By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
George McPhee strolled into the media chat room, wearing his zippered sweatshirt with “GM” on his right sleeve.
While Vegas Golden Knights coach Gerard Gallant is a guy’s guy and a player’s coach, VGK General Manager George McPhee is a whole different cat.
McPhee is a soft-spoken cyborg who can break out a wicked sense of humor at any time. But this was not a time for any humor.
He told the assembled Golden Knights media corp that he was not allowed to discuss defenseman Nate Schmidt and 20-game suspension for using a banned substance. Schmidt, who averaged more than 20 minutes of playing time a game in the VGK’s inaugural season, is arguably the Knights’ best all-around defenseman, and a chatterbox in the locker room.
Even though McPhee said he would discuss the matter, the GM proceeded to talk quite a bit about the Schmidt situation.
In doing so, McPhee’s message was Business 101 on running a company: do what the company says and everything will be A-OK.
In other words, if you play for the Vegas Golden Knights, don’t put anything in your body except the food and vitamins that the Golden Knights deem adheres to the rules of the National Hockey League
McPhee said he had a conversation with the team to make sure they were putting the right food, supplements and vitamins in their mouths and what the team is supplying them is adequate and safe, as in safe to pass any drug tests.
McPhee was crystal clear in saying that any bad stuff that Schmidt took did not come from the Golden Knights and that the NHL has approved the supplements and vitamins that the Knights dole out. And he mentioned the team knows “where our food comes from,” so don’t even think about blaming the team.
McPhee’s comments were quite fascinating when you consider an interesting line in Schmidt’s statement four days ago on Sunday when he included this assertion: “. . . I have only used supplements provided by my NHL team and I have always been extremely careful about what I put into my body”
To place Schmidt’s thought into complete context, here’s the entire paragraph from his statement Sunday:
“I am extremely disappointed to learn that I have been suspended for a violation of the NHL/ NHLPA Performance Enhancing Substances Program. The fact that I’m issuing this statement is surreal to me as I have only used supplements provided by my NHL team and I have always been extremely careful about what I put into my body. Throughout my playing career I have been tested numerous times, including twice last season, and I have never before tested positive. It was utterly shocking to be informed that I tested positive for a microscopic amount of a tainted substance. Not only did I not intentionally take a banned substance, I could not have received any performance enhancement benefit from the trace amount that inadvertently got into my system at a level that was far too small to have any effect. This low amount was consistent with environmental contamination that I could not possibly have prevented.”
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During the appeal process — the media was not informed that Schmidt had failed the drug test in the first place — McPhee and the team backed Schmidt, who can practice during Knights workouts.
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