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Don’t Tell Anyone
by Paul on 05/27/09 at 12:22 PM ET
Comments (5)
from Jeff Blair of the Globe and Mail,
You don’t get a spot at the best table with the hockey cognoscenti if you mention the possibility that NHL players might – shhh – use steroids or human growth hormone or other performance enhancers. Nope. No sport has come under less scrutiny for PED use than the NHL, mostly because nobody in the U.S. Congress follows hockey or knows who Gary Bettman is and mostly because the cadre of hockey analysts who are ex-players, coaches or general managers act like gate-keepers, preferring to drop juvenile nicknames on each other than speak truths.
Filed in: NHL Teams, NHL Talk | KK Hockey | Permalink
Comments
Hey, no one cared when Van Hellemond ‘resigned’ for activities ostensibly related to gambling (borrowing money from subordinate refs and firing a couple who happened not to lend him any).
A similar situation with a referee got the NBA on the front page for over a month… and VanHellemond was the Director of Officiating at the time he , uh, ‘resigned’.
This is why I get a little alarmed about the demise of newspapers. Obviously it’s impossible for Bloggers to pick up this kind of investigative thread and do too much with it. Also obviously, there isn’t any relevant media in Canada that’s not wholly in the bag for the NHL. Finally, no-one in the USA gives two poops about the league. It’d take two refs starting a game of craps at center ice between periods to get noticed by any domestic media.
Posted by HockeyinHD on 05/27/09 at 01:43 PM ET
This guy is absolutely 100% spot on in his assessment, in my opinion.
Posted by Mandingo from The Garage on 05/27/09 at 01:53 PM ET
The NHL doesn’t speak the truth about anything unfortunately. Or at least that’s what I’ve come to believe. Officiating seems arbitray, suspensions seem like they are made by throwing darts and a board and the whole fiasco in Phoenix along with many other things have led me not to trust this league.
This just makes me really sad.
Posted by hockeychic from Denver, CO on 05/27/09 at 02:44 PM ET
It depends on the team. There are teams whose training staffs religiously (and yes, it deserves bold-face type, because John Wharton wouldn’t want his “if you want to take it, bring it to me first” policy to go unheeded) test any supplement that the players want to take for performance-enhancing drugs of any kind, and coordinate their treatment with the team’s medical staff so that everybody’s on the same page and knows what player’s taking what…
And some teams are a little more laissez faire.
I’m willing to bet that HGH has nothing on Viagra, which athletes use to increase their ability to absorb oxygen so that they can recover more quickly. As for the steroid issue, there’s no doubt that some players use steroids, but I would imagine that talking to the NHL’s trainers and doctors would give you a completely different picture than Gary “We have no idea what you’re talking about” Bettman does.
Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 05/27/09 at 05:19 PM ET
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You seem to be getting excited that NHL’ers might be using PED’s. It’s a bad thing for the NHL and the sport in general,so don’t be so happy about it. I know it’s news and should be invetigated, but too many times I see reporters (and bloggers) get their rocks off with bringing down athletes. At least the ones they don’t root for.
Posted by Lidas1st on 05/27/09 at 01:28 PM ET