Huge If True: Would Ilya Kovalchuk actually make a difference?

 [HUGE IF TRUE breaks down the plausibility of the week's biggest rumor.]

The Rumor

So Ilya Kovalchuk has been repeatedly scratched by his KHL team in its postseason run, and the club has suffered no ill effects as a result. At last check, they were undefeated without the former Rocket Richard winner in the lineup.

Because of Kovalchuk's weird contract situation in the NHL, and the ability of KHLers to buy themselves out of their own deals if they really want to, that created a perfect storm of speculation as to whether the 32-year-old would make a return to North America.

Kovalchuk, by the way, turns 33 on April 15, a little less than a week after the end of the NHL regular season.

But here's the thing: No one is entirely clear on what that would look like. As such, given that the trade deadline has come and gone, this is probably going to be the only real thing to examine with respect to rumors for at least the next little while.

Who's Going Where?

Well that's the tricky part. If you entertain the idea of Kovalchuk coming back to the NHL, you have to keep in mind how all that would work. And no one seems to have any concrete idea of what the process looks like.

Lots of people says it works one of a number of ways, depending upon whom you believe:

-- If Kovalchuk wants to come back right now, all 30 teams would have to sign off on it.

-- And, because he began the year in Europe, he'd have to go through waivers, meaning he has no control over his destination.

-- He can go straight back to the Devils if he doesn't play any pro hockey at all next season.

-- He can stay in the KHL or some other league through the end of the 2017-18 season, and afterward he's just a UFA.

-- If he wants to come back sooner, though, he might also be able to use a loophole in the CBA to come back in just about any way he pleases because he voluntarily “retired” from the NHL. That loophole still might require approval from all 30 teams.

-- Bill Daly says as far as the league is concerned, the Devils probably have “preferential rights to his NHL [status].” Daly further acknowledged that it's a “complicated situation.”

-- The path back might also need to be negotiated further by the league and the NHLPA (item No. 27).

To summarize, no one seems to have any clear idea of how all this is going to work, if it's going to happen at all. The fact that even Bill Daly doesn't know for sure whether the Devils would have first crack at bringing Kovalchuk back is pretty telling about what a mess this is.

The good news, I guess, is that it now doesn't seem likely to happen this season.

Various KHL reporters (here and here) are now saying Kovalchuk has reached an agreement with his KHL club to not-play in the playoffs, but also not terminate his contract before the end of April, which would of course be well after the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs here in North America. Further, Kovalchuk's agent says he has only had one conversation with an NHL GM about a possible return, but not necessarily a serious one.

Finally, it's important to note someone actually thought to ask Devils GM Ray Shero, who may or may not hold the reins on this thing, about how things might go. Shero, though, played a bit coy, saying he's followed it in the newspaper, and that it's really not up to him, saying:

"We'll kind of see what that method could be, but I think the Devils always will have preferential treatment at some point, according to the league. But again, we'll cross that bridge if it ever comes ... and if we ever get to it and go from there."

Oh and the other thing here is that Shero doesn't seem to know whether, if Kovalchuk comes back at all, he'd be eligible to sign a new deal or would be bound to the old one, which carries a $6.67 million cap hit through 2025, when he will be 42.

So basically, everyone is just throwing their 'Who knows?'

The Implications

What all this talk about Kovalchuk coming back ignores is that Kovalchuk kind of proved this season that he can't even play in the KHL, which might be a step below the AHL in terms of quality.

While he was nearly a point-a-game player, and finished 12th in the league in scoring (seventh in points per game), he only had 16 goals in 50 games, and was actually just third on his own team after the team acquired Nikita Gusev from Khanty-Mansiysk. Gusev, by the way, is a 23-year-old Tampa draft pick.

More to the heart of the issue, he finished behind hockey luminaries such as former NHLers Brandon Bochenski, Linus Omark and Nigel Dawes in total points, and tied Brandon Kozun. So if his team is scratching what is, in effect, its second-leading scorer and basically tells him, “We're all set for the entire playoffs,” the idea that any NHL team would want him is a worrisome one.

Let's put it this way: Alex Radulov was younger than Kovalchuk when he came back to the NHL, and routinely posted better numbers overseas to boot. When he came back to Nashville in 2011-12, he was coming off a 63-in-50 season for CSKA, which was actually a big of a disappointment in comparison with his 20-60-80 in 54 for Ufa the year before.

(And to his credit, Radulov accrued 13 points in 17 games for Nashville, which isn't bad all things considered, but clearly he wasn't a fit going forward for a lot of reasons.)

Point being: If Radulov, a dominant KHL player who led the league in scoring two years straight, and was the three-times-running league MVP (and who is still just 29 right this second!) couldn't make it work in the NHL, an out-of-shape, unmotivated, 33-year-old Kovalchuk who can't even crack top-10 in scoring for a not-good league probably isn't gonna move the needle for anyone.

At least, not to the extent that he'd be worth all the headaches surrounding his return.

This Is So Huge, If True: Is It True?

On a B.S. detector scale of 1-5, with one being the most reasonable and 5 being the least:

While it would be really funny to see New Jersey get stuck with the Kovalchuk contract again, I just can't see why anyone would want to sign him at this point. If you're not such a weight on your KHL team that you're a scratch for the entire playoffs, the idea that you'd help anyone at the NHL level seems a bridge too far.

Still, if he's eligible to sign a new deal, rather than continuing his old one, it seems likely that someone takes a flier on him with a short-term, short-money deal. As such, we can give this rumor no more than:

This is going to be fun post-deadline fodder for a while, but I'm inclined to continue believing his North American career ended a few years ago.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All statistics via War On Ice unless otherwise noted.)

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