Maria Sharapova picked the wrong sport to cheat on.

If her name was, say, Misha Sharapov, and she played in the NHL, she wouldn’t be awaiting suspension for testing positive for the Latvian drug meldonium.

She would be in the clear, having passed drug test after drug test. It is a drug that apparently increases blood flow, increases oxygen to muscles and reduces stress. It sounds like a drug a lot of us could probably benefit from.

And it’s a drug that was recently banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Banned by WADA, but not banned by the NHL — for now. Not necessarily banned by the NFL, the NBA or Major League Baseball. Those decisions will be discussed later.

The drug test Sharapova faces right now is far more complete than the North American professional sports, and the penalty she now faces will be far more severe.

It’s very possible a two-year ban awaits her — which seems awfully harsh in the context of what Jarred Tinordi, the Arizona Coyotes player, now faces for testing positive while he was with the Montreal Canadiens.

It doesn’t matter which team Tinordi is on, he used the predictable Sharapova defence to explain the situation. He chose the Ben Johnson words from 28 years ago: He said he never knowingly ingested a banned substance.

What almost no one ever seems to say: I did it. I meant to do it. I needed it. I knew exactly what I was doing. Stupidly, I got caught.

Instead, there are the two regular defences for being caught with performance-enhancing drugs: One is: Deny, deny, deny and deny some more. I didn’t do it. I don’t know how it got in my system.

Inevitably, someone talks about sabotage.

For doing what he did — whether he knew it or not — Tinordi gets a 20-game suspension, or just under a quarter of an NHL season.

Sharapova would settle for that kind of punishment right now, no questions asked: A quarter of the tennis season. If she could sign off on that, all she’d be looking for is the pen.

That would have her back on the WTA Tour playing in July, in time for Wimbledon. Able to play the U.S. Open in August and September. Her disappearance — never mind her sponsors running away from her at top speed — would hardly be noticed or necessarily be notable.

Tennis doesn’t work that way. It isn’t just hard on your elbows, your shoulders, your knees, your Achilles. It’s hard on your decision-making.

This is how tough the ITF is on the matter of drugs: The young Russian, Ivan Gakhov, was suspended for a year not because he tested positive for anything. He was found guilty for failing to show up for three scheduled drug tests. When he couldn’t explain why, they said, “See you next year.”

Gakhov isn’t alone. The Olympics will be in Brazil this summer, but Marcela Alves Pereira won’t be playing for the host country. She’s partway through her two-year suspension from the women’s tour.

She used the wrong inhaler.

A first offence in the NHL gets you 20 games. That’s similar to the NFL suspension for first offenders: Four games of a 16-game season, gone. A first offence in baseball has been recently raised to 80 games, or half-a-season. Baseball used to be behind on this; now it seems a touch ahead.

And the NBA has this mystical floating drug policy — it depends which drug you’re caught with, whether recreational or performance-enhancing, whether socially damaging. So many factors are involved in the rather private decision-making.

Their program is the most confidential of the professional leagues. It’s also on a sliding scale of sorts, depending on circumstance. If you’re caught with heroin or LSD, you can get life from the NBA. If it’s marijuana, you get no games, but they put you in a program without any suspension. If it’s HGH, the penalty is 20 games. When O.J. Mayo tested positive for steroids in 2011, he got 10 games. That’s 12% of an NBA season.

Sharapova could well get 100% of the next two years: She has yet to be informed of what her punishment will be, but the ITF has historically shown little sympathy for drug cheats, no matter what the circumstances appear to be.

The head of sport in Russia has called her positive test “a load of nonsense,” but what else would you expect from a culture in which drug scandal has become a daily occurrence? The defending silver-medal winner won’t be participating.

It seems not all drugs, not all drug tests and not all punishments are created equal.

Email: ssimmons@postmedia.com

Twitter: @simmonssteve