Bourne Blog: Steroids in hockey; why current testing is inadequate

When players show up at training camp after a summer of lifting, as they will this weekend in the NHL, they're as jacked-up as they can possible get. Hell, even I usually felt pretty good about my situation. So it rarely ever crossed my mind that anybody may have used performance-enhancers in the off-season. It was possible that a guy or two worked a little harder than me. Then I walked into a teammate's bedroom one day and saw his "medical kit." It didn't blow my mind, but it definitely caught me off-guard. It would be the first and last time I ever saw steroid paraphernalia, but it was just the beginning of my awareness that the occasional player in professional hockey cheats. That blind pursuit of a better opportunity or better contract was something I came to understand and grudgingly accept. But I stopped being so understanding when guys like him started climbing up our organization's depth chart. The number of players using steroids in our sport is ...