Reports: With NHL Assistance, Ilya Kovalchuk, Devils Preparing Another Contract

If at first you don't succeed, try again, right?

The NHL may have rejected a 17-year contract the first time, but now, Ilya Kovalchuk, his agent Jay Grossman and the New Jersey Devils are going to great lengths to make sure the League approves things this time around.

Those lengths include a sit down meeting at the NHL offices -- just to make sure a new contract between the parties is kosher. Tom Gulitti at Fire & Ice has the details:

Both ESPN’s E.J. Hradek and Puck Daddy’s Dmitry Chesnokov have reported that Devils owner Jeff Vanderbeek, Devils president/GM Lou Lamoriello and Jay Grossman, the agent for Ilya Kovalchuk, met today with NHL executives at the league’s offices.

The expectation, of course, is that this represents the final stage of the summer-long Ilya Kovalchuk saga and that a deal will be finalized within the next 24 hours. No doubt, all parties, this time, want to make sure there are no glitches like the one that led to an arbitrator’s ruling to uphold the NHL’s rejection of Kovalchuk’s initial 17-year deal with the Devils.

Terms of the new deal have not yet been discussed publicly but, at this point, it does appear Kovalchuk will be remaining with the Devils.

Finally, we can safely say that this whole mess might be over this week.