from Gregg Krupa of the Detroit News,

The odds Ilya Kovalchuk wants to play on the Detroit Red Wings power play in 2018-19 are slim.

But not quite as poor as the chances the Wings will win the Stanley Cup, anytime soon.

The twin improbabilities limit any interest Kovalchuk has in signing with them, despite the run the Red Wings are taking at him.

Kovalchuk seeks a second NHL comeback in his prodigal career to experience what Alex Ovechkin experienced over the past week. He seeks the height of team performance, a Stanley Cup, to add to an Olympic gold medal, two golds in World Championships, one in a World Junior Championship and two Gagarin Cups, the championship trophy of the Kontinental Hockey League.

The Red Wings interest in Kovalchuk is about the opportunity for players Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha and Evgeny Svechnikov to play with the once supremely-talented 35-year-old, and removing some of the dead weight of the franchise from Henrik Zetterberg’s surgically-repaired back for the first season since Pavel Dastyuk decamped to the KHL.

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