Noticed this on Newsday.com today...

WILD SIGNS EX-ISLANDER

HILL DESPITE BAN. Just when Sean Hill thought a steroid scandal might mark the end of his NHL career, the Minnesota Wild signed him to a one-year deal. The 37-year-old defenseman played for the Islanders last season and was suspended hours before their playoff loss to Buffalo on April 20, becoming the first NHL player to be suspended for violating the league's drug policy. He received a 20-game suspension and will miss the first 19 games of this season. The Wild said Hill acknowledged using a doctor-prescribed testosterone booster approved by the NHL, but he tested positive for the anabolic steroid boldenone, which is banned.

(Bill's notes: Docs often prescribe testosterone boosters to people who have abused steroids. Steroids are synthetic testosterone and once you start using a synthetic, your body shuts down that function because it is getting what it needs from the outside. No finger of blame here, just something I learned in college that has been mentioned here and there in the Benoit coverage. Bears a mention in this forum, I thought.)

'Dirty' Hill played for months after testing positive

June 05, 2007
DAMIEN COX
Toronto Star HOCKEY COLUMNIST

"For sure I think we would have made the playoffs," says Leafs GM of blueliner's impact on Islanders

OTTAWA-The Maple Leafs finally have their answer, and neither they nor their fans are going to like it very much.

It now appears defenceman Sean Hill of the New York Islanders likely tested positive for an illegal performance enhancing drug sometime in February and may have played as many as 20 regular-season games and four playoff matches while appealing his mandatory 20-game suspension. The information came to light yesterday during the NHL general managers meeting when Leaf GM John Ferguson asked league deputy commissioner Bill Daly for details on the Hill case.

Ferguson said he was told it was somewhere between 6-9 weeks from the time the 37-year-old blueliner actually tested positive and April 20, the day he was suspended prior to Game 5 of the Islanders first-round series against Buffalo.

"The issue is how many games was a dirty competitor allowed to compete," said Ferguson, who was once a roommate of Hill's when both played in Montreal's organization. "It was an outrage. It still is."

Hill was a key minute muncher on the Long Island defence alongside partner Brendan Witt down the stretch and in the final week of the season when the Isles won their last four games and knocked the Leafs out of the playoffs on the final day of the season with a shootout victory over the New Jersey Devils.

Hill played 22 minutes and 37 seconds in that game, which conservatively occurred at least a month after the NHL Players' Association appealed his suspension, and possibly two months from the time he actually tested positive.

"For sure I think we would have made the playoffs," said Ferguson when asked about the impact of Hill's delayed suspension. "I had heard that it might have been as far back as February when he tested positive, and clearly we now know it's an area that needs to be addressed."

Daly confirmed yesterday the league wants to streamline the appeal process by limiting possible grounds on which appeals can be made and ensuring the time from appeal to a decision by an arbitrator doesn't exceed 10 days.

The union has to agree to changes in the collective agreement, and without an executive director in place in the wake of the firing of Ted Saskin, the NHL may have difficulty getting the NHLPA to agree to the changes before next season.

Top Five Questions on the Board--Here are one guy's answers.

The Islanders head into the off-season with the potential to be sporting a much different lineup when the team reconvenes for training camp in September. While the season very much showed promise and a change in the culture surrounding the Islanders, the summer is going to be the time where we as fans find out whether this is a team ready to make the next step or whether the team will backslide like it did in 2002.

With that in mind, there are five key questions the team needs to answer as we head into the summer. I'll take a look at the questions over the next week or so with different posts each time.

Question #5: What to do about the suspended Islanders.

This is a very interesting question. Both Chris Simon and Sean Hill were important role players who added to the leadership core. Simon was a guy who made the opponents accountable when they took liberties with his teammates. Hill was, quite simply, a rock on the backline. Both men signed bargain contracts just before training camp last fall; which made their contributions to the Islanders so very cost effective.

I am thinking that Chris Simon will be back. Regarding The Incident of Which We Will Not Speak, it was unfortunate as hell and probably can be labeled as the tipping point where the promising season began taking on such a strange tone. He will only have to serve a handful of games of the suspension in the next season and his prior relationship being mentored by Ted Nolan leads me to speculate about his return. Plus, while it can be argued that Simon's reaction on the ice was selfish, he has always been known as a great teammate who sticks up for the guys in the room.

