The violation was circumventing the salary cap. He signed a deal for 17 years . I forget the amount but anyway
He would have gotten something like $10 mil per year for the first 12 years and $500k for the last 5 years
basically giving NJ a cap hit of like $6-$7 mil per year.( my numbers are probably off but you have an idea of how it was structured.) So the NHL doesn't approve the contract. They go to arbitraition, he rules in the NHL's favor.
NJ and Kovy agree to a new deal that was similiar by the way and the NHL approves that one.( The NHL and NHLPA have come up with some new rule about salary and guys who play into their 40's.) Then the NHL started to investigate guys who signed super long term deals because they were all put together to make less of a cap hit.(Hossa,Luongo,Pronger, and Savard to be specific.) Those investigations were dropped after this rule was put in place. Those guys had deals that were pretty obvious to getting less cap space. Kovy's deal was downright blatant.
I guess he could use Gordie Howe and Chris Chelios as examples but That is only 2 guys who played that long.
Sorry for the ramble.
