was one time in my keeper league where I owned Steve Yzerman, Bob Probert and Paul Ysebaert – a line combo for about a year and half. I also did a school project on fighting in hockey vs. the law, and showed two fights between Tie Domi and Bob Probert. The class, of course, was riveted.

Carolina goaltender Justin Peters signed a two-year contract, with both years being two-way. He should have held out longer and tried to work that second  year into a one-way. It’s tough for two-way deals to get into the NHL. It happens – a lot actually – but relatively speaking the two way contract gets sent down.

Here are the players who filed for arbitration. As fantasy owners, you should be relieved – as there will be no holdouts from these guys and even if the team walks away from the decision, another team will sign them before the season starts (thanks to Puck Daddy for the list):
James Wisniewski, ANA
Andrew Ladd, Ben Eager, Clarke MacArthur, ATL
Blake Wheeler, Greg Campbell, BOS
Tim Kennedy, BUF
Ian White, CGY
Antti Niemi, CHI
Jared Boll, Anton Stralman, CBJ
Fabian Brunnstrom, DAL
Derek Meech, DET
Gilbert Brule, Jeff DesLauriers, JF Jacques, EDM
Brad Richardson, LA
Mark Fraser, NJ
Matt Moulson, NYI
Dan Girardi, NYR
Chris Campoli, Peter Regin, OTT
Daniel Carcillo, PHI
Cam Janssen, STL
Nate Thompson, TB
Mason Raymond, Tanner Glass, Jannik Hansen, VAN
Tomas Fleischmann, Eric Fehr, Jeff Schultz, WAS

No shocker here – Taylor Hall signed with the Oilers for the maximum allowable rookie number. I will pencil him in for the high-60s this year in terms of a projection.

Puck Daddy also reports that the Kings are out of the running for Simon Gagne.

The Leafs deny that they are involved in any Nikolai Zherdev discussions (Leaf fans should be happy, trust me)

Probert vs. Domi…Part I (Domi with the “belt” sign)

And the rematch (Domi loses the “belt”)