With Sean Hill, the situation is problematic. He has to serve a full twenty game-suspension before he can play next season. A bargain at 600K, my guess is that he will have suitors next season who are willing to pay him a pro-rated salary of the same rate.

The real question is what kind of advantage did this banned substance give Sean Hill? He sure played a lot of minutes down the stretch, so was it something that boosted his endurance? Was it something that helped with those nagging injuries? I mean, the guy is 37 years old and was super-resilient over the past few weeks of the season. Something like human growth hormone would help cure those aches and pains a lot faster than even sitting out would have.

This one is a tough call. I bet if you polled the players themselves that they'd want to have Sean Hill back on the team next season. All of the quotes about Sean Hill lead you to think that the boys all like and admire him a whole heck of a lot. I think that the fans admire(d) Hill this season, too. I know that I did. What the whole situation is going to boil down to is whether or not Hill is going to be accused of "cheating" and whether or not the Islanders Braintrust has any reason to believe in his guilt or innocence.

We'll be back with a look at Question #4 later this week.

The Hits Just Keep On Comin'

This is from the AP. Islanders D Hill suspended 20 games for violating NHL drug policy

April 20, 2007

BUFFALO (AP) -- Islanders defenseman Sean Hill was hit with a 20-game suspension by the NHL on Friday -- just hours before New York faced elimination from the playoffs -- for violating the league's performance-enhancing substances program.

Hill's ban began Friday night when the Islanders faced the Buffalo Sabres in Game 5 of the first round Eastern Conference playoff series. The earliest Hill could return to the lineup would be the Stanley Cup finals.

He is the first player to be suspended under this program.

Islanders spokesman Chris Botta said Hill didn't travel with the team to the arena for Friday night's game. He added he didn't know whether Hill had returned to Long Island.

New York started the day in a 3-1 hole to top-seeded Buffalo in the best-of-seven matchup.

The 37-year-old Hill signed a one-year deal worth $600,000 last summer and is eligible to be a free agent again in the upcoming offseason. If the Islanders don't play 19 more playoff games this year, Hill's suspension will continue next season without pay.

Hill showed no sign Thursday, before the Islanders flew to Buffalo, that anything was amiss. He joined the rest of his teammates in talking about putting several controversial calls in consecutive home losses this week behind them as they prepared for Game 5.

"If we can use it as a motivational tool, that would be great. If we can't, we just have to put it behind us," he said Thursday. "It doesn't matter what happened in the last game, it doesn't matter what happened in the previous games. We have to focus all our energy on that one game. If we do that we'll have a good outcome."

Hill, who missed only one regular-season game with the Islanders, had one goal, 24 assists and a plus-6 rating in 81 contests. He had no points and was a minus-1 in the first four playoff games against the Sabres.

As part of the new collective bargaining agreement that ended the yearlong lockout in 2005, a player receives a 20-game suspension for a first positive test and is subject to a mandatory referral to the league's substance abuse-behavioral health program for evaluation, education and possible treatment.

Every NHL player can be given up to two "no-notice" tests every year, with at least one conducted on a team-wide basis. Players can be given a "no-notice" test at any time.

Hill, a Duluth, Minn., native, was selected by the Montreal Canadiens in the eighth round of the 1988 draft. In 841 career regular-season games, Hill has recorded 60 goals and 229 assists for 289 points.

He played with the Canadiens in the 1991 and 1992 playoffs -- winning a Stanley Cup ring during his rookie year -- before ever dressing for an NHL regular-season game.

Hill spent the 2005-06 season with the Florida Panthers, following three with Carolina, before signing with the Islanders. He is the second Islanders player to be given a lengthy suspension by the NHL in just over a month.

Hard-hitting forward Chris Simon received a record ban of at least 25 games, that ended his season and could carry into the next campaign, for striking Ryan Hollweg of the New York Rangers with a two-handed swing of his stick.

Simon served the 20th game of the NHL's longest suspension for on-ice violence Friday. He is ineligible to return to the playoffs this year and will have to sit out any remaining games next year should the Islanders fail to play five more this season.