What We Learned: Squashing an Alex Ovechkin steroid accusation
By Ryan Lambert/Mon Dec 05



A lot of time this season has been devoted to figuring out what, exactly, is keeping Alex Ovechkin from scoring by the truckload, as he used to in the halcyon days in which 50 goals was his annual expectation.

Have defenses figured him out? Was it a problem with the coach? Is he playing without his old edge?

No, says John Steigerwald, columnist for Washington, Pennsylvania, Observer-Reporter and brother of loathsome homer Pens broadcaster Paul. It's none of those things. The problem is that Ovie's off all the steroids he was taking!

Yes, really.

Steigerwald, clearly not content with having said the San Francisco Giants fan who was beaten into a coma earlier this year by opposing fans brought the attack on himself, published a column on Sunday that did not simply wonder whether Ovechkin's decline in production was the result of his ceasing to use performance-enhancing drugs, as the question mark in the headline implied. He outright said that without definitive proof that Ovechkin did not use performance-enhancing drugs, then clearly he must be presumed to have used them.

"I've taken the position that if you're performing at a near super-human level and your doctor is arrested for selling steroids, you are guilty until proven innocent," Steigerwald wrote.

That's how the law works, right?