Mark Bell, Just Another NHL Drunk Driver

The culture of boozing it up permeates the NHL player ranks like a Trojan virus. Steve Chiasson's 1999 drunk driving death of was, sadly, reflective of the beer-swilling, drunk and dangerous driving nature of many NHL players.

The latest dopey NHLer to be caught boozing and cruising was Toronto Maple Leafs forward Mark Bell, who could face jail time for his stupidity. Thanks to his athletic status, however, he won't miss any games for the Buds.

Bell pleaded guilty in a San Jose courtroom Tuesday to charges of drunk driving causing injury and hit and run.

The Leaf forward, picked up in the Vesa Toskala trade with San Jose in June, will be sentenced to six months in a Santa Clara ,California county jail to be served at the end of this upcoming season.

The charges stem from an incident in San Jose on Labour Day last year when Bell's vehicle rear-ended a pickup truck in the early morning hours, leaving the driver of the truck with head injuries.

While hockey players are generally good citizens, especially compared to their other North American sporting brethren, drinking and driving is the one long-standing tradition the league would rather not have blacking its eye..

As writer Jamie Fitzpatrick points out, such incidents have lead to quite a few accidents and deaths for NHL players (and not just Chiasson), including one involving Oilers head coach Craig MacTavish, who had a woman die in a crash he caused.

I could go on, but John Berkovich put together a pretty 'nice' list of the drinking and driving incidents NHLers have been involved in. The list is far too long for any sportsfan's liking.

Sure, the NHL claims to be helping people through it's joint substance abuse program with the NHLPA, but it doesn't appear to be helping any. Until the newer generation of players learns that drinking and driving is far from acceptable, this is a trend that we'll, sadly, see continue.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

8-15-2007 @ 1:59AM

mclea said...

While hockey players are generally good citizens, especially compared to their other North American sporting brethren, drinking and driving is the one long-standing tradition the league would rather not have blacking its eye.

Come on now, by my count there have been 5 DUIs involving NHL players in the last 10 years. That hardly strikes me as being an epidemic. I'd be absolutely shocked if the DUI rate for NHL players was significantly higher than that of the general population.

8-15-2007 @ 9:00AM

A quick google search brought me to this page:

http://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/PrevGuid/m0032985/m0032985.asp

which says that the "annual arrest rate for DWI nationally in 1992 was nine per 1000 licensed drivers."

So roughly calculating, there are:

30 teams * 25 players = 750 NHL Players each year.

Given the rate above, we should expect 6.75 players ((9/1000)*750) NHL players being busted for DUI each year. The same site says that the rate for some states was 3 DWI Arrests/1000 people, which would suggest that we should have 2.25 arrests of NHL players for DUI every year.

By John Berkovich's count, there have been 18 DUIs involving NHL players in the past 34 years. So, far from being "a problem," it appears that NHL players are incredibly well behaved. Especially considering that the majority of them are young males, which this site:

http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k5/DUIarrests/DUIarrests.htm

says are far more likely to be convicted of drunk driving (1.1% of all male drivers over 21 years of age) than the rest of the population.