Sacre Bleu!

The night's not over, my friends.

RDS Hockey, the French-Canadian source for all things NHL, says (in your editor's admittedly rough and stumbling translation):

Ilya Kovalchuk and the Atlanta Thrashers are reportedly [editor's note: heeengh?] very near an agreement of nine years that would pay him [editor's note: "him" being Kovalchuk] more than 100 million dollars.

His average salary would be 11.3 million dollars per season.

The Thrashers' first choice in the 2001 draft, Kovalchuk has scored 304 goals in 551 career games. [editor's note: silly pseudo-Frog press! Already outdated!]

This season, the player of Russian origin has scored 7 goals in 6 bouts. [Ed. note: Have to love that Gallic flash: "recontre." Amazing!]

Kovalchuk won the Maurine Richard Trophy in for most goals in the NHL when he scored YOU GET THE POINT.

Interesting report, this. The key word here is "seraient," which can mean all kinds of things. Here it seems to mean "Kovalchuk and the Thrashers are thought to be/speculated to be very near..."

Basically they're saying that some folks, somewhere on the Planet Earth, are speculating that this might be so. It might be. It might not be. All I know is I've expected Kovalchuk to get a contract like this ever since Ovechkin signed his. So, um, yeah. If you want to see a puking ape keep scrolling down.