There's an intensity, a focus, a fire in his eyes.
It's how I imagine it would be to look closely in the eyes of a speed reader, knocking off chapter after chapter in seconds or seeing the faces of a couple of world-class ping pong players. Eyes so active that they seem to almost be jumping out of their sockets.
For an instant, I felt like Jose Theodore took me into his world behind the mask ... only it was outside the Colorado Avalanche locker room in Dallas about 45 minutes after he played in his first career playoff game for the Avs.
A montage of his saves in a 5-2 victory over the Stars flashed across the TV screen in front of us -- and it was clear his eyes were doing more than just replaying a series of movements. He was in a different world reserved for those crazy enough to let others shoot pucks at them at up to 100 mph.
Jose could see a curiosity in my face as I watched him watch himself ... and ironically, the montage of saves appeared on the screen right after I asked him about having to replace a goaltending legend like Patrick Roy ... first in Montreal ... and now in Denver.
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.
Related Links:
|
"All of those years ago when I was growing up in Montreal watching Patrick Roy, I kind of pictured myself someday being in his place," Theodore said. "My family had season tickets and I'd sit there focused on him in goal. I'd marvel at his poise, his confidence, his focus and his cockiness.
"And it became magnified in the playoffs. I'll never forget 1993, when Patrick was facing so many shots, so many overtimes. He was in a zone ... only someone who has played goal could really understand just how good he really was that year."
Understand? Playoff hockey is all about intensity. It's all about effort and leaving everything you've got out there on the ice. First impressions are not important. This is a game for those who ask: What have you done lately?
Like leading the Avalanche, a seventh seed in the Western Conference, to a first-round playoff upset of the Dallas Stars, the second seed.
Theodore's .881 save percentage and 3.46 goals-against average in 38 games for the Montreal Canadiens earlier this season.
Forgotten.
The pre-Olympic reports in December that he had tested positive for a steroid masking agent he said was from Propecia, a product he uses to prevent baldness.
Forgotten.
The fractured bone in his right heel mysteriously broken in a fall on icy steps in mid-February.
Forgotten.
His less than ordinary 1-3-1 record and .887 save percentage in his first five games for the Avalanche at the end of the regular season after he had come over from Montreal in a trade for No. 1 goalie David Aebischer on March 8.
Forgotten.
"The true measure of a player is your ability to take your game to another level in the playoffs," Theodore was telling me. "That's why guys like Patrick Roy, Joe Sakic and Mark Messier are considered such all-time greats. In the playoffs, they always played their best games of the season.
"Call it a zone, I don't know. It's a place, where pressure is your friend. It's a place where you get inside yourself and push and push to find the best you have to offer. I want to make sure after every playoff game, my teammates can look at me and say, 'He did his job.' "
Whether you buy into the theory that self-motivated players become worth their weight in gold in the playoffs, whether there's a mental montage that athletes reach back for when they need to get into that playoff zone, whether intangibles inside a player make some better than others at this time of the year, the fact of the matter is that Jose Theodore has been there before.
It was no fluke that he didn't falter in Game 5, that Theodore's 50-saves, including the 11 shots he stopped in overtime before Andrew Brunette fired a rebound over Marty Turco to give Colorado a 3-2 victory lifted the Avalanche to a place they weren't sure they could be in his year's playoffs.
"He is the reason we're standing here with smiles on our faces. He was unbelievable today," Sakic told reporters after the clincher. "They could've ended it so many times ... not only in overtime, but in the third period as well. He kept us in the game. He gave us a chance."
The Avalanche are used to success in the postseason. They have won in the past, because of big-game performances by stars like Roy, Sakic, Peter Forsberg, Ray Bourque, Adam Foote and Rob Blake. Roy and Bourque have retired long ago and Forsberg and Foote left via free agency last summer. So someone is going to have to provide that big-game performance to help Sakic and Blake. Why not Theodore?
After all, this is the same goaltender who was named Most Valuable Player in the NHL in 2002, the same netminder who led an eighth-seeded Montreal over a No. 1-seeded Boston in the playoffs that same year.
General Manager Pierre Lacroix is famous for making big trades that give the Avalanche a chance to contend for another Stanley Cup. Maybe he did gamble this time, thinking that a change of scenery might bring Theodore back to the form he tantalized us with in 2002.
"With this acquisition, we are convinced that we are securing our goaltending position for many years," Lacroix said back on March 8. We probably wondered about that statement a lot, until that 50-save performance that eliminated the Stars.
