Jarred Tinordi and the flaws of the NHL's drug policy

The announcement of Jarred Tinordi’s 20-game suspension for failing a drug test might have been news, but the questions surrounding the league’s drug policy are nothing new.

Of course, this isn’t strictly a problem in the NHL — not even this week, for that matter. The announcement of Tinordi’s suspension comes just days after it became public that Maria Sharapova failed a drug test at the Australian Open. The MLB season hasn’t even started yet, and Cleveland Indians’ outfielder Abraham Almonte has been suspended 80 games for a failed test.

After news broke of Tinordi’s long unpaid suspension — and the mandatory NHL/NHLPA Program for Substance Abuse and Behavioral Health evaluation that will accompany it — the Arizona Coyotes defenseman released a statement taking responsibility for the failed drug test, saying:

“I did not knowingly take a banned substance. I understand, however, that I am responsible for what enters my body as a professional athlete and I accept the suspension.”

Sound familiar? It echoes the statement made through the NHLPA by Anaheim Ducks’ Shawn Horcoff, who was suspended back in January:  

“While recovering from an injury I suffered this past fall, I tried a treatment that I believed would help speed up the healing process… Although I was unaware that this treatment was not permitted under NHL rules, that is no excuse whatsoever. I should have done my research and I should have checked with the NHL/NHLPA Performance Enhancing Substances Program’s doctors. I accept full responsibility for my actions, and I am sorry.”

Is this a matter of players not paying enough attention to what they put in their bodies? Or are the NHL’s drug policies in that much need of repair?

Let’s go back to the Horcoff suspension for a moment. Following the incident, SportsNet broadcaster Doug MacLean put the blame on the player for making the mistake. The Globe And Mail, on the other hand, wrote that the league is responsible for having a system in place that players who knowingly take banned substances can dodge:

“Under the current system, every team collectively gets tested twice a year — once during training camp, and once during the regular season. There is also a provision for individual players to be selected for no-notice random tests during the regular season and playoffs, though never on a game day. 

In the off-season, testing tends to be more haphazard. A league-wide maximum of 60 individual tests are conducted, meaning less than one out of every dozen players faces the possibility of an off-season test. If you happen to be unlucky enough to be one of the chosen, a player still has up to two weeks to respond and show up at a specified place and time for a test. 

Accordingly, if a player really wanted to cheat by using performance enhancing drugs, he could probably get away with it with a minimum amount of advance planning…”

Really, neither the league or its players come out of that mess looking good.

The league looks worse in the Tinordi incident. Per Sarah McLellan of AZ Central, Tinordi failed the drug test before he was traded to the Coyotes from the Canadiens on Jan. 15, and neither team knew about it at the time.

It’s hard to deduce why the league would wait so long to issue the suspension and subsequent treatment, especially since it hasn’t been made public what the banned substance is. (The situation is muddied even more when Tinordi’s trade from Montreal comes into play, but that gets into a whole other argument.)

There was already evidence that the NHL’s drug policies need to be reworked, and Jarred Tinordi’s suspension is yet another example that they need to be revamped.