OTTAWAatDEVILSTonight: 7:30FSN, WQEW
(1560 AM)
The greatest stand-up defenseman in hockey is making his stand, and it stands to move him out of New Jersey next summer.
Upcoming unrestricted free agent Scott Stevens told The Post yesterday that he will not sign a Devils contract below the market level set by Blues defenseman Al MacInnis this week, some $7 million per season. With Martin Brodeur signing earlier this month for $7 million per season, plus another $1 million annually in deferred payments, the Devils would be drastically raising their payroll to keep their captain, and it was already an upset that they broke the bank for Brodeur.
“If you look around the league, the market is pretty well set,” the Devils captain said. “MacInnis just signed, and he’s a top defenseman, and he’s 38. I’m a year younger.
“I’m not going to sign anything I’m not happy with. Fair market value: I like it here, but it’s got to be that.”
Stevens set standards for player salaries when he twice signed with the Blues as a restricted free agent. The Caps obtained five draft picks for him the first time, and the Devils matched St. Louis’ contract bid for him the second, after the Devils were awarded Stevens as compensation for the Blues’ free agent signing of Brendan Shanahan.
Stevens actually took a pay cut in 1998 when he signed his current four-year deal for an annual salary of $4.2 million, dropping from that final year of that last Blues’ offer that paid him $4.312 million for 1997-98. Stevens wants a three-year contract, but it appears that salary, not term, is the sticking point. MacInnis received a $1 million signing bonus, and salaries of $6 million and $7 million in his two-year deal.
Now in his 20th NHL season and 11th with the Devils, Stevens recently has had some of his finest years of a Hall of Fame career, and would surely be a highly-coveted figure as an unrestricted free agent, with the bidding likely only starting at $7 million.
Stevens will be logging his workhorse 20-plus minutes of superb defense tonight against the Senators at the Meadowlands, when the Devils try to win a second straight game. His craft is a sight Devils fans had best fully appreciate now, because he could well be gone next season.
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Turner Stevenson was placed on IR, hoping to only miss a month of action with a sprained right knee. Stevenson said the sprained ligament is his anterior cruciate, not the devastating medial collateral.
