The National Hockey League does not have a doping problem. You just have to ask.
Everyone from Gary Bettman to the Columbus Blue Jackets locker room strongly supports the idea that the NHL is not affected by the syringe and the steroid. In fact, they are so confident that for five months a year no player can be subject to drug testing.
Say what?
It’s true: from the day the puck drops in the playoffs to the opening of training camp, players no longer fear drug testing. Article 47.5 of the collective agreement covers testing procedures for performance-enhancing substances. It reads:
“Each NHL player…will be subject to up to two (2) tests without notice during the period from the start of training camp until the end of the regular season. »
One might think that this is an oversight on the part of the League, a poorly worded and involuntary gap.
It’s not.
The National Hockey League Players’ Association (NHLPA) included this clause to protect its players from any “potential distractions” during the playoffs, a notion with which Sydney Crosby agrees. In turn, players benefit from the honor system for five months per year.
In the four years since the NHL/NHLPA policy was adopted, only one player, former defenseman Sean Hill, has tested positive for banned substances.
Two years earlier, Blue Jackets defenseman Brian Berard tested positive for anabolic steroids. He was handed a two-year ban from international competition, but the NHL took no action.
The test was administered by the United States Anti-Doping Agency in preparation at the Olympic team’s suggestion, not by the NHL, so there was no postponement.
An actor taken in four years of active politics represents an almost impeccable record. It’s always a question of chicken or the egg: is the record clean because the players are not cheating or because the system is insufficient?
According to Rick Nash, it’s the first. “I would say we’re clean as well,” the Blue Jacket captain told Tom Reed. The Columbus Dispatch.
Nash isn’t the only one who thinks hockey’s remarkably clean doping record is normal. NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly says there is no steroid problem in his league. “We never had the same problem” as baseball, he said. “Hockey players have been tested on the international stage for many years. It’s just not in their culture.
What Daly forgets is that at one time, no matter how long ago, doping wasn’t part of baseball culture either. There was a time when the American pastime was pure and free from speculation about who did or didn’t consume.
Daly also believes that “there is no need for an independent investigation into” hockey, akin to a Mitchell report on the ice.
But, as Rick Reilly asked then-Chicago Cub Sammy Sossa, why wait?
“Why wait to see what the players association does,” Reilly suggested. “Why don’t you step in now and get tested?” You show everyone that you are clean. It will take a cloud off you and a cloud off the game.”
Such a cloud, so many argue, simply does not exist in hockey.
The NHL’s anti-doping standards were called into question by former World Anti-Doping Agency president Dick Pound, who called the policy “very seriously flawed” and predicted that a third of NHL players were taking performance-enhancing substances.
Daly, for one, thinks year-round testing would be beneficial. “The league would support expanding the scope of the policy,” he told Reed.
The common three-month cycle in which performance-enhancing drugs must be flushed out of the system, Daly says, doesn’t give players “a long period of benefit.” “Our players are great role models,” he continued, “and they have a great reputation for their integrity, and I would hate to see that affected.”
In simple terms? Policy. The NHLPA and the NHL have a very precarious, push/pull relationship, and doping is not a subject the NHL wants to highlight.
The playoffs, the precise moment when the tests stop, are the most important in terms of recovery and rehabilitation. With only one day off between series games and series often spanning the entire seven games, reducing the grueling rehab process would give players an advantage.
This would steer players away from anabolic steroids, which add bulk and strength, and toward stimulants. The biggest concern, Reed writes, is “the possible use of blood doping.”
Blood doping essentially increases the body’s production of red blood cells, which “helps produce more oxygen and internal fuel for the muscles, giving the athlete more endurance.”
Additionally, blood doping acts quickly – sometimes within a few days – and can be cleared from the system within a week and a half.
Alexei Cherepanov, a New York Rangers prospect who died in October last year, was a blood doping enthusiast. He never played a game in the NHL, but why would he stop once he got to the Show?
Right now, the NHL doesn’t have “the same problem” as baseball. Waiting for a shower of needles, however, is naive and unwise. The time for “outrageous” doping allegations “with answers” is over. It is time for the NHL and NHLPA to take a proactive approach.
Adopt a stricter drug testing policy. Pee in the cup, and pee in it all year round.
