Dale Tallon May Have Forgot To Dot The "I"s and Cross The "T"s

Back in 2001 the Chicago Bears had a restricted free agent on their roster whom I believe was D'Wayne Bates. Honestly, I don't know for sure because it wasn't any player of real importance and his name isn't important, but I believe it was Bates.

Anyway, Bates was a restricted free agent and the Bears messed up on some paper work when making him a qualifying offer. Because of this mistake, when the Minnesota Vikings signed Bates, the Bears didn't get a draft pick in return which is what usually happens when a restricted free agent leaves.

Now this wasn't a big deal for the Bears because Bates wasn't a key player on the team, and they just moved on. But just imagine if the Bears had made mistakes on the qualifying offers of six free agents that season. Why that would be enough to devastate a team.

Which is why I'm rather terrified of the consequences of an apparent mistake that Blackhawks general manager Dale Tallon may have made.

Sources tell TSN the NHL and the NHLPA are investigating what might have been an enormous mistake by the Chicago Blackhawks.

Chicago tendered qualifying offers to several key players this week, including Kris Versteeg, Cam Barker, Ben Eager, Colin Fraser, Aaron Johnson and Troy Brouwer, however the investigation underway is to determine whether the qualifying offers were filed correctly.

If not, there is the remote possibility the qualifying offers could be ruled invalid and the players listed above, conceivably, could be deemed unrestricted free agents because of the blunder.

There are few details, but one source says the players involved didn't receive the necessary notification of the offers.

According to Tallon he mailed the qualifying offers to the players on June 29th but that because of the holiday in Canada on July 1st -- it was Canada Day which is the Canadian version of Independence Day except there are less fireworks and more Canadians -- they may not have gotten them in the mail in time.

Well that's all well and good but for one small problem. Qualifying offers aren't supposed to be sent through the mail.

Now I don't know enough about this aspect of the NHL to make any predictions on what will end up happening here, but I do know that if the NHL rules the Hawks erred here and rules all of these guys as unrestricted free agents it could gut the young core of this team.

I'll keep my eye on this story and keep you informed on anything that develops.