The Straight Dope on Doping in the NHL: Part One

Being the best of the best as an elite athlete is something that kids dream of. Fame, fortune, and respect normally go hand in hand with being, say, the holder of baseball’s single-season home run record, the 2004 Olympic 100-meter sprint champion, or the 2006 Tour de France winner.

Unfortunately, Barry Bonds, Justin Gatlin, and Floyd Landis have had their accomplishments tarnished by the specter of performance-enhancing drugs. The involvement of Bonds with the infamous Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) and his alleged use of anabolic steroids calls into question the validity of the San Francisco Giants slugger’s surpassing of Hank Aaron’s career home run record. Caught with excessive testosterone levels, Gatlin was stripped of the 9.77-second world record he set in May 2006 and received an eight-year ban from sprinting. Landis, meanwhile, gave numerous excuses for why synthetic testosterone might have been detected in his urine sample before losing his crown in a cycling event that has become notoriously drug-riddled.

The latest scandal has seen former American track superstar Marion Jones finally confessing to lying about her steroid use, and she has relinquished the five medals she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

So with all this bad news coming out of other major sports, should hockey fans worry that the NHL has been similarly tainted?

Let’s look at the bright side first. There is no overt history of association between hockey and anabolic steroids, which is the performance-enhancing substance that most people think of first. Maurice “Rocket” Richard and Gordie Howe most definitely were not juiced.

When the artificially bulked-up East German women’s swimming team was dominating the Olympic medal podium in the 1970’s, NHLers were still showing up for training camp with summer beer bellies they had to work off. In 1988, Boston Red Sox fans at Fenway Park were serenading hitter Jose Canseco, later to be deservedly nicknamed “The Chemist,” with chants of “Steroids! Steroids!”, but hockey fans were focused on the exploits of Wayne Gretzky in his new Los Angeles Kings jersey, and Gretzky’s lithe frame attested to the power of brains over brawn. Hockey players aren’t known to kid around about doping, which was common in baseball’s clubhouses in the 1990’s.

Another factor to consider is that at least compared to sports like cycling and baseball, doping doesn’t confer as many immediate, direct advantages in hockey. A world-class cyclist on erythropoietin (EPO) can race past competitors unobstructed with his red blood cells delivering oxygen to his muscles more efficiently. A MLB hitter obviously uses elite hand-eye coordination skills to make contact with the ball, but if he’s got the steroid-induced strength to hammer it further than he otherwise could, he can jack up his home run totals and there’s nothing the opposing outfielders can do about it. But in hockey, there are numerous factors that can prevent you from scoring: stick checks, bodychecks, blocked shots, and goalie saves, among others.

International hockey doping tests results also provide some encouragement. Up to but not including the 2006 Olympics and IIHF World Championships (where no doping infractions were detected), there were 3,089 in-competition and out-of-competition tests performed at these tournaments since 1994, and only eight were positive. The IIHF adheres fully to the doping and testing policies of WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency). Players in European pro leagues, meanwhile, are subject to year-round, no-notice testing by the various national sports federations and anti-doping agencies.

So how important was it for the NHL to institute its first-ever drug-testing policy in the Collective Bargaining Agreement signed in 2005? “I think it’s important,” said Trevor Linden, who helped negotiate the CBA as president of the NHL Players Association. “But I’m not sure the fans really care, to tell you the truth. I think it’s more of a media issue, possibly. The game of hockey is an extremely clean sport. I think the players would all recognize that. Still, it’s probably something that’s good to have. I don’t think it’s an issue, because I don’t think anyone has a problem with doping in hockey.”

The main argument among hockey boosters has always been that it doesn’t pay to be too bulky in this sport, since mobility is key. WADA chairman Dick Pound, slated to step down at the end of 2007, was heavily criticized for his sensational November 2005 claim that “one third” of NHL players took some type of performance-enhancing drugs. When the NHL announced the results from its first year of testing in June 2006, with 1,406 tests done on the league’s 700-plus players and zero positives, forward Georges Laraque gave a typical response: “Hockey is such an aerobic sport that drugs won’t help you. We knew it wasn’t going to be an issue. It shows our sport is clean.”

But now for the bad news. Laraque’s remark incurs a strong negative response from Dr. Chuck Yesalis, a Pennsylvania State professor considered one of North America’s top sports doping experts. “That’s just silly talk,” Yesalis told HockeyAdventure.com. “I can’t even be nicer than that. It’s child-like naiveté. I don’t know the guy who said it, but I suspect he knows better. It would be very difficult to name a sport where a good big man usually doesn’t beat a good little man. Hockey clearly is a sport where strength helps. It’s a very violent sport.”

With a healthy dose of sarcasm, Yesalis added: “If it’s better to be smaller and not as strong and not recover from your workouts as quickly as possible in hockey, then no, these various drugs wouldn’t help.”

In tomorrow’s Part Two, we look at loopholes in current testing policies, the history of doping incidents in hockey, and ways to keep the sport clean in the future.