The Straight Dope on Doping in the NHL: Part Two

Dr. Ken Kirkwood, a doping expert at the University of Western Ontario, is eager to debunk the myth that steroid use automatically makes you resemble Ben Johnson, the muscle-laden sprinter whose disqualification from the 1988 Olympics still influences the way Canadians view doping today. In the new NHL, where speed and skill are integral parts of a wide-open game, wouldn’t that extra bulk just bog you down?

“Steroids don’t just pack muscle mass on athletes like a sculptor adding clay to a statue,” said Kirkwood, who specializes in kinesiology and bioethics. “Steroids allow an athlete’s muscles to recover quicker than a non-user’s. The muscle mass added is a by-product of the type of training and diet, combined with drugs. An endurance athlete, like a Floyd Landis, can use steroids and weigh less than 160 pounds. But because hockey players are in a sport of intense bursts of less than two minutes, they are unlikely to gain enormous muscle mass from steroid use.”

“What the modern NHL player would gain, especially in the new, faster game, is the ability to recover quicker, especially as the season gets longer and longer,” added Kirkwood. “When a team plays four games in seven nights in four different cities, it makes sense that some players would resort to steroids just to keep up the pace. Pro sport is a job, and if you can’t handle it, they can always replace you with someone who will.”

Hockey is an intensely competitive sport, and players work out like maniacs in the off-season nowadays. It’s not hard to meet drug distributors through gyms. Players determined to keep their jobs (whether young prospects looking to achieve NHL-level fitness or aging veterans who have lost a step) could exploit gaps in the league’s policy. Perhaps the biggest one is the lack of off-season testing. “These drugs are not generally used in competition,” Yesalis pointed out. “They’re used when you’re training. So not testing during the off-season gives you a loophole through which I could drive an Abrams M1A tank blindfolded at night, for God’s sake!”

There are other issues. There is a maximum of two tests per player per year, so a player would know he’s home free after the second one. The NHL’s list of prohibited substances is derived from WADA’s list, but does not include such things as human growth hormone, certain designer steroids, or ephedrine. There is also no clear ban on masking agents used to conceal doping during testing. And the doping program is run jointly by the NHL and NHLPA, rather than an independent third party like WADA.

Looking back, it’s not as if hockey has been completely excluded from the dialogue surrounding performance-enhancing drugs. The Cold War era provides some interesting examples. A correspondent for a Polish paper called Przeglad Sportowy, covering Game Five of the 1972 Summit Series (a 5-4 loss for Canada to the Soviets in Moscow), suggested Team Canada “might have been under the influence of drugs, which is not forbidden in professional ice hockey.” Legendary Russian goalie Vladislav Tretiak wrote in his 1974 book The Hockey I Love: “I have been asked many times whether the Canadian professionals are doped. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t exclude the possibility. There is little interest in controlling doping in the North American leagues.”

The foregoing suggestions were never substantiated, and might have reflected nothing more than state propaganda. But ironically, the Soviets themselves were implicated in Igor Larionov’s 1990 autobiography, where he alleged that members of the USSR national team (excluding Larionov’s famous five-man “Green Unit”) had received some type of injections before World Championships in the early to mid-1980’s, and had also circumvented doping controls by substituting clean urine samples.

Steroid abuse was at least partly to blame for the 1992 death of veteran NHL enforcer John Kordic. American defenseman Bryan Berard was banned from international competition for two years after testing positive for nandrolone last November. Sean Hill, another USA-born blueliner, still hasn’t suited up for the Minnesota Wild this year, as he continues to serve a 20-game suspension for steroids.

And in recent years, we’ve also heard allegations about steroids and stimulants from former NHLers like Dave Morrissette, Stephane Quintal, and Andrei Nazarov. Morrissette, who only played 11 NHL games with Montreal, claimed steroids helped him bulk up as a fighter but also made him more susceptible to injuries because his frame couldn’t support the extra mass. Quintal suggested 40 percent of NHLers have used stimulants to get whipped up for games (mostly over-the-counter products like Sudafed), while Nazarov claimed 99 percent of enforcers use steroids. The latter claim, in particular, saw Nazarov’s credibility being attacked, with talk of sour grapes.

Should we care if players are doping? Some cynics would contend that owners benefit financially from the excitement that pumped-up players bring to their arenas, players benefit likewise by making more money in their brief careers, and fans love being entertained by giant, cartoonish players (although Martin St. Louis and Steve Sullivan supporters might argue the opposite). But good reasons exist to crack down on doping.

“My concern is that the behavior of these people can affect children who view them, unfortunately, as role models,” said Yesalis. “They’re cheating, and they’re saying to kids to do the same. The message is that these guys are using drugs and it’s OK to do.”

Kirkwood takes a different angle: “The real concern I have about drug use in sport is the added risk of physical harm to the athletes. Hockey is already brutal on the players’ bodies, often leaving players with disabilities (think of Saku Koivu’s vision, or Bobby Orr’s knees as examples), but excessive or unsupervised drug use can add the risks of cancer, cysts, or cardiovascular disease to that list.”

There are plenty of alternatives to keep hockey clean. Optimally, the NHL and minor pro leagues like the AHL and ECHL would implement drug-testing programs that include the full range of substances and are administered by an independent third party with random, year-round testing. The challenge would be to do this in a logistically feasible, cost-effective manner and show respect for the individual rights of the players. Currently, the NHL levies suspensions of 20 games for a first offense, 60 for a second, and life for a third, although a player can apply for reinstatement after two years): it’s worth monitoring whether these penalties are stiff enough to serve as a deterrent.

An anonymous poll could be conducted among NHLPA members to gauge support for stiffening the drug policy, to reduce any sense of peer pressure to use performance enhancers in order to keep up. Teams should keep tabs on the personal trainers their players choose, and since certain injuries like rib cage strains and patella tendonitis can be associated with muscle mass gain through steroids, doctors should monitor any patterns that might emerge in these areas. Even sports journalists shouldn’t blind themselves to the possibility that doping takes place. It’s a very complex and rapidly evolving problem throughout elite sports.

The bottom line is, hockey may be as clean as its most ardent boosters claim. But for the sake of the players’ health and the integrity of competition, more can and should be done to confirm the NHL is drug-free, because at present, there are significant loopholes that cheaters could exploit. The last thing any hockey fan wants to see is someone breaking one of Wayne Gretzky’s records and then turning out to be juiced, tarnishing what should have been a classic moment. Let’s hope it never comes to that.