Longtime NHL winger Ilya Kovalchuk has formally confirmed the top of his enjoying profession, per Hockey News Hub on X.
Now 41, Kovalchuk is without doubt one of the most embellished wingers of the twenty first century — even when his NHL profession noticed quite a lot of twists and turns. A dominant teenager with Spartak Moscow, then of the second-tier Russian league on the flip of the century, he was the primary general decide by the Thrashers within the 2001 draft.
Kovalchuk was the centerpiece of the fledgling Atlanta squad for seven and a half seasons, ending second in Calder Trophy voting in his rookie 12 months behind teammate Dany Heatley however capturing the league’s goal-scoring title with 41 within the 2003-04 marketing campaign. He remained one of many league’s premier goal-scorers previous the 2005 lockout, eclipsing the 50-goal mark twice with the Thrashers, though his throne because the league’s prime left-wing sniper was rapidly taken from him by countryman Alex Ovechkin.
In 2009-10, amid his sixth consecutive 40-goal marketing campaign, the Thrashers dealt Kovalchuk to the Devils for what turned out to be an extremely underwhelming return on reflection — though they did flip the first-round decide they obtained within the deal to the Blackhawks to accumulate longtime top-pair defenseman Dustin Byfuglien, even when these rewards have been reaped after the franchise relocated to Winnipeg to change into the second iteration of the Jets.
In fact, Kovalchuk’s time in New Jersey was extremely tumultuous. Set to be a UFA in the summertime of 2010, he returned to New Jersey on a record-breaking 17-year, $102M contract that was rapidly invalidated by the league for being too frontloaded. Whereas the Devils and Kovalchuk agreed to a revised 15-year, $100M deal, they have been stripped of a primary and third-round decide and have been fined $3M by the league.
In any case that, Kovalchuk solely performed three seasons of the deal earlier than abruptly retiring from the NHL, leaving $77M in money on the desk to terminate his deal and return house. He performed six seasons with SKA St. Petersburg of the Kontinental Hockey League, together with a stint in the course of the 2013 lockout. He was unsurprisingly the KHL’s premier offensive expertise throughout that timeframe, posting 138-189–327 in 298 video games with SKA, profitable the Gagarin Cup in 2015 and 2017 and scoring the championship-clinching objective each occasions.
Upon leading the KHL in scoring in 2017-18 with 63 points in 53 games and winning an Olympic MVP and Gold Medal, Kovalchuk opted to make an NHL comeback and landed a hefty three-year, $18.75M deal with the Kings. Then in his mid-30s, he underwhelmed in L.A. and managed just 43 points in 81 games over a season and a half before he again opted to walk away from the money remaining on his deal midway through the 2019-20 campaign. He finished out that season with the Canadiens and Capitals — the former signed him to a one-year deal following his termination and flipped him to Washington at the deadline. After amassing 10-16–26 in 46 games split between the three clubs, Kovalchuk headed back to Russia with Avangard Omsk.
“Kovy” finished the shortened 2020-21 season with 17 points in 16 games for Avangard en route to a third Gagarin Cup championship. He stepped away into an off-ice role after that, even serving as Russia’s general manager at the 2022 Winter Olympics, but returned to the sheet where his career began with Spartak final season. He notched 4-4–8 in 20 video games and went pointless in 5 playoff video games earlier than opting to not re-sign final summer season.
Kovalchuk performed 13 NHL seasons, posting a 443-433–876 scoring line in 926 video games with a -146 ranking. He averaged a exceptional 21:15 per sport all through his profession, together with a couple of seasons north of 24 with the Devils. For his first NHL stint from 2001 to 2013, nobody scored greater than Kovalchuk’s 417 targets. He remained the Jets’ franchise all-time targets chief till Mark Scheifele lastly surpassed him final month.
