The Kovalchuk Circus: Fun Summer Fare or Nightmare?

by Susan Slusser

Filed under: Kings, NHL Free Agency

The best reality show coming out of Los Angeles this summer is part Amazing Race, part soap opera. Lots of flying around, deadlines, dramatic shifts, erroneous reports.

Will he? Won't he? It's the Kovy/Kings Show!

The Ilya Kovalchuk back-and-forth with Los Angeles has turned out some of the most interesting hockey coverage of the summer, from Rich Hammond's breakdown of salary structures on NHL.com ("Isn't math fun?" he asked) to Eric Duhatschek's somewhat amused dissertation on the merits of patience in the Globe and Mail of Toronto. "No rush gentlemen. Take all summer if you need it," he wrote.

Easy to say from 2,500 miles away. For a beat writer, the Kovalchuk situation is a non-stop stress fest. Who's tweeting what? Canadian television says that? How many times is it OK to call a GM before he just starts ignoring you altogether?

"The Kings need to end this soon so they can get on with the rest of the summer and their lives," Helene Elliott wrote in the Los Angeles Times last week, something of a personal plea, too, after two weeks of non-stop coverage.

"I feel like a hostage," Hall of Fame hockey writer Elliott told FanHouse. "This is the most bizarre thing, it's been goofy. You have to react to so many things that you know are ridiculous."

 

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Marc-Edouard Vlasic Anton Volchenkov Viatcheslav Voynov Steve Wagner