Nedved Traded to Rangers

Petr Nedved, so determined not to play again for the Pittsburgh Penguins that he held out for a year and a half, returned to the New York Rangers in a five-player trade Wednesday that sent Alexei Kovalev to the Penguins.

The Penguins dealt Nedved, defenseman Chris Tamer and center Sean Pronger to the last-place Rangers for Kovalev, a talented but underachieving right wing, center Harry York and future considerations.

“We just never got close to coming to terms with Petr,” said Craig Patrick, the Penguins’ general manager.

To finalize the deal with the bankrupt Penguins, the Rangers apparently agreed to pay all or some of Kovalev’s $1.5-million salary and part of the $2.33 million in deferred money the Penguins owe the Rangers’ Kevin Stevens.

The Rangers agreed to the trade only after working out a contract with Nedved, a center who hasn’t played in the NHL since the 1997 playoffs. The three-year deal is believed to be worth slightly less than $4 million a season--or less than the Penguins offered last year.

“We talked around and around and around with a number of clubs,” Patrick said. “We had a number of different players with a number of different clubs. We couldn’t really get the pieces that fit our puzzle until now.”

The Penguins previously wanted as much as $4 million cash in a proposed Nedved-for-Kovalev trade, but NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman wouldn’t let so much money change hands.

The Penguins filed for bankruptcy protection last month and may owe creditors as much as $123 million, or more than the franchise’s value. A French bank recently loaned them $20 million to get through the season.

“We are fortunate to add a world class player like Alexei under these difficult circumstances,” Patrick said. “We finally feel we received proper value for our asset.”

That asset is the 26-year-old Nedved, who sat out the 1997-98 season in a contract dispute and is currently playing for Las Vegas of the International Hockey League. He had a 99-point season for the Penguins in 1995-96, after he fell out of favor with Ranger star Mark Messier and coach Colin Campbell and was traded to Pittsburgh.

Kovalev has had similar problems with the Rangers, who felt his production--24 goals are his career high--never matched his talent.

*

Fox Sports turned out the light on its glowing hockey puck.

The News Corp. unit, which will relinquish its network broadcast rights for NHL games to ABC after this season and had tried to get out of its $45-million commitment for 1998-99, won’t use the puck this season, the network said.

Fox spokesman Vince Wladika wouldn’t comment on whether the decision was made as a cost-cutting move, but using the puck costs the network about $50,000 a game.

“It’s definitely not because of negative backlash,” Wladika said. “We’ve decided not to use it on the network telecasts this year for a number of reasons.”

The glowing puck, first used by the network during the 1995-96 All-Star game in an attempt to increase interest and help the sport’s casual fans follow the action, has a computer chip inside it that produces a blue cometlike tail that turns red on the TV screen when it travels more than 70 mph.