Ovechkins problems last year seemed to stem from three things:

1. Bad luck. When his goal slump started last season he hit several posts, and had a couple goals waved off in a few game stretch. Those helped keep his drout going, and it proved to be hard to break.

2. Bad summer conditioning. Ovechkin clearly wasn’t in great shape entering last season. I know the conspiracy theorist out there would try to link that with Nagels bust… but without any evidence (theres not even circumstancial evidence) thats foolish. Its far more likely Ovechkin simply got lazy in the offseason.

3. Overall downtrun in Caps offense. Last year the Caps were not the power house they were in years past, and the who team saw a scoring drop off. This was helped by a very in-effective power play, which certainly contributed to Ovechkins down numbers.

4. Injuries. Its known that Ovechkin had at least one injury (wrist) that he had to deal with for a while last year… and its possible there were more.

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Add all that up and there is plenty of reason for his fall off last year. The ohter thing to consider is that IF Ovechkin (or any other player) was in fact getting steroids from Nagel… they would simply have gone elsewhere after he was busted. Everyone knows the NHl testing policy is a joke, and no one is going to stop using just because there doctor was caught.