Neroille ja uunoille luettavaa:
Report: Stimulants a problem in NHL
TSN.ca Staff
3/21/2005
Performance-enhancing drugs may not be just a problem in baseball.
According to Le Presse newspaper in Montreal, former tough guy Dave Morissette says the use of stimulants is commonplace in NHL dressing rooms.
Morissette, who played 11 games with the Montreal Canadiens in the late 1990s, contributed to a book which chronicles his 12-year career and is slated to be released this week.
"The majority of the guys had their pills," Morissette told Le Presse. "It wasn't a big deal. It was pretty common to take pills before a game. It didn't bother anyone."
Morissette alleges that players use ephedrine-based, over-the-counter drugs such as Sudafed to make the heart beat faster and increase blood pressure, which allows athletes to stay fresh and exert bursts of energy.
The Baie-Comeau, Quebec native, who played for ten different teams in six different professional leagues over the course of his career, says he started taking pills to deal with the long road trips.
"With 70-80 games per year, the bus trips, it was impossible for a normal human being to keep up without the drugs," Morrissette told Le Presse.
With no current policy in the NHL against the use of over-the-counter stimulants, Morissette fears the problem could escalate, especially among the enforcers.
"As long as there's no penalty, those who aren't using drugs will feel handicapped," Morissette told Le Presse. "When a you go to fight a guy, and that you know he's taken five or six [pills] you are afraid. You think that you'd better take some too."
Ja lisää...
Former hockey enforcer's book says steroids, stimulants ended his career
Bill Beacon
Canadian Press
March 21, 2005
MONTREAL (CP) - Former hockey enforcer Dave (Moose) Morissette says steroids and stimulants helped end his modest career.
Morissette tells all in Memoires d'Un Dur a Cuire (Memoires of an Enforcer), co-written by Montreal La Presse hockey writer Mathias Brunet.
Morissette says he began taking steroids shortly after he was drafted by the Washington Capitals and began using stimulants like the cold remedy Sudafed and a caffeine-ephedrine mix called Ripped Fuel, while playing junior hockey.
He says use of steroids and stimulants is common in the NHL, but does not name any players who used them. The league does not currently test for performance-enhancing drugs.
Use of performance-enhancing drugs is in the spotlight of late due to allegations in a recent book by former baseball slugger Jose Canseco.
"I don't want to tarnish my sport with this book, nor to point the finger at any individuals as the baseball player Jose Canseco recently did," Morissette writes at the end of his 183-page book. "I just want to make my little contribution towards stopping these dangerous practises.
"There were steroids before me and there will be steroids after. The system is such that young people are ready to do anything to get maximum performance."
Morissette played only 11 NHL games with the Montreal Canadiens between 1998 and 2000 - collecting no points and 57 penalty minutes. A seventh-round pick of the Capitals, he pied his trade in the minors with Hampton Roads and Roanoke (ECHL), Baltimore, Fredericton and Quebec (AHL), Minnesota and Houston (IHL), Austin and Lake Charles (WPHL) and overseas in England.
He said bulking up on steroids led to repeated knee injuries because his body could not sustain his weight. But he needed the muscle-building drugs to compete with the hockey's best fighters.
"To make it to the NHL, I had to commit to being an enforcer," he says. "Not everyone can be an effective fighter.
"And I needed steroids to get there, because I knew that the majority of toughs of the NHL were taking them."
He said steroids were in use in his day - the late 1980s and early 1990s - in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, which last season instituted a drug-testing program.
"I heard about guys in junior taking steroids to get bigger and build muscle mass," he says. "And not only tough guys - scorers too.
"Some of them had long careers in the NHL. I can't name them here, but you'd be surprised to learn their identities."
Morissette said he first bought steroids from a bodybuilder he knew in Trois-Rivieres, Que. He avoided buying them from anyone connected to hockey to keep it a secret.
He also became addicted to stimulants, often popping three or four before games.
"I still get stomach pains because of those pills," he says. "I have to take medication for nausea and I'm still sensitive to light and loud noises."
He could not recall to the Montreal doctor who finally advised him to retire how many concussions he had suffered during his career. The final blow to the head came during a game for the London Knights in Britain in the 2000-01 season and knocked him out for 30 minutes.
"It became hellish," he says. "Every other time, I'd black out after a bodycheck, which meant I was losing consciousness every game.
"If I banged my helmet against an opponent, it would go black for a few seconds."
