Steroids, Concussions, and the NHL's Future

To call the 2014-15 Toronto Maple Leafs season a soap opera would set the bar too high for writers of future seasons of The Bold and the Beautiful.

There have been convincing wins over the two previous Stanley Cup champions, crushing defeats like a 6-2 loss to the lowly Buffalo Sabres, and a bewildering 9-2 drubbing at the hands of the Nashville Predators. It's become common practice for Leafs fans to throw their jerseys on the ice in disgust. Their leading scorer called a reporter an idiot. In January, the Leafs threw their disgruntled fans a bone and fired their old-school coach Randy Carlyle. Still, the team is 24-31 and 2-7-1 in its last 10.

And things keep getting worse. In the past three months, two middling Leafs players have been busted for performance enhancing drug use. Carter Ashton was just the third player suspended under the NHL/NHLPA Performance Enhancing Substances Policy and Brad Ross, a forward for the Leafs' farm club, the Toronto Marlies, was the first to be suspended under the American Hockey League's new policy. The AHL program is administered by the same doctors who supervise the NHL/NHLPA's program. Ashton was subsequently shipped to the Tampa Bay Lightning on February 6.

PEDs aren't associated with the NHL in the way they are with MLB and the NFL. Many NHL fans I spoke to assumed that the only players who might dope in the NHL would be hulking enforcers. But given that fighting and enforcers are declining across the league, there is a pervasive misconception that using PEDs would not benefit NHL players who rely on speed and skill.

University of Western Ontario associate professor Ken Kirkwood, who specializes in researching the ethics of performance-enhancing drug use, believes there's a drug out there for every type of NHL player.

"Steroids are very versatile," Kirkwood says. "They don't just make you big and strong. They can make you faster, they can allow you to recover quicker. They allow you play and train harder the next day. How you use them is up to you. If you're going to be a big power forward and you need to be 220 pounds, but you need to be a lean 220, there's tons of people who would know what drug to put you on. If you're going to be 185 pounds, but you're going to be a Darcy Tucker-style player, then there's drugs to keep you going in that regard as well.."

Perhaps this is what Ashton and Ross saw. Neither player figured into the Leafs' long-term plan, whatever that plan is. Neither player, despite having been selected in the first and second rounds of their respective drafts, had done much to make a name for themselves in the sport. Both were sort of hanging around in quasi-obscurity.

"You never know what guys do away from the rink to get to the next level," says former Toronto Maple Leaf Boyd Devereaux, who also spent time with the AHL's Marlies.

"Because you're in the same city as the big club in Toronto you're seeing the glitz and the glam and on Saturday night the city is buzzing. You're so close, you're right on the doorstep. It might influence guys to go down the wrong direction."

A source close to the situation detailed the decrease in confidence one of the suspended players felt under recently-axed coach Randy Carlyle. It might not have been the promise of playing under Carlyle and for the storied franchise that compelled players to take PEDs. Instead, it may have been a cry for help.

"Hockey is a team game but there's definitely guys that are doing their own thing in the AHL," says Devereaux.

"You're watching highlights all day long and you're hyper aware of guys in the big club getting injured. Of course when players get called up you're happy for your teammates but you want it to be you. My time in the AHL opened my eyes to the pressures that guys go through to get to the next level. It's a tough, physical, and fast league and you take a beating. Players do whatever they can to get to the next level."

Ashton has still not quite gotten to that next level. He's playing for the Lightning's AHL affiliate in Syracuse. But the Lightning's acceptance of him in a trade speaks to the relatively low concern over his suspension. First offenders like Ashton are generally thought to be worthy of second chances. And for a league without a widely criticized PED problem, his case can be held up as proof that the model is working; the PED trend is being bucked before it becomes, ahem, a trend.

The league has already won no friends with the continued stigma over headshots and players suffering the long-term effects of concussions. Getting mired in a PED controversy would do no favors to a sport that has struggled to maintain its place in the mainstream outside of Canada. But many, including former veteran and enforcer Georges Laraque, insist PED use in the NHL is already wide-scale.

"I have to say here that tough guys weren't the only players using steroids in the NHL," wrote Laraque in his 2011 autobiography Georges Laraque: The Story of the NHL's Unlikeliest Tough Guy. "It was true that quite a lot of them did use this drug, but other, more talented players did too. Most of us knew who they were, but not a single player, not even me, would ever think of raising his hand to break the silence and accuse a fellow player. I don't like snitches and will never be one."

If Laraque is to be believed, then prevention and education should now be at the forefront of the NHL's model and the cases of Ashton and Ross should be treated as possible watershed moments.

Perhaps the fact that the two players were caught means that the protocols in place for detecting PED usage are actually effective. Yet if this is the case, the league then has the opportunity to raise the bar in terms of prevention, by making a real education available to players.

After all, a new crop of young stars will enter the league through the 2015 NHL Draft, including highly-touted generational prospects Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel. Making it into the NHL is only getting harder—and the pressure to perform once in the league is only mounting. Plus, the lure of large contracts remains as the NHL's salary cap is expected to rise next season.

But the dark side of a career in hockey has also never been more evident: the recent tragic death of 35-year-old former player Steve Montador showcased how many former players struggle in life after hockey. Surely if the NHL wants to see its league survive long-term, the health and success of its players needs to be a priority. Montador's cause of death is not known, but he was suffering from depression and there are reports surfacing that he was also battling with after-effects of concussions.

Hockey fans love their fast-paced, physical sport. Contained aggression is part of what makes the game so special. But as the NHL continues to work on expanding its fanbase, on drawing in new fans, and getting more kids to play hockey, perhaps it also needs to pay attention to the players it already has, and the lengths they are going not just to succeed in the NHL, but to survive.