Dater: Nichushkin Situation Shows Addiction Doesn't Discriminate

Well, yesterday took some time to digest.

It was supposed to have been a raucous atmosphere at Ball Arena, where the Avs would get even-steven with the Dallas Stars and it would be a best-of-three series from there.

Instead: a six-month suspension for a crucially important player, Valeri Nichushkin, followed by a 5-1 loss in front of a crowd that had all the noise of the Denver Public Library by the end.

I don’t really know what to say about the Nichushkin situation, but one thing I’m not going to do is get up on my white horse and start lecturing him about how to live his life, or about his choices in life.

As someone who has acknowledged struggling with prescription drugs and alcohol before - and those demons lurk and tempt me every single day still - I’m not going to be a moralizer on this.

Yes, of course he disappointed his teammates, the fans and no doubt his family too. Before the biggest game of the season to this point, Nichushkin, I was told last night, failed a drug test.

What were the drugs? No idea, and unless Nichushkin tells us, we’ll probably never know.

If you’ve never struggled with substances of any kind, then you just can’t understand the power they can have over you. They are powerful enough to make a grown man, with a family, an eight-year, $49 million contract and fans from all over, choose the drug over all of that.

What happened with Nichushkin obviously had an effect on the team. They came out just looking dispirited and passion-free. The shots after the first period were 14-2 against. The final score was Dallas 5, Colorado 1.

I don’t know if this is Nichushkin’s bottom or not. He may emerge from this with his contract intact (though he’s suspended without pay until Nov. 13 - which in this case would cost him probably a month’s salary, because players make all their money in the regular season).

Will the Avs still be there for him when the suspension is up - and he’s deemed OK to play again by the powers that be?

Good question. But you can’t blame Avs teammates for having a “We’re done with him” attitude, if that’s the case with some or all.

The fact is, this is the second year in a row something like this has happened - with another leave of absence in between. His loss very much hurt the team’s playoff chances last year, and right now a victory over Dallas in this series seems impossible.

Nichushkin had been the leading NHL goal scorer for much of the playoffs. He’s a great player, a talented player, but right now that talent is being wasted.

It’s a shame. But that’s what addiction does eventually. It brings shame. I hope he gets the help he needs.

I wasn’t going to bring this up, but I’ll address it briefly: Last night, I said a couple of things on Twitter that made me look petty, about not getting credit for being “first” breaking the news that Nichushkin wouldn’t play because of the failed drug test.

I said some unkind things. I don’t like doing that. As always, I probably should have just kept my big mouth shut.

But I will say this: I may have looked petty, but I think what’s just as petty are reporters who simply won’t acknowledge where the original report started. The fact is, it’s unprofessional not to do that.

What especially galls me in this case is when a competing reporter tries to get on a white horse and says something like, “Well, when it comes to a player’s personal life, I wait until it’s confirmed before writing anything.”

That implies that I’m a jerk for reporting it before it becomes “official”, when the truth is, that reporter didn’t write anything because he/she didn’t have the story.

If they did, you bet your bottom dollar they would have posted it before it became “confirmed.”

I’ve always given credit to others who broke a story that involved my beat. It sucks to do that, but it’s the professional thing to do. If I ever even thought about not giving credit for a story that didn’t start with my reporting, my editors would damn well make sure that it happened. With every piece of news I report before anyone else now, it’s always treated as a “rumor.” And, yes, that is insulting to me. Do you think I’d write something like I did on Nichushkin last night without having it absolutely locked down first? I’ve been in this business for 36 years, going all the way back to when I was a proofreader and part-time sports writer at the Concord Monitor in N.H. in 1988.

But, I know I shouldn’t care about that. I don’t know, I guess last night I did and I spouted off a little. I’ll try not to do that anymore, at least when it comes to that kind of stuff.