The book's preface was written by Christiane Ayotte, head of Montreal's IOC-accredited dope-testing laboratory. She praises Morissette for "daring to break the silence surrounding the culture of doping that is present in this sport as in others."
Mostly, it is a book about the life of a player with modest talent who turns to fighting to fulfil his dream of playing in the NHL. He spent years battling in the minor leagues only to get a brief taste of the big league - at a terrible cost to his health.
Morissette wonders if his closest friend, former NHL player Stephane Morin who died of a heart attack during a game in Germany, or former teammate Sergei Zholtok, who died last fall of heart failure during a game in Belarus, were victims of stimulants.
"I don't know," he said. "I never asked them.
"You don't ask these things. Each person does his own thing, neither hiding it nor showing it off. It's important to put it into context. It was normal for us to take them. These products weren't banned and you could find them in any pharmacy, gym or health club. It wasn't dope."
Ja vielä yksi..
Bonvie: I've fought guys on steroids
Canadian Press
3/22/2005
MONTREAL (CP) - Among his many hockey fights, Dennis Bonvie says he took on opponents who had bulked up on steroids.
''I know I have,'' Bonvie said Tuesday. ''I can't name anybody, but I handled myself fine.
''You know from seeing them one year to the next. You see a big difference in size. And sometimes you see a guy who wasn't doing that well and suddenly he's whipping guys.''
The 31-year-old Bonvie, who played 92 NHL games from 1994 to 2003 and who now plays for Hershey in the AHL, said he never used steroids and doesn't believe they are widespread in hockey. But he knows they are there.
And he lauded former enforcer Dave Morissette's efforts to warn young players of performance-enhancing drugs in his book - Memoires d'un dur a cuire (Memoires of an Enforcer) - in which the former Montreal Canadien says using steroids and stimulants helped end his career.
''If he doesn't mention names and he's trying to carry the message to kids, I don't mind it,'' said Bonvie, a feared fighter in the early 1990s with the OHL's North Bay Centennials.
''I know Dave Morissette. He's a good individual and if he's talking to kids, that's a good first step. Everybody should be saying that.''
Nick Kypreos, a tough winger in the 1990s who is now a hockey analyst on Rogers Sportsnet, agreed, adding that Morissette's book is not likely to cause the uproar that followed the steroid allegations in a recent book by former baseball slugger Jose Canseco.
'I appreciate the way he did it, as opposed to Canseco, who threw everybody under the bus,'' he said. ''I have more respect for Morissette. He just said ''here's what I did and I'm the one suffering from the effects of it now.''
Morissette says stimulants such as the cold remedy Sudafed are common throughout hockey to give players a boost before games, but that it is difficult to say how many use steroids because it is not discussed among players in the dressing room.
Defenceman Stephane Quintal estimated 40 per cent of NHL players use stimulants, most of which are bought over-the-counter at pharmacies, but that steroids appear to be favoured mostly by the tough guys. Both are banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
''The feeling is that it still belongs to the big, bulky guy - the lineman - as opposed to the shifty hockey player,'' said Kypreos.
Kypreos, another former North Bay Centennial, broke into the NHL in 1989 with the Washington Capitals, not long after Canada was rocked by the Ben Johnson steroid scandal at the 1988 Olympics.
''After that, you were aware that there were things that could help you perform at a higher level. And in the early 1990s, when you're dealing with 750 NHL players, you'd be naive to think there weren't a few who dabbled.''
But he doubted that use of muscle-building drugs is widespread ''because of the stigma that follows steroids, especially in this country with the Ben Johnson situation.
''It's taboo. Even if hockey is in a situation where there's no testing, you'd still be labelled as a guy who cheats.''
Both the NHL and the NHL Players' Association are in favour of some sort of dope testing, which is expected be part of the next collective bargaining agreement should the two sides ever solve the impasse that has seen the players locked out all season.
Many athletes use creatine and other legal protein supplements to help put on weight during training.
Bonvie said steroids aren't necessary.
''You see guys getting big enough on their own,'' he said. ''You go into the gym and do the right things, you'll get big and strong.
''Steroids is the easy way out. You'll get big and strong, but it's not right. You can't get super-big because your body can't support it. They become too strong for their bodies and then when they break down, they really break down.''
Morissette, who played only 11 NHL games but spent years in the minors, says he suffered chronic knee and shoulder problems because he had become too heavy for his body to sustain.
He also suffered multiple concussions that ended his career in 2001.
''We need drug-testing,'' added Bonvie. ''That puts everybody on a level playing field.''
