Dryden McKay did everything right except one thing, and that one thing was buying a vitamin.
In April 2022 he won the Hobey Baker Award as the best player in Division I men's hockey. He finished his Minnesota State career holding NCAA records for career shutouts and single season wins. Six days after the award, he accepted a doping suspension for a prohibited anabolic agent.
He had never knowingly taken it. A laboratory proved that. He served the suspension anyway.
Here is what happened, and what it should change about how your team handles supplements.
Ten days of an immune vitamin
McKay gave an out of competition sample on January 23, 2022, shortly after being named an alternate for the United States men's Olympic hockey team. It came back positive for ostarine, also called enobosarm, a selective androgen receptor modulator that USADA classifies as a non specified substance in the class of anabolic agents, prohibited at all times. [1]
He had not touched a steroid, a pre workout or anything sold on the promise of muscle. By his own public account, he had spent about ten days taking an over the counter immune support vitamin, trying to avoid getting sick during the Omicron wave, and it carried no banned substance certification of any kind. [2][3]
When his supplements went to a laboratory, USADA received results from a WADA accredited lab confirming that a product he had been using before the test was contaminated with ostarine, at an amount consistent with the circumstances of ingestion and his positive test. Ostarine appeared nowhere on the Supplement Facts label. [1]
Reporting at the time indicated that testing covered both his opened bottle and a sealed bottle from the distributor. That detail matters: it is what separates a contaminated manufactured product from something introduced after purchase. [3]
The evidence helped. It did not save him.
Anti doping enforcement runs on strict liability. What is in your sample is your responsibility, whether or not you knew it was there. [4]
Contamination evidence changes the sentence, not the verdict. Because the finding was consistent with a contaminated supplement, the World Anti Doping Code allowed a substantial reduction from what would otherwise have been a far longer ban. McKay accepted six months beginning April 14, 2022, with a three day credit for a provisional suspension, and his competitive result from the day of collection was disqualified. [1]
The NCAA ran its own review and cleared him to finish the season, which is why he was on the ice for the national championship game in April while a USADA case was still open. [3][5]
So the timeline reads strangely: best player in college hockey on April 8, suspended athlete on April 14. Same person, same bottle, no intent anywhere in the story.
It did not look dangerous, because it was not supposed to
This is the part every athlete gets wrong.
Supplement risk is not confined to the aisle everyone warns you about. McKay was not describing a testosterone booster or a fat burner. He was describing the sort of immune vitamin sold in every pharmacy in America, next to the cough drops.
Vitamins, minerals, greens powders, protein, recovery aids and immune products can all carry an undeclared substance when the sourcing or the manufacturing behind them is poor. The NCAA tells student athletes exactly this: [6]
- There are no NCAA approved dietary supplements.
- Vitamins and minerals can contribute to a positive drug test.
- Supplements may contain banned substances that are not disclosed on their labels.
- Student athletes have lost eligibility after using supplements.
Legal, familiar and widely sold are not the same as safe for someone who gets tested.
Reading the label was never going to catch this
Label review is worth doing. It catches an openly listed stimulant, SARM or hormone precursor, and it surfaces excessive doses, duplicated ingredients and warnings a dietitian should see.
It has one permanent limitation.
A label can only be reviewed for what the manufacturer chose to print. USADA warns that manufacturers may misidentify prohibited ingredients or leave them off the label entirely, and that athletes cannot rely on label accuracy. [7]
That is the whole case in one sentence. The substance that ended McKay's season was found by a laboratory, not by anyone reading the bottle.
So if the label cannot answer the question, something else has to.
Certification is the something else
Independent banned substance certification is the only widely available mechanism that puts a finished product through testing it did not design itself. Three programs do the bulk of this work, and athletes will meet all of them:
| Program | What the certification means |
|---|---|
| NSF Certified for Sport | Tests production lots and publishes certified products so a specific item can be looked up [8] |
| Informed Sport | Requires every certified batch to be tested before it is released for sale [9] |
| BSCG Certified Drug Free | Tests every finished lot, or ingredients monthly, against a list of more than 450 substances, including drugs outside the WADA list [10] |
They differ in scope, in testing cadence and in what they publish, and none of them is the default answer for every product. What they share is the thing a label cannot give you: someone other than the manufacturer looked inside the bottle.