For Theodore, the confidence came back in the final game of the regular season ... a 4-2 loss to Edmonton in which he faced 36 shots and ...
Theodore on what makes a player great:
"The true measure of a player is your ability to take your game to another level in the playoffs. That's why guys like Patrick Roy, Joe Sakic and Mark Messier are considered such all-time greats. In the playoffs, they always played their best games of the season. Call it a zone, I don't know. It's a place, where pressure is your friend."
|
"I knew right there I was ready, even though we lost," Theodore said. "I guess you could say that I felt like I was coming back from a summer of inactivity before that game. You're rusty. You're movements are not fluid. The timing and rhythm you normally play with was not there."
As the first round of the playoffs continued, shots were no longer sneaking through Jose. He felt he was becoming the same wall he was in 2002. Or at least a close facsimile.
Ian Laperriere, Alex Tanguay, Patrice Brisebois and Pierre Turgeon remember eating at one restaurant in Chicago, while Joe Sakic, Rob Blake, Bob Boughner, Brad May and Brett Clark where at another when their cell phones began going off.
Even though they weren't at the same place, the message Pierre Lacroix sent that day reverberated around the team.
"We all knew what kind of goalie Jose Theodore was and is: He gets into the heads of the other team," Tanguay said. "I remember the reaction at our table that night. It was something like: 'Here's the deal. Now it's up to us.' Players like to be challenged ... and this was the ultimate challenge to us."
This is not the same Jose Theodore that, at 16, admired Roy for his heroics in the 1993 Stanley Cup finals. It's not the same Jose who was chosen the NHL's best goaltender and MVP in 2002. It's not the same guy who once posed with the motorcycle gang Hell's Angels. He's older, more mature and is accountable now.
Just before the playoffs, his girlfriend, Stephanie Cloutier, and baby girl, Romi, visited Theodore in Denver. He has plenty of photographs and a videotape to remind him of his family back in Montreal.
"My girlfriend brought me a lot of pictures, and she sends me a lot of e-mails," Theodore said. "I have pictures and a video, and it's always fun to look at them. When I look at the pictures, I feel like I'm actually there. Looking at my girlfriend and daughter remind me that I have responsibilities to them that I didn't have before."
A mentally tough Jose Theodore? Now that could be daunting for the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in the second round of the playoffs. Not to mention the rest of the NHL.
"We thought we could beat him if we got a lot of shots on him from all different angles," Stars captain Mike Modano said. "We thought we saw him flopping around a little early in the series. But, as the series went on, there was no flopping. He was focused and in good position to make a second and third and fourth save in certain situations."
Roy-like?
"There's only one Patrick Roy," Modano said. "But Jose was good."
Theodore smiles, but is clearly uncomfortable when the Roy comparisons begin.
Though he met Roy at a young age at one of noted goaltending guru Francois Allaire's summer camps, and the two met again at a Montreal training camp in 1994, Jose's first with the Canadiens and Roy's last, the attraction is more professional than personal.
"I admired the way he played, but I didn't try to copy his style," Theodore said. "I've always tried to have my own style."
Theodore, in fact, is just 5-11. Roy was 6-2. Jose, in fact, came to the NHL with a tendency to play very low to the ice. He had to be taught to keep his back straight and raise his glove hand and his blocker to make him look bigger in the net.
The 29-year-old Theodore was laughing about how time flies in sports. He remembered his first NHL game that late afternoon after beating Dallas and laughed to himself.
"I arrived in Hartford on a private jet with (Canadiens GM) Rejean Houle only minutes before the game," I remember sitting across the rink (there was no room on the bench at the old Hartford Civic Center so the backup goalie sat across the ice from his team) and (coach) Mario Tremblay pulls Pat Jablonski and starts waving at me.
"We were winning 2-1 after two periods, so I'd left my mask and gloves in the locker room, and when Mario points at me midway through the third period, I remember jumping up and running the other way to get my stuff. It's funny, because on TV it looked like I was running away, terrified."
That's Jose. Not so tall. Not the most graceful on the sidewalks of Montreal in icy conditions. But he can stop pucks ... and now, he's driven to accept new responsibilities.
"The most important lesson I learned was that I have the ability to make a difference in every game ... to be a big part of the result," he said.
A big smile crossed Jose's face. He had remembered something else.
"An old goaltender once told me that if you talk to your goalposts, they'll be good to you."
Jose Theodore may not accept the comparisons to his idol Patrick Roy. But when you follow a legend to Montreal and now Denver, sometimes they can't be avoided if success follows.
Success is always the key.
