Penguins

Kovacevic: Le’Veon’s not at North Pole, either

Dejan Kovacevic
Posted on

EDMONTON, Alberta -- No, Le'Veon Bell isn't here, either, though I might as well have spotted him in the form of a stubborn moose clogging a two-lane highway, looking clueless as to whether he was coming or going.

Just thought I’d start with that.

• Before I get to all the hockey for which I flew up here, I’ve got a handful of thoughts related to Bell, chief among them a reiteration: Take nothing he says seriously.

A couple weeks ago, he and his equally clueless agent, Adisa Bakari, reached out to ESPN to share the big, exclusive news that Bell would report to the Steelers following the bye week. The agent even got Bell himself on the horn with the ESPN reporter, presumably to strengthen the stance.

It was garbage.

Not the report itself, of course — there’s no accounting for the future in the news business — but everything the reporter was told that day. I didn’t believe then and I don’t believe now that Bell had any intention of reporting this soon. Just as I didn’t believe when his agent declared that he still aims to have his greatest statistical season, lost games and all. Just as I didn’t believe ... well, pretty much a single syllable the two have spoken for months.

Also, candidly, I don’t really care anymore. I don’t care what they have to say. I don’t care which of those two is the dog and which is the tail. I don’t care if or when Bell reports.

I don’t care about any of this from the player’s standpoint, I definitely don’t care about it from the agent’s standpoint, and I’m not sure I even care about it from the Steelers’ standpoint at this stage.

Why?

My top three reasons, in ascending order, after which I’ll act on this lack of caring and stop writing on this topic:

3. The Steelers have saved $855,000 for each of the seven weeks Bell’s been partying in South Beach. Counting the coming week, that’s $6.84 million toward cap room in 2019. That can buy a whole lot of talent at positions of far greater need.

To boot, they’ve got added current financial flexibility to make a trade before the NFL’s Oct. 30 deadline. I’m not going to name names here, but, uh, PATRICK PETERSON sure would be a fine fit in black and gold.

2. Running back isn’t a position of need. Bell in peak form would be an upgrade over James Conner, but the degree to which that’s true seems to diminish with every passing Sunday. Conner ranks sixth in the NFL in rushing yardage, ninth in receiving yardage for a back, fifth in total touchdowns, and he’s additionally brought a fresh dimension by leading the league in broken tackles at 38.

He’s been exceptional. Everything the Steelers could have hoped and so much more.

To the point, Bell wouldn’t be an upgrade where an upgrade is most needed. Not to pick on anyone, but, oh, say, CORNERBACK.

1. I’m not convinced Bell wants to play football.

If that comes across as draconian theory, so be it. But when a football player is willfully staying away from a $14.5 million payday for playing football, when a football player is openly discussing the management of snap counts in the name of self-preservation, when a football player has expressed that he’d simply retire if he doesn’t get the money he wants, it would be ridiculous to rule out that this football player just doesn’t want to play football anymore.

And there’d be nothing wrong with that. Bell sure wouldn’t be the first or last. Former Steelers outside linebacker Jason Worilds retired in 2015, one day after becoming a free agent for the first time. Heck, Vontae Davis of the Bills quit at halftime a month ago. It’s a demanding, damaging game, doubly brutal for a running back.

Someone let me know how it turns out.

• Peterson wants out of Phoenix in the worst way, apparently:

The Cardinals only make deals with the Steelers. Find a way. And spare me the storyline that the Steelers just don’t make moves like that. Go ask Vance McDonald and Joe Haden. It’s a different era.

• None of this is to suggest, by the way, that the Steelers should behave vindictively toward Bell. That’d be senseless. While there might be some finger-wagging satisfaction in telling Bell to go stick it, there wouldn’t be much substance to it beyond closure.

• Here we go again with Sidney Crosby vs. Connor McDavid here tonight, and it’ll all be blown up even more than Crosby vs. Auston Matthews last week in Toronto. If only because McDavid’s markedly better than Matthews.

Still, the discussion will be just as silly.

As Mike Babcock just schooled everyone, “One of them has two Olympic gold medals and three Stanley Cups.”

Same applies. The hockey culture, fair or not, rewards/punishes an individual as it relates to team performance. It’s the only major sport, in fact, that sets MVP criteria as being the player “adjudged to be most valuable to his team.” That’s how Taylor Hall got the Hart Trophy last season — got my vote, too — because he pretty much dragged the Devils into the playoffs.

McDavid won the scoring title last season, but the Oilers missed the playoffs. So he was never a serious consideration among voters for the Hart.

He can’t be considered in the Crosby conversation — yet — for the same reason.

• When Mario Lemieux entered the NHL and was visibly a superior talent to Wayne Gretzky, the howls from this city to the contrary were all about how Lemieux’s Penguins didn’t make the playoffs his first five years in the league.

Welp ... can’t have it both ways.

• Sooner rather than later, it’d be wonderful to see Patric Hornqvist rather than Bryan Rust on the top line. Neither has a goal yet, but it’s infinitely more important for the Penguins to get Hornqvist going. If he’s feeling it, they’re all getting pucks to the net. If they’re getting pucks to the net, they’re 72 times better than what they showed in the first handful of games.

• Aren’t we well past assimilation stage for Derick Brassard?

Great dude. Guys love him. Time to produce.

• There isn’t a more oversized, cavernous facility in professional sports than the three-year-old Rogers Place. (See my picture way at the top.) No idea what they were thinking here with this design, but it takes a telescope to locate the rink, much less track a small slice of frozen vulcanized rubber on it.

• Nobody downplays payroll as a factor in the Pirates’ broader picture more than I do. But this is still instructive: With the Brewers eliminated, the trend will continue in which 25 of the past 26 World Series champions ranked in the upper half of Major League Baseball’s payroll hierarchy. And 30 of the past 32 World Series participants. The champions’ average payroll ranking is sixth.

And now, it's Boston vs. Los Angeles. Because of course it is.

• One last time: The Brewers are based in baseball's smallest market, a market two-thirds the size of Pittsburgh, and an ambitious owner and smart management got them all this:

• The Crew won’t stand pat for 2019. Neither will the Cubs or Cardinals. Even the Reds are beginning to stir. Going out and getting that big bat — the one Frank Coonelly‘s already basically made clear is a no-go — won’t be optional.

• Anyone with soccer-phobia can skip this one: The Hounds need better goalkeeping. They can’t say it, so I will: Dan Lynd was a terrific story, coming from Pitt to start in USL — part of 17 team shutouts, most in the league — but far too many of these late lapses all season long could have been avoided with more dynamic, athletic work in the box. And yeah, that includes the two blown leads in the playoff loss Saturday, as well as Bethlehem embarrassingly converting all eight of its kicks in the shootout. That’s the next step. Part of it, anyway.

• Hockey in Western Canada is, for me, as hockey as hockey gets. Something feels so pure about it. Maybe it’s all the pristine sheets of ice. Maybe it’s all the grassroots signs of the sport everywhere you look.

Always love coming out here, just for that.

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