The mistake is treating the logo as the verification. USADA warns that certification marks can be misused, and recommends confirming that the exact product appears in the certifying program's own database. [7]
That means matching more than a brand:
| What athletes usually check | What actually has to match |
|---|---|
| The brand | The brand |
| A logo on the packaging | The specific product and formulation |
| A screenshot from last season | The flavor or variant |
| A teammate's recommendation | The current listing, and the lot where the program publishes lots |
A company can sell one certified product beside a dozen that were never submitted. A flavor change can be a different formulation. A certification can lapse while an old screenshot keeps circulating in a group chat.
Certification does not remove every risk. It is still a far stronger safeguard than packaging, marketing copy or an ingredient panel.
The gap: nobody knows what athletes are actually taking
Athletic departments can control what they buy and hand out. They cannot see what an athlete picks up at a pharmacy at 11pm, orders online, borrows from a roommate or buys because of a video.
Even when an athlete does ask, the review usually happens through a photo, a text message or a conversation in a hallway. Nobody records the exact formulation. Nobody keeps the lot. Nothing lands anywhere a second staff member could find it three months later.
McKay was able to identify the suspected product and get a sealed bottle from the same batch tested. Plenty of athletes would have thrown the container out weeks earlier and had nothing to hand anyone.
What Varsity Stack does about it
Varsity Stack gives athletes and staff one shared workflow for supplement decisions, and it runs before the product is used rather than after a test.
An athlete scans or submits the exact product they are considering. Varsity Stack organizes the ingredient and certification information it holds for that product, including whether it appears in a banned substance certification program, and routes the submission to the right staff member, who can approve it, deny it, flag it for review or recommend an alternative.
What a department ends up with is the record it wishes it had:
- The exact product an athlete submitted, with brand and formulation.
- Listed ingredients and the areas of concern in them.
- Whether the product carries recognized third party certification.
- Staff decisions, notes and recommended alternatives.
- What athletes report taking from outside the athletic department.
- How an athlete's routine changes across a season.
In a case shaped like McKay's, that workflow surfaces the single most important fact about the product before the first dose: nobody independent had ever tested it. That is a decision a sports dietitian can act on.
It matters just as much to say what it would not have done. Varsity Stack does not laboratory test supplements. Nothing on that label would have revealed the ostarine inside, and no ingredient screening platform can detect a contaminant a manufacturer failed to declare. What Varsity Stack reduces is the risk you can actually see: uncertified products, unverified formulations, unreviewed purchases and undocumented decisions. It does not guarantee that a supplement is free of prohibited substances, and anyone who tells you their software does is selling you something.
The takeaway
McKay's case was not a failure to spot an obvious banned ingredient. The ingredient was never on the label.
So the question is not only "do any of these ingredients look banned?" It is:
- Does the athlete actually need this product?
- Has this exact product been certified by an independent program?
- Has the current lot been verified, where the program publishes lots?
- Has a qualified staff member reviewed it?
- Is there a certified alternative that does the same job?
- Is the athlete's use documented somewhere durable?
- Could food get this done instead?
He proved unintentional contamination, and that proof cut his sanction substantially. He was still suspended. He still lost a disqualified result, and he still lost the right to sign and play through the window that followed the best season of his career.
Proving what happened after a positive test is not the same as preventing it. The decision that protects an athlete happens before the first dose, and it takes about thirty seconds.
Download Varsity Stack to check and track the products you actually take, or request access for your program.
This article is for educational purposes only. Consult a qualified healthcare provider, registered dietitian, or your athletics compliance staff before starting any supplement regimen. For questions about specific governing body rules, consult your athletic compliance officer.
Sources
- USADA, U.S. Hockey Athlete Dryden McKay Accepts Sanction for Anti Doping Rule Violation: usada.org
- InForum, Hobey Baker Winner Dryden McKay Accepts Six Month Suspension for Doping: inforum.com
- College Hockey News, McKay Suspended 6 Months For Accidental Doping Violation: collegehockeynews.com
- World Anti Doping Agency, World Anti Doping Code: wada-ama.org
- ESPN, Dryden McKay Banned Six Months for an Anti Doping Rule Violation: espn.com
- NCAA, FAQs About NCAA Banned Substances and Medical Exceptions Procedures: ncaa.org
- USADA, Supplement Connect, Reduce Your Risk: usada.org
- NSF Certified for Sport, Certified Products and Program Information: nsfsport.com
- Informed Sport, Sports Supplements Certification: sport.wetestyoutrust.com
- BSCG, Certified Drug Free Program: bscg.org
