His contract was eventually approved.
If it’s approved it’s because him and Savard threatened to file a lawsuit. Their contracts will be “grandfather’d” in. From this point on they wouldn’t work.
Actually, the contract was renegotiated. It's now a 15 (rather than 17) year deal, with higher annual cap hits and a higher salary later. Also, the NHL and NHLPA negotiated new language to deal with long-term contracts in the future.
Yeah, and I don't think Kovalchuk ever had a chance at a lawsuit, since his deal was never approved by the league in the first place. Savard was the one threatening a lawsuit, because his deal was approved by the league a long time ago, and by waiting so long to nullify it, the league would have likely cost him a ton of money, since at this point in the offseason, no teams have the cap space to sign him for anything close to that deal.