Not A single player ever has been outed or suspended as a user, but you nevertheless would have to believe in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and Alex Rodriguez in order to have faith the NHL is completely clean in the matter of performance-enhancing drugs.
The fact is, the testing system that formerly was in place — and did not allow for any offseason testing — would have had more credibility if an athlete or two had been identified as a user.
I mean, 2,011 players have appeared in at least one game since the NHL reopened for business following the 2004-05 canceled season, and not one — not one? — has been a user?
That’s less likely than the Capitals at some point retiring Jaromir Jagr’s number … or maybe less likely than Jagr actually retiring at some point.
But.
But there is no reason to suspect PEDs are a problem for the NHL or the NHLPA, which negotiated more expansive procedures, including playoff and offseason testing, into the Collective Bargaining Agreement that ended the 2012-13 lockout.
It’s not that hockey is an inherently morally superior operation. Hockey’s issue has been with painkillers and sleeping pills. The breadth of the problem likely will become more apparent as the wrongful death suit against the NHL filed by the family of the late Derek Boogaard moves through the legal system.
No doubt overdue, the NHL and NHLPA did address the matter of controlling player access to prescription drugs and sleep aids in crafting new procedures that went into effect at the beginning of last season.
The likelihood is that restricting access to painkillers will do more to eliminate fighting from the game than any on-ice rule initiative the league might ponder. As it becomes less and less possible to dull a heavyweight’s senses, the more senseless it will be for heavyweights to drop their gloves.
Porter Fischer, a former employee of Biogenesis who has become a whistleblower/snitch in the ongoing baseball investigation/scandal, claimed on Thursday that he knows of up to a dozen as yet unnamed athletes from MLB, the NBA, the NCAA, the pro tennis tour, boxing and mixed martial arts who did business with the clinic.
Fischer at the same time said the Biogenesis clinic did not have a client from the NHL.
Of course, there are other places to go to procure PEDs, other sources for HGH. It would be folly to believe not a single NHL player has tried over the last half-decade … or before that.
But even if NHL testing procedures previously have left holes to exploit, the league’s participation in international events such as the Olympics and World Championships are the best guard against the use of PEDs in the sport.
This means the NHL’s elite have been subject to Olympic drug-testing on a regular basis over the past 15 years with just one positive test we’re aware of — when Jose Theodore was found in 2006 to be using a banned substance that could act as a masking agent contained in a prescribed hair-growth medication for which he sought a medical exemption.
On Oct. 1, each country’s federation will be required to provide the IOC and the IIHF with its “long roster” for the Sochi Games that could include more players than the ones invited to the teams’ orientation camps.
Every player on the long roster will be subject to Olympic drug-testing protocol. We’re talking perhaps a couple hundred of the NHL’s best players.
Hockey is sometimes blind to its problems. That’s hardly unique to the NHL in pro (or big-time college) sports.
Again. This isn’t to say no one has ever done it and gotten away with it. But a combination of anecdotal evidence, improved testing procedures and participation in the Olympics, strongly suggests — if not outright proves, because it is essentially impossible to prove a negative — the NHL is clean.
* Dan Girardi’s exclusion from Canada’s Olympic orientation camp invite list is a stunner. Have to wonder whether he has been typecast over the last couple of years as a stationary shot-blocker in John Tortorella’s system who isn’t mobile enough or adept enough at moving the puck on the larger international ice surface.
It’s unfortunate if that’s the case, but Girardi — who certainly should be on the Oct. 1 long list — will have a couple of months to prove otherwise playing for new Rangers coach Alain Vigneault before the final 25-man roster is established in December.
* One of the highlights of the Tom Renney years was the time in Chicago on Jan. 16, 2009, when the players’ fathers lined up in the corridor outside the locker room chanting, “Let’s go Rangers” following the 3-2 OT victory over the Blackhawks in which the club was shorthanded two men six times for a total of 6:55.
That was the second annual Rangers’ Fathers’ trip. It was also the last, the practice ended by Tortorella, who believed family was a distraction, though players’ families did make the trip to Philadelphia for the 2012 Winter Classic.
The Canucks had Fathers’, Mothers’ and Siblings’ trips with Vigneault as the coach. The Blueshirts, we’re told, might bring the players’ families to Yankee Stadium for the two outdoor games as this season’s outing, but suffice to say the Rangers’ Family will include the Rangers’ families with the change behind the bench.
* Finally, maybe in 10 years the Garden can move to Uniondale.
larry.brooks@nypost.com