Thursday Morning Cupcheck - A-Roid, Shrinkydinks and Hockey

This week, our hockey scribe pulls down baseballs' pants and sticks it to 'em where it counts.

Top of the morning, hockey fans! Last week we royally dissed on those brie-slurping visormonkeys up French Canadian way; this week, I was planning on dissecting the Stars' weirdly-satisfying 10-2 blowout of the New York Rangers --that looked like one club that was pumped about the inevitable return of one Sir Sean Avery-- but recent earth-shattering events in el mundo de sportiva have once again forced my hand. I'm talking, of course, about former Texas Ranger hate-ee A-Roid.

First, an admission: I honestly thought that the Rangers acquiring A-Fraud was a grade-A personnel move, much in the same way I danced gaily in my Victory Tutu upon hearing of the Pierre Turgeon and Jason Arnott acquisitions. Then, things didn't turn out as invincibly awesome as they were supposed to: who knew? I mean, besides Bud Selig.

But A-Chode's recent admission to taking it the butt brings up a far more serious question: Has Jose Canseco been wrong about anything, ever, in his entire life? More importantly, Do steroids play a role in professional hockey, and if so, so what?

Pictured: the Nostradamus of our generation

In the history of the NHL, there's only been one player who got caught using steroids --team-hopping defenseman Sean Hill, who promptly was suspended from my fantasy league roster as punishment-- although if Dick Pound, the former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), is to be believed, up to "a third" of NHL players use performance-enhancing drugs. Pound was referring primarily to stimulants, but it has less shock value if I say that first without implying hey look steroids steroids steroids.

I would bet the general consensus is that there is no steroid problem in hockey, at least not to the same extent that it prevails throughout baseball, football, and --(snicker)-- cycling. Why hockey players would feel less inclined to cheat (excuse me, have you ever seen a Detroit Red Wings game??) is beyond me.

My instincts are calling bull$hit but without any concrete proof --and no, you can't use those twenty year's worth of NHL player urine samples I've been collecting, I'm saving those for a totally cool avant-garde craft project in a gender-neutral space-- it's impossible to tell. But what benefit would steroids even bring to a hockey player?

The common mis-perception about steroids is that they make you bigger and stronger; hence the shock and outrage that a lean, lanky Kaballah-bracelet-wearin' A-Slob would ever have taken the juice. This argument is used endlessly by clueless hockey pundits on why steroids would never work in the NHL: hockey players need to be fast, need to have stamina rather than raw power, etc etc. Realistically, however, steroids just make recovery time faster, particularly between weightlifting sessions. Non-Kerry Wood baseball players' bodies are pretty much unscathed, while hockey players endure 82 games + playoffs of constant hammering, exertion and fatigue. Who would benefit more from faster recovery times?

Ultimately, the reason steroids will never be an issue in hockey has nothing to do with physical regimens, bulging muscles or recovery times. It has everything to do with the nature of the sport, and what exactly constitutes a 'sacred cow' for fans. In major league baseball, fans are obsessed with statistics; they define the sport, the players, and the eras. If you want to get into a hearty argument, walk into a sports bar in Boston and loudly proclaim that Ted Williams wouldn't stand a chance against the pitchers in the 1890s or 1970s. Baseball fans live for heated debates about the merits of this stat versus that stat, justifying and belittling stats from different eras, and generally ranking players based on statistical performance over all else.

With steroids, The Great One might've achieved 250 strikeouts in a single season

Hockey, on the other hand, has vastly different ways to measure player greatness. To understand them, here' a quick quiz (no wikicheating): how many World Series titles did Babe Ruth win? How many World Series titles did Ty Cobb win? Honus Wagner? Vida Blue?

Conversely, which hockey player holds the modern-day record for shooting percentage in a season? Faceoffs won in a game? Short-handed assists in a single power play?

Baseball has always had an unhealthy hangup on home runs: this left the door wide open for roid-pumping cheat-happy devilworshipping child molesters to break the sport's sacred records. Hockey's prime stat has always been Stanley Cups Won. Individual records are a moot point in hockey. Even team records are met with a resounding "meh."

This is because hockey = the ultimate team sport. Same as football, where no one cares if you use steroids, as long as you win the Superbowl. Baseball = ultimate individual sport. ' Great defense' is a sideshow, 'intangibles' are a joke, and everything comes down to the hitter or the pitcher, and rarely, the baserunner. Hence, individuals are raked over the coals in baseball when they're caught cheating, and barely even acknowledged in the real team sports.

Steroids cheapened MLB's records, but more importantly they cheapened the entire history of the sport; players I fawned over as a kid like Tom Brunansky, Rob Deer and Pete Incavaglia very quickly had their entire careers negated by the home run explosion. While I grew up with "slugging" DHs hitting 17-25 home runs a year, by the time I went to college even backup utility infielders were knocking back 25 420-footers every season.

Then again, you could argue that nothing has been better for the sport of baseball than steroids... one could argue that without steroids, baseball would be competing with the WBNA and those Lumberjack Competitions on ESPN8 'The Ocho' for ratings. Let's face it, baseball is a boring game enjoyed primarily by People's Dads, and will soon go the way of newspapers, major record labels and stegosauruses. Steroids just delayed the inevitable decline of the sport, and 50 years from now incoherent baby boomers will be writing about how Barry Bonds' buff body perfectly symbolized the HGH-ravaged corpse of his sport: bloated, top-heavy and quite irritating.

But what about a real sport? Are sacred hockey records in danger? Are there even any such thing as sacred hockey records? Other than the diminished importance of individual records in hockey, the NHL benefits from something that makes it immune to steroid-scandals: Wayne Gretzky. Gretzky's season and career statistics are so ridiculously over-the-top unattainable, that hockey records become next-to-meaningless in comparison. Ovechkin scored 65 goals last year? Bully for Alex! Joe Thornton is collecting assists like I collect dead nurses in my basement? Keep up the good work, Joey! Neither will ever approach the level of statistical dominance Gretzky achieved over and over, until they start allowing white pucks and make playing defense a two-minute minor (Bettman would implement these tomorrow if he thought he could get away with it).

All these individual records, held by a 155 pound, 5'9' roid-raging battle ogre.

Truth be told, I'd be shocked if a large number of hockey players weren't stuffing themselves chock full of the cream and the clear. Steroid abuse starts early, at the high school level and earlier, due to parental/coaching pressure for underfed Canadian stick-men to 'bulk up' and follow their dream. But just like steroid abuse in professional football, no one really cares --now if the NHL had a Tim Donaghy-type scandal, i.e. one in which the Cup chances of a team were affected-- that's the kind of scandal that could rock the sport. Steroids? Pshaw. Peter Forsberg probably puts the clear on his nachos.

That's it for this week's Cupcheck. Tune in next week for another installment of my nine-part series on The Horrifying Consequences of Steroids (Part Four: Your Shriveled Genitalia and You: Dealing With Those Strange Feelings of Attraction Toward the Goblin Queen).