You have to hand it to Carolina Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos.

With his team expected to have minimum losses of $25 million this year in making its transition from Hartford to North Carolina, Karmanos still found enough room in his wallet to throw an armored carload of cash in Sergei Fedorov's direction.

The disgruntled holdout from Detroit, who has not played a shift in the NHL this season, signed an offer sheet Wednesday with the Hurricanes that would pay $38 million over six seasons.

Detroit has until 11 p.m. Wednesday to match the offer or let him go and receive Carolina's next five first-round draft picks as compensation.

And they probably won't make a decision until the 11th hour.

Since the Red Wings have said all along that they would match any offer sheet for Fedorov even though the Russian center has said he will never play in Motown again, there should be a lot of drama this week.

Carolina is playing hardball. The team has put together a creative offer sheet that is front-loaded with so much money that if Detroit dares to match the offer, it would likely have to write Fedorov a check for an unprecedented $28 million by July 1.

"I hope [Fedorov's) still my friend," joked Panthers General Manager-coach Bryan Murray.

Just $12 million of the $38 million is Fedorov's base salary, which will be paid at $2 million per year. He will receive a $14 million signing bonus, which will bump him to $16 million this year, leaving a final $12 million.

But that's the kicker, a scare tactic the Hurricanes hope discourages Detroit owner Mike Ilitch from matching the offer.

The $12 million will be paid to Fedorov over the next four years unless the team reaches the conference finals. Then the bonus must be paid in one lump sum.

Since the Hurricanes are unlikely to make it to the finals in the near future, it doesn't affect them.

But since Detroit will likely make it to the finals this year, between the two bonuses and the base salary, the bill for Fedorov would cost $28 million for just 25 regular-season games of work.

"Come on, $28 million up front?" Rangers star Wayne Gretzky said. "Maybe he signed with the Charlotte Hornets, not the the Carolina Hurricanes."

The signing has already caused a ruckus throughout a league that has seen salaries skyrocket.

Carolina GM Jim Rutherford likely won't be winning too many popularity contests with the other GMs.

"It's getting outrageous," Murray said. "I don't know, when we have facilities like we have _ 18,000 to 19,000 seats at most _ and the price of a ticket today and the TV package we have, how teams expect to make money. I don't know how it's possible. We're hurting ourselves."

It started when Rangers GM Neil Smith threw a $21 million offer sheet at Joe Sakic last summer, a contract that would pay $17 million for this season.

Colorado surprised many by matching the offer and keeping Sakic, but basically all that Smith did was negotiate Sakic's contract for him and drive up the market at an unbelievable pace.

Chris Gratton is making $10 million because of a lofty signing bonus from Philadelphia, while Paul Kariya ended a holdout that pays $14 million over two years. Eric Lindros and Jaromir Jagr extended their contracts _ Lindros a two-year deal worth $16 million and Jagr six years for $48 million.

And Toronto is expected to extend Mats Sundin to close to $10 million per season.

It's likely that if the Red Wings match the offer, Fedorov wouldn't report. So the other option for the Wings is to work out a trade with Carolina, maybe asking for Sami Kapanen or Glen Wesley. Rutherford has already said trading Keith Primeau back to the Red Wings is not an option.

"This is an investment in a player and in a market in building a championship team," Rutherford said. "Finally it got to the point that we realized getting Sergei would come down to the highest bidder. Somebody was going to pay him."

That's true, but with salaries escalating the way they are, the question is when the fuel tank is going to run empty.

Coverage outstanding

There's been constant criticism over the coverage that CBS has given the Winter Olympics, but as far as hockey is concerned, I think the coverage was outstanding.

Sure, the games were televised in the wee hours when most sane people are in dreamland (by the way, I watched every game), but as far as the coverage, it was superior.

While I will never comprehend how hockey's best play-by-play man, Gary Thorne, was over in Japan stuck covering speedskating while the sleeping dead's Sean McDonough called the hockey action, John Davidson did his usual exceptional job at analyzing the games.

Unlike its counterparts at Fox Sports, CBS' camera angles were extraordinary.

During the NHL season, Fox's main fault is finding adaquate replays that are at all relevant, while CBS had replays from every angle.

The cameras caught almost everything as CBS showed the explicit replays that added excitement and understanding of the game to the audience.

Injury fears realized

Exactly what concerned most hockey fans and teams before the Olympics became reality as the hockey tournament wrapped up.

While most higher-ups believed the Olympics would showcase the sport to new audiences around the world, most people were still concerned about injuries to their stars, especially with the playoffs seven weeks away.

It appeared the Games were going to slide along with no major injuries until Phoenix's Jeremy Roenick and Colorado's Joe Sakic went down with injuries in back-to-back nights.

Roenick went down with a groin injury that appears less serious than originally felt, while Sakic, the league's highest-paid player, could miss up to six weeks with a knee injury.

The Penguins' Jaromir Jagr and Sabres goaltender Dominik Hasek are also banged up.

Heck, even referee Mark Faucette is down with a knee injury, which ought to please Panthers fans with long memories.

Better goalies, fewer goals

You better believe hockey's Board of Governors watched the Olympics closely.

One thing that was evident is that those who believe that the sole reason for goals being down in the NHL is because goalies are better could be right.

Even with the larger ice surface, the nets being farther out and the stars being on the ice, goals were still down.

The obvious reason was because of the outstanding play of superstar goalies such as Hasek and Patrick Roy.

The NHL will be more stringent when the season resumes this week on regulating the size of goalie's equipment.

But the reality is, just like a good pitching staff in baseball and a good quarterback in football is essential, goalies are better than ever, a definitive reason for the decreased scoring.