The issue of drugs in professional hockey is grabbing some of the spotlight as of late, and one current NHLer says more players are using them than we think.
Veteran defenceman Stephane Quintal, who has played 17 NHL seasons with six different teams, told Montreal's La Presse Tuesday he believed about 40 per cent of the players he's encountered have used stimulants, while some of the stronger, tougher players have gone so far as taking anabolic steroids.
Quintal added that he has also used stimulants on a regular basis, going back to when he started playing professional hockey with the Maine Mariners of the American Hockey League. In an effort to stimulate his aggressiveness on the ice, the former Montreal Canadien would chase down tablets of Pseudoephedrine with multiple cups of coffee.
Quintal suffered a case of cardiac arrhythmia four years ago, and suspects it was the result of his regular drug use.
Quintal took part Monday in a book launch for Memoires d'Un Dur a Cuire (Memoires of an Enforcer), co-written by Montreal La Presse hockey writer Mathias Brunet on the revelations of Dave Morissette, a former player of professional hockey having admitted making use of anabolic steroids.
Quintal said at the book launch he'd like to see a tough testing program. He spent the season in Italy, where a doping offence carries a two-year suspension.
"There's no first offence or second offence, you're gone," said Quintal. "The NHL should come out with something like that - like the Olympics."
Dick Pound, the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, thinks athletes still need to be educated against the perils of performance-enhancing drugs.
"A lot of people still do not understand the problem of doping," Pound said Tuesday during an international conference on sport and health in Tunisia. "Even at the Olympic Games, there are athletes who do not understand the problem."
Pound called for a mobilization at every level to combat doping. He expects governments to approve an international anti-doping convention under the aegis of UNESCO in Paris in October.
WADA medical director Alain Garnier said doping is a concern even at an early age.
"Unfortunately, doping of very young athletes is a reality which we have to be aware of and which can happen at any level (of sport)," he said.
Files from Associated Press, La Presse and RDS were used for this report.