Former Red Wing Sergei Fedorov has always insisted that Detroit pulled a contract offer (supposedly 5 years at $10 million per season) off the table before he signed a 5-year, $40 million contract with the Anaheim Ducks.
According to the Russian press that I was following way back in 2003 (back in the day, you could still read Sport-Express and Sovetsky Sport, but it took wading through clunky online translations from PROMT), the Red Wings felt that it was Fedorov who walked away from a still-valid contract offer to sign with the Ducks.
Between Fedorov signing the $28 million offer sheet from Carolina in 1998, and the Wings ownership’s belief that he betrayed the team in the summer of 2003…
That’s where you get the still-bitter feelings that have kept #91 out of the rafters in Detroit.
This morning, Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff reports that Fedorov, who left CSKA Moscow’s board of directors, has spoken with Sport-Express.ru’s Yuri Golishak and Aleksandr Kruzhkov about his divorce from the Wings. Per Mr. Duff:
So why didn’t he put his name to the lucrative pact that was placed in front of him by the Red Wings?
“I finished it like this: “I need to think about it,” Fedorov said of that contract meeting with the Red Wings. “I named a time frame – two or three weeks. But it all turned into months. I was a young man, not very knowledgeable about life. I also trusted the agents.
“My agents kept saying that they could raise my salary. But nothing changed. At some point, I completely stopped understanding what was happening in my life. Playing hockey was my only outlet. And Detroit simply removed a new contract offer from the table.”
The end result was acrimony on both sides. The contract Fedorov would sign with the Ducks was for less money than the original Detroit offer. When he’d return to Detroit with Anaheim, Red Wings fans would boo Fedorov – the most recent Red Wings player to win the Hart Trophy as NHL MVP – with a merciless fury.
“I was convinced that there is only one step from love to hate,” Fedorov said. “And the management blamed it all on me, without telling me how it really was. Indeed, I go out on the ice — the spectators boo. You get the puck — a whistle. Very unpleasant.”
Continued; if you read Duff’s superb summary and the attached Russian article through an online translator, you’ll find that Fedorov is still enigmatic in his conversations with Sport-Express’s correspondents, engaging in a wide-ranging and rambling conversation.
And he’s still insisting that it was the Red Wings who pulled that 5-year, $50 million contract off the table. He’ll insist that his agent at the time, super-agent (still) Pat Brisson, played a role in his departure, but ultimately, it’s a skirmish between player and team that still yields hurt feelings and hardened hearts on both sides.
What really happened? You’ll have to ask Fedorov, Mrs. Ilitch and Jimmy Devellano, and you’re going to get different answers from the respective parties.
