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The NHL could use some Le'Veon Bell

August 27, 2019, 3:47 PM ET [9 Comments]
Ty Anderson
Boston Bruins Blogger •Bruins Feature Columnist • RSSArchiveCONTACT
In case you’re unaware, having the seventh overall pick in your 2019 Fantasy Football Draft is basically hell. Especially if your league involves keepers. The board refusing to break my way essentially put me in the position of deciding between reaching for Le’Veon Bell or Joe Mixon or going with an all-world wideout. Given the fact that I’m in a PPR league, I opted for DeAndre Hopkins.

Whether or not this pays off remains to be seen -- knowing my luck, it won’t, and Hopkins will be in a walking boot come time for the fantasy playoffs -- but it did get me thinking about Bell.

For those who don’t follow the NFL, Bell sat out the entire 2018 season due to a contract issue with the Steelers. The entire season. This is and was unheard of, especially for somebody who was supposed to be playing in their prime (last year was Bell’s Age-26 season.) But Bell’s decision has absolutely changed the game for all running backs (and all players in need of a market value deal), as he sat out an entire year and still got paid over $52 million from the New York Jets when he hit the market as an unrestricted free agent after the 2018 season.

And it took all of zero subsequent seasons to find the impact of his decision.

Just look at the situation with Melvin Gordon and the Chargers, and Zeke Elliott and the Cowboys. Both are holding out of camp due to contract issues, and there’s a possibility that they miss regular-season time. It’s believed that Gordon is willing to pull a Bell and sit out the entire season if he doesn’t get a long-term deal. That seems like a possibility with Elliott, but he lacks the professional experience to go Full Bell and hit the market as an unrestricted free agent like Gordon, making such an endeavor less enticing. Both the Chargers and Cowboys would like to tell you that they’re Super Bowl contenders this season, too, meaning they’d obviously love to have their guys in uniform and on the field from Week 1 through the final whistle of 2019. Their holdout plays are absolutely I-N-S-A-N-E when you sit and think about what they’re willing to do to get their way, really, but it’s a reality and tactic that’s undoubtedly smacked NFL executives and owners upside the head.

It’s created real deadlines, real drama, and real potential fallout.

It’s also something that the National Hockey League does not possess with their restricted free agents.

Now, this is not about players sitting out an entire season. Eric Lindros did that. Same for Mike Peca in Buffalo and Nikolai Khabibulin in Phoenix. We came close to Ryan O’Reilly doing just that in the lockout-delayed 2013 season, but a (terrible) offer sheet from Calgary made sure that didn’t happen.

This is about not having options if and when you do decide to sit out an entire season.

And not having options at all, in fact.

Should Mitch Marner, Patrik Laine, or Charlie McAvoy decide to play the ultimate card and sit out an entire season in search of a fair deal, they won’t reap the rewards Bell did last offseason. They will instead find themselves in the exact same position this time next year, with the team they’re currently battling with for a new deal holding their rights as a restricted free agent yet
again. And potentially worse off for it, even if they play overseas for a season. There’s legitimately no upside to it.

There’s also no possibility of an offer sheet actually coming any player’s way, as we’ve all clearly learned by now, which with respect to the page views, makes me feel like thinking any player is going anywhere this fall is a complete waste of our time. Given the buddy-buddy nature of the NHL front office collective, as well as the steep prices necessary to pull off successful offer sheets, they’re basically Bigfoot riding the Jersey Devil through Narnia. Again, we’ve been over this part of it all.

The teams hold all the cards, and we’re stuck in this hellish gridlock as a result.

None of this is new.

The NHL has always had the most team-friendly restricted free agency process.
Compare to the offer sheet process in the NBA to the NHL; If you want to sign an RFA in the NBA, all you need to do is offer cash, not picks, and see if that player’s team wants to match the offer. If they don’t, off you go. If that was all it took, all these guys would have been off the market in July. The NHL also gives you until Dec. 1 to come to terms on a deal with your restricted free agent. This is one of the softest deadlines imaginable, really, as you still have about 60 games to get your player back in the mix for your team should you put this off until the final minute and come to terms in December. Imagine the progress you’d have if you had a hard Sept. 1 or Oct. 1 deadline. Movement!

Of course, these are just minor tweaks to a severely flawed process, as we’ve come to learn.
But somebody Pulling A Bell, and choosing their own path and timeline, could be just what this league needs to truly get out of this absurd pattern that’s shown no signs of going away anytime soon.

Ty Anderson is a writer, columnist, and weird personality for 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston, where he covers all things Boston sports. He has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010, and has also been part of the Boston Chapter of the PHWA since 2013. In addition to writing, Ty can occasionally be heard on the air at 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston, and seen and/or heard on the NHL Network every now and then. He will not give you his email, so yell at him on Twitter (@_TyAnderson).
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