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The last time the Avalanche traded for a Canadiens goalie (Patrick Roy, December 2005) the results turned out pretty well.
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Avs hope history repeats
By Larry Wigge | NHL.com columnist
Mar. 9, 2006
A few hours before the Colorado Avalanche faced the St. Louis Blues March 7, coach Joel Quenneville shook his head when he was asked about his goaltending this season.
"It's been hard to figure out," Quenneville told me. "(David Aebischer) Abby got off to a 7-0 start and then just went into a funk where he couldn't stop a beach ball."
For more than a month, Quenneville used a three-for-all in the goal crease, replacing Aebischer with backup Peter Budaj for a while and then calling up Vitaly Kolesnik from the minors.
After leading the Avalanche to a 2-1 shootout victory in St. Louis, Aebischer drew praise from Quenneville for a turnaround in which he won seven straight in January and had a 14-5-2 in his last 21 starts with a .917 save percentage and was 1-0-2 with a .940 save percentage for Switzerland in the recent Olympic Games in Torino, Italy.
But there still seemed to be quiet reservations.
Larry Wigge has covered the NHL since 1969. The longtime NHL columnist for The Sporting News, Wigge is now an NHL.com columnist and a frequent contributor to the website.
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"We could be so much better," Quenneville said. "Get one more goal in a game or give up one fewer and we'd have another five or so wins."
We clearly found out which side of that equation that General Manager Pierre Lacroix felt was most important less than 24 hours later, when he traded Aebischer to the Montreal Canadiens for struggling and injured goaltender Jose Theodore.
"Our entire hockey staff is very excited about the addition of Jose Theodore," Lacroix said. "With this acquisition, we are convinced that we are securing our goaltending position for many years. He is a proven, all-star caliber netminder and at 29 we feel he is entering the prime years of his career."
Truth be told, the Montreal Canadiens and Colorado Avalanche have found out how difficult it is to replace a legend like Patrick Roy, who won Stanley Cups in Montreal in 1986 and 1993 before he was traded to the Avs and added Cups in 1996 and 2001 in Denver before he retired after the 2002-03 season.
It's no coincidence that most fans around the NHL had to flash back to December of 1995, when they heard about this Theodore for Aebischer trade and wondered if the Canadiens just might be trading another couple Stanley Cups to Denver like they did when they traded Roy to the Avalanche.
Theodore was on the top of the world in the spring of 2002, when he led the Canadiens to their first playoff series in four years and he was about to win a battle with Calgary's 52-goal scorer Jarome Iginla and be named Most Valuable Player in the NHL. In the process, he became only the sixth goaltender in League history to win that award. Theodore led the Canadiens to a first-round playoff upset over Boston before losing out to Carolina in the next round.
"There were a lot of nights when the only reason we were still in the game was because Jose stood on his head in goal," star center Doug Gilmour told me. "We would give up 35 to 45 shots a night and we were still in it. It was one of the greatest goaltending performances I've ever seen.
"If anyone doubted whether Jose deserved the NHL MVP, they were hiding in a closet for the last half of the season."
Theodore had a 34-24-10 record with seven shutouts and a microscopic 2.11 goals-against average for the Canadiens in his first full season as the team's No. 1 goalie in 2001-02.
The next season, Theodore struggled and the Canadiens again missed the playoffs. Then came the beginning of a stretch of off-ice stories that tested the mental toughness of the Laval, Quebec, native. The stories implicated Jose's father, uncle and half-brother in an alleged loan-sharking ring -- some of the 14 arrested were also charged with extortion and gangsterism.
But Theodore responded with a 33-28-5 record, with six shutouts and a 2.27 GAA.
At the All-Star Game in Minnesota in February 2004, a proud Theodore said, "To the people who didn't know that, or who didn't believe me, I'm showing that I can put anything aside.
Jose Theodore:
"I have to prove to myself that I can be better each day. When you don't make the playoffs, everybody has to look at themselves in the mirror and do a little bit more."
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"I have to prove to myself that I can be better each day. When you don't make the playoffs, everybody has to look at themselves in the mirror and do a little bit more. We lost as a team, and I came this year ready to show everybody I was going to play well, for the team and the fans."
Early this season, Theodore was performing some more of his shot-stopping magic, before the roof caved in on him -- on the ice and off of it.
While the 29-year-old Theodore was going through a dreadful stretch in late December in which he went 0-4 with a 4.06 goals-against average, it was learned that he failed a pre-Olympic anti-doping test for a steroid-masking agent known a Propecia, a drug that is said to hold off baldness.
Then, during the Olympic break, he said he slipped on some icy stairs at his home and fractured his right foot, putting him out of action for six to eight weeks. At the time of the trade, Theodore was still a couple weeks away from being ready to play again, leaving the Avs goaltending in the hands of Budaj and Kolesnik. When he is ready to return, Theodore will be trying to overcome a 3.46 goals-against average and woeful .881 save percentage.
Aebischer, 28, won his first seven games this season before losing his edge and going through a three-for-all with Peter Budaj and Vitaly Kolesnik for more than a month.
"I've heard the rumors and heard the whispers that management wasn't happy," Aebischer told me Tuesday night after leading the Avalanche to a 2-1 shootout victory over the St. Louis Blues. "But I think I'm much more focused now."
When asked if he thought Quenneville was playing mind games to get him going, Aebischer said he wasn't sure.
"All I know is I want to be No. 1," he said. "And it wasn't a good feeling when I didn't know from one day to another whether they considered me No. 2 or No. 3."
To say that Aebischer was caught off-guard by the trade would be an understatement.
He set a franchise record for wins in the month of January when he went 9-2-1, breaking the mark set by Roy in January of 2001. He was 14-5-2 in his last 21 starts with a .917 save percentage. This is strictly a case of the Avalanche believing that Theodore has a bigger upside for them than Aebischer.
For Theodore, it's a fresh start on a talented team with Stanley Cup aspirations.
"The difference is Theodore has already shown he can win a playoff series or two by himself like Roy used to," a Western Conference general manager told me after hearing about the trade. "Aebischer may never be that kind of goaltender.
"Give Pierre Lacroix credit. He always seems to be right in the middle of big deadline deals. It helped him win a Cup in 1996 (when the Avs acquired Roy and defenseman Sandis Ozolinsh in separate deals) and it worked again in 2001 (when defenseman Rob Blake went from Los Angeles to Colorado)."
Flashback to December 1996 when Roy went to Denver?
If the Avalanche can get Jose Theodore back on track, they may have stolen another top goalie from Montreal.
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