The news Aaron Ekblad received a 20 game suspension for failing a PED test seemingly came out of nowhere. We don’t think anyone, let alone the Florida Panthers, had that on their bingo card for this season. Ekblad gave the age old excuse it was from a medication he used to recover and will serve his 20 game suspension.
What did catch our eye was the suspension length of 20 games. PED suspensions are rare in the NHL with the last one being nine years ago with Ekblad’s now teammate Nate Schmidt who also got a 20 game banishment. Last season Shane Pinto of the Ottawa Senators got a 41 game suspension in a gambling related case.
Both PED’s and gambling infractions can damage the integrity of the game
With a suspension more than double the length of Ekblad’s is the NHL saying gambling is more of a threat? Why does the NHL give seemingly shorter PED suspensions that other leagues?
The 20-game amount seems to be something the NHL and the NHLPA agreed upon and wasn’t up for discussion as a first time offense. Pinto was the first such gambling case for the NHL since the widespread post 2018 adoption of sports betting in the United States and Canada.
Pinto’s infractions weren’t as egregious as some other famous sports gambling cases. For example, he didn’t change the outcome of games like infamous former NBA referee Tim Donaghy or bet on his own team like the late Pete Rose. Pinto said he asked his friends to place NHL sports wagers for him by proxy, since he was in Canada and couldn’t use a Canadian sports book.
A seemingly minor infraction, but still an illegal one that warranted repercussions. The NHL obviously wanted to make an example out of Pinto before the league experienced problems like Jontay Porter in the NBA which broke around the same time. Pinto wasn’t even under contract at the time of his suspension and you could argue the league did him a favor by allowing the games he sat out to count towards the 41 game suspension.
Leagues are also under legislative pressure to regulate and police their players on the subject of sports betting. After Pinto’s suspension NHLPA director, and former politician, Marty Walsh said efforts to educate players on the gambling rules need to step up. It’s also a bad look that many athlete gambling cases of notoriety, like the aforementioned Tim Donaghy and Jontay Porter, have ended with criminal cases. A suspension long enough to catch a players attention could keep them in check to avoid the same fate.
A 20 game suspension for Ekblad’s first offense is roughly 25% of an NHL season
Compare that to Major League Baseball where a suspension for a first offense is 50 games, equal to 30% of the regular season. Baseball superstar Fernando Tatis Jr. was suspended 80 games, almost half of the regular season, for a similar offense back in 2022.
MLB has also been the sports most damaged by PED scandals. There was a time of intense public and political scrutiny over the use of PEDs in sports during the Mitchell Report (a baseball specific example from 2007) but that time has seemingly passed.
With PED suspensions few and very far between in the NHL why would the league feel the need to increase penalties for a problem that almost doesn’t exist? Meanwhile gambling remains at the forefront.
The league hopes Pinto’s lengthy suspension was enough to send a warning to all players. A 2023 article (before Valeri Nichuskin’s suspension) lists Pinto’s as tied with Raffi Torres for the second longest in the NHL’s post 1967 era, behind Slava Voynov’s “indefinite” ban. The 20 game ban Ekblad received wouldn’t even crack the top 10.