I may not know much about hockey, but I do know this: Alex Ovechkin is about as close to a hometown sports hero as we have.

He’s avoided Gilbert Arenas-like scandals and hasn’t yet been taken to court for inappropriately touching a waitress. (Yes, standards are low these days.) He also hasn’t told D.C. that he’s not really into us, so that helps.

Of course, when someone accuses Ovechkin of using performance enhancing drugs, our ears perk up. That’s exactly what John Steigerwald of the Pennsylvania-based Observer-Reporter claimed last Sunday when wondering aloud why Ovechkin wasn’t his usual stellar self on the ice:

There are whispers and maybe even some out-loud conversations around the hockey world about Ovechkin’s problem being a lack of artificial help.

In other words, performance-enhancing drugs.

The guy was superhuman when he first came into the league. He had the hardest shot anybody had seen in years. Goalies around the league talked about how it was different from everybody else’s shot.

He’s taking about half as many shots as he used to.

Is any of this proof that Ovechkin’s performance was enhanced before, and now it’s not? No. But, you combine it with the fact that his doctor was charged with bringing PEDs over the border from Canada, and it gives you the right to be suspicious.

Add to that the fact a Washington D.C. chiropractor was investigated after he bragged about supplying steroids to members of the Capitals and Washington Nationals.

After all the tearful, indignant denials by athletes who were later found to be juicers, 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.

Not guilty in a court of law, just in my mind. Sorry.

Interestingly enough, the same doctor who had Ovechkin as a patient also treated Tiger Woods.

Since I’m a fan of professional cycling, I know all too well how widespread the use of performance enhancing drugs can and has been. Heck, these days you don’t even need a definitive test to assume that someone might have doped.

But this is a different case, and both Ryan Lambert at Puck Daddy and Deadspin argue that Steigerwald is just dead wrong. (You can listen to Lambert and Steigerwald go at it here.) They write that Ovechkin isn’t linked to the doctor that he was claimed to be, and that a drop in performance isn’t exactly conclusive evidence that his past strong performances were enhanced by drugs.

Mike Halford over at ProHockeyTalk may have said it best when he wrote: “I haven’t seen such reliance on hearsay and conjecture since Lionel Hutz sued the creator of Itchy & Scratchy.”