Dave Morissette, who played a handful of games for the Montreal Canadiens during the 1999-2000 season, claims the use of stimulants is rampant in hockey.
Morissette alleges hockey players abuse ephedrine-based, over-the-counter drugs such as Sudafed and Ripped Fuel in a book by journalist Mathias Brunet. Mémoires d'un Dur à Cuire (Memories of an Enforcer), which chronicles the tough guy's 12-year hockey career, hit the shelves Monday.
"The majority of the guys had their pills," Morissette is quoted as saying in Montreal's French-language daily newspaper La Presse.
Fights, stimulants, steroids and injuries are front and centre in a just-released autobiography of former Montreal Canadiens enforcer Dave Morissette, who played in the minors and 11 games for the Canadiens from 1998 to 2000. (CP PICTURE ARCHIVE - Paul Chiasson)
"It wasn't a big deal. It was pretty common to take pills before a game. It didn't bother anyone."
An amphetamine-like stimulant, ephedrine makes the heart beat faster and increases blood pressure, allowing athletes to avoid fatigue and increase their performances during bursts of powerful effort.
Morrissette also suggests steroids are common in hockey, even though he claims never to have seen the muscle-building drugs used by his teammates.
"You don't do anything in the locker room," he told CBC Newsworld. "It's taboo."
But Morrissette does admit he used steroids to bolster his chances of earning a spot in the NHL.
"I saw some of my future rivals – such as John Kordic – training in the gym. I was going to have to be as large as him."
Also a Canadiens' fighter, Kordic died in 1992 after a long period of steroid and cocaine use.
At the time, Morrissette believed the drugs would make him a better player. Now he believes steroids robbed him of his career.
"[Steroids] didn't help me. They didn't make me a better hockey player."
Morrissette says his body couldn't support all the extra muscle he gained through steroid use.
"I had injuries ... all kinds of surgeries," he said. "I wouldn't have had [all the injuries] without steroids."
In addition to his brief stint with the Canadiens, Morissette also played in the American Hockey League, the defunct International Hockey League and in England for the London Knights of the British hockey league.
Morissette says he began taking supplements as a teenager to cope with rigours of life on the road.
"With 70-80 games per year, the bus trips," explains Morrissette, who played junior hockey in Quebec, "it was it was impossible for a normal human being to keep up with out the drugs."
The idea that hockey players are using ephedrine-based stimulants is nothing new. There are plenty of anonymous anecdotal accounts of Sudafed use. In 1999, the Canadian roller-hockey team was stripped of its gold medals from the Pan Am Games after goalie Steve Vezina was found to have consumed the cold medication.
The NHL currently doesn't have a policy against the use of stimulants like Sudafed. Morissette says the problem will persist, and could grow worse, if the league continues to turn a blind eye.
"As long as there's no penalty, those who aren't using drugs will feel handicapped.
"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."
