One of These Things is Not Like the Other....

Mark Bell has no business playing hockey this year. He should be in jail. He should be serving his sentence for his DUI and hit and run one year ago this weekend. He's not though. Instead he gets to play this season, collect his 2 million dollar salary and serve his time(which will be anywhere between 4-6 months) after hockey is done. Great, just great. No sooner does Roger Gooddell put his foot down and say "enough is enough" then Garry Bettman drags the NHL down another level.

Let's look at this case. Last year Mark Bell was involved in a two car accident over the Labour Day weekend. He rear-ended a truck and left the forty year old driver with head injuries and cuts to his face. Bell left the scene and was shortly arrested in the general area. He was given a breathalyser and blew a .15, the legal limit being .08. He was booked on DUI and leaving the scene of an accident. One year later he plead no contest to the charges and had the felony dropped to a misdemeanor.

While I have no problem with the plea bargain, I take issue with Bettman allowing Bell to play this season. The precedent set by the NFL regarding Mike Vick and Pacman Jones should have been enough to put some balls on Canada's favorite midget, but it didn't. Instead Bettman is going to keep the status quo and allow a man who broke the law back on the ice. Way to go Garry. You keep that game honest my man.

Let's go back a few years and re-visit the sad and brutal story of Steve Moore. Moore was one of a few hundred players in the NHL, not a whole lot of talent but good speed and some jam in his game. He played a hard nosed style that earned him around 10 minutes a game and a few hundred thousand dollars a year. A lot of players(Kent Manderville is a great example), have carved out long and prosperous careers like that. I don't know if Moore could have, but we'll never know now.

Thanks to Todd Bertuzzis famous attack on Moore, the young man will never play again. As a result of Bertuzzis sucker punch he was formally charged with and plead guilty to assault. He was suspended by the NHL following the on ice attack for what amounted to 13 regular season games and 7 playoff games. The following season was the lock out, and on August 8, 2005 Bertuzzi was re-instated into the NHL. Moore was still in re-hab for three fractured vertebrae. the NHL cited the following reasons why Betuzzi was allowed back in.

• Bertuzzi serving a suspension of 20 games, tied for 4th longest in NHL history (13 regular season games, 7 playoff games)
• Bertuzzi's repeated attempts to apologize to Mr. Moore personally
• Bertuzzi's forfeited salary ($501,926.39 USD)
• Lost endorsements (approximately $350,000.00 USD)
• Significant uncertainty, anxiety, stress and emotional pain caused to Bertuzzi's family
• The commissioner's belief that Bertuzzi was genuinely remorseful and apologetic for his actions

Get all that? Good. Now Let's get real. 850 grand to man who signed a massive, multi-year deal with the Vancouver Cauncks is a drop in a very large bucket, the suspension length hardly matched the severity of the Bertuzzis attack on Moore and his obvious intent to injure him. The stress and anxiety are Todds problem, brought on by his own viscious actions, not the maliciousness of other people. Of course, the biggest detail of the whole re-instatement was the date. August 8th, 2005, a rather significant date for NHL news. that was the day Wayne Gretzky announced he was taking over as head coach of the Phoenix Coyotes.

Basically, while the hockey world was talking about the Great One, Bettman slipped a tiny press release around announcing Bertuzzi was back in the NHL, deliberately using the biggest announcement of the summer to slip that mortar shell in the back door. It was painfully obvious that Bettman had done so to insure minimal press devoted to the story, meaning he knew what he was doing would set people off.

Remember the public outcry over the attack? The View of all TV shows devoted almost a week to it. For the first time since the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994 ESPN and FOXSports were leading their updates with NHL talk. Bettman knew full well what would happen if he had announced Bertuzzis return on any other date, so he waited and use Gretzky to avoid the problem.

And now it's happening again. Bettman is allowing a criminal to play to game and make his money when Mark Bell should be in a California jail cell. He's silently issuing a statement that tells players they can do what they like, he'll let them back in. Hell, he'll even let them serve their sentences whenever they feel like it. Bell is by no means a star player like Bertuzzi once was, but the example is still the same. If sports leagues want their players to stop embarrassing the sport, then they need to stop allowing those very players to break the law and still collect a check. If athletes are just like you and me, then it's high time they started going to jail like we do.