Has anyone seen the headline that WVU wants to cancel it's game with FSU next season? With WVU planning on moving to the Big 12, they need to trim one OOC game from their schedule and want to remove Florida State. FSU doesn't want to have it cancelled because it needs an FBS school to play.

What about Oregon? Oregon currently has Fresno State on schedule for Sept. 8. Does anyone know if it's even possible get out of that game and add a home-and-home (preferably with the opposing team playing here first so they don't back out of the back half) with FSU?

Just some food for though. Would improve our OOC schedule next year!

I don't know if anyone here watches SportsShow with Norm Macdonald on Comedy Central, but he mentioned the Nashville Predators tonight. The only other hockey that I've ever seen on that show that I can think of was Bobby Ryan's goal from the first round. Norm is a comedian and his joke for Nashville tonight was...

"The Nashville Predators got a victory this weekend. I hope they mean the hockey team."

I laughed. Maybe not all that appropriate, but I thought it was funny. Anyways, yeah!

So today Kovy signed while I was at work. Once I saw his numbers (reported 102 mil over 17 (holy crap) years), I got to thinking. What the heck is the point of the cap hit? Sitting there at work, wishing the day was over already, I could only come up with two answers to it. The first one is for teams to sign more money under the maximum cap by front loading load term contracts as we've seen with Hossa and Kovy and a few others. The second is to allow teams like the Thrashers and other teams looking to reach the cap floor and nothing above that, to take on front loaded contracts at the end of their life so the cap hit is more, but the payout that year is significantly less.

I thought the whole point of the cap hit was to bring parity to all the teams as much as possible. However, seems like the only two things that cap hit is used for are two things that are cheating the system. You get an advantage both ways if you're willing to use it. You can either pay less money for players and stay within the boundaries or you can get more but stay under the cap. Both way seem like a pile of you know what if you ask me. I for one would be pissed if the Ducks signed someone to a contract like Hossa or Kovy got. Knowing full well that they were trying to cheat the system by front loading and tacking on several years on the end that everyone and their mother knows they aren't going to play just to get the cap hit down. That's BS. Flat out.

I don't know why the NHL doesn't just make it so that what you pay a player in a given year is the cap hit. If the Devils feel that Kovy is worthy of getting paid 11.5 mil a season for several seasons, that should be the number that counts towards the cap. Not some BS contract that pays 93% of the contract value in less than 60% of the contract life. Of course no team or player is going to admit what they did in agreeing that the player would retire, because both sides win with the way it is. The player gets paid darn near exactly what he wants for the time he wants to play for, then can retire, and the team gets a player at probably 60% of what they should be paying and he'll come off the books once he retires instead of making a measly 750k or 550k a season. What a joke.

What's even more a joke is how the NHL just sits around and watches. Yes I understand they can't do too much until the CBA is re-negotiated, but they should have nipped this in the butt when it first started. When Detroit started doing it with Zetterberg and Franzen and then Chicago followed with Hossa, Luongo with the Nucks, and now the Devils and Kovy (I'm not counting Pronger because they screwed up, but they tried to be a part of this group). Each time it gets even worse too. It's turning in to a joke.

The NHL needs to find a team and somehow find that they and the player agreed to have the player retire at a certain point, and punish them severely. I'm not sure how or what kind of punishment can be set on a team, or if the NHL would have the balls to do so, but something needs to happen. If I'm the commish (I'd probably kill myself if I were Bettman, but that's another story) and I could find this and had to punish a team, I'd start with draft picks and I'd also make it so that their RFA lost the restricted status and could become UFA once their current contract expired. That'd be punishment enough in my opinion.

So if you got this far, you're probably wondering why the hell I'm rambling on... I had two questions. What do you all think should happen next time the CBA needs to be negotiated? The second question I had was does anyone know what happens to contracts next time it gets negotiated?

I think the cap hit needs to be the amount paid to a player per year. If the Devils clearly think Kovy is with some 11.5 mil for a few seasons and are willing to pay him that, that needs to be his cap hit. I think doing that, along with limiting contract years to 5 years or so. I think doing those two things will be the only way to get around this. I think if the NHL did that, they could create more parity, as well as do better in the off season. If you only could sign a player to 5 years max, that would mean more players becoming UFA each summer, and more signings and such. More signings generate more interest, which will ultimately benefit the game.

And I don't know what will/should happen with current contracts such as Kovy if things like this happen. If someone who is more familiar with the CBA wants to chime in, they might be able to tell us if there is a clause that states that teams can just wipe contracts off the books once a new CBA is put in place of what.

Anyways, that's enough of my typing, I'd be surprised if anyone makes it through that and replies. Hahaha. Go Ducks!