Hey Mark, watch out for your corn hole, buddy

According to Sportsnet, Mark Bell is going to jail. Apparently, Sportsnet has learned that he will serve a six-month term at the end of this hockey season, likely in a California prison. Bell pleaded guilty on Tuesday to drunk driving after a hit-and-run incident in San Jose last Labour Day. His blood alcohol was double the legal limit when he ran into the back of another car. In other words, he Hancock'ed someone.

Sentencing for the offense will not take place until October. Interestingly enough, Sportsnet knows the length of the sentence before Bell gets sentenced. Very impressive! Sportsnet must have meant that Bell is expected to receive a six-month stint.

Being that Mark Bell is a professional athlete, we must remember that sentencing may not amount to anything other than community service and a fine. After all, Dany Heatley got zero time in prison for killing Dan Snyder with his car. Fuck, OJ Simpson got zero time in prison for double homicide. Mark Bell is now going to serve six months for rear-ending someone? Maybe, but the fact is that pro athletes rarely serve all their time.

So, the story could be true - Mark Bell probably does deserve to go to prison for injuring someone due to his own drunken negligence - but the ability of a pro athlete to dodge jail time, combined with Sportsnet's history of garbage journalism leaves me skeptical that Bell will ever see the inside of a cell.

From a very shallow, Leaf-centric point of view, Bell's impending sentence is likely bad news for Leafs Nation. Mark Bell has shown two very distinct sides of his game since graduating to the NHL. The first was the emerging power forward in Chicago that increased point and goal totals each of his first four seasons in the league, peaking at 25 goals and 48 points in 05/06. The second was the player we saw last year in San Jose: 10 goals, 11 assists and several games as a healthy scratch. It says here that the reason Mark shit the bed last season was the fallout from the DUI. It ruined his season, and has the potential to ruin the upcoming season as well. Hopefully Mark can get past it and resume his upward march to a legitimate NHL-calibre power forward.

And the conspiracy theorist in me says:
One must wonder whether this was part of the reason Bell was included in the Vesa Toskala trade. Obviously Mark Bell didn't live to expectations in San Jose, but they did trade away Tom Preissing and Josh Hennessy for his services. Often, the fact that decent talent was given up in exchange for an underachiever is enough reason to see the underachieving player through a bad season or two.

Perhaps San Jose Sharks General Manager Doug Wilson had the foresight to see this coming. Perhaps he was instructed by Sharks counsel Don Gralnek that Bell got himself into something fairly serious that would continue to dog him and his team. Perhaps the Sharks pulled the wool over JFJ's eyes, or told him that Toskala would never be a Leaf unless Mark Bell came with him. Or, perhaps I am full of bull'ish.