Dallas – One win, no losses. That is the record Jose Theodore waited a long time to achieve while withstanding a lot of adversity.
No, the new Avalanche goalie did not have to stand on his head to get Saturday’s 5-2 Game 1 victory in the first-round playoff series against Dallas. But after a chaotic regular season he wants to forget, Theodore didn’t care how it happened. The former Montreal star is just glad to have a fresh start.
“It’s always a new season in the playoffs,” Theodore said. “You can be the best goalie or the worst out there, but when the playoffs start, all the stats are back to zero.”
Theodore allowed two goals on the first four Dallas shots, while Stars goalie Marty Turco stopped the first 10 he saw.
“I thought they made two nice goals. It was not like I wasn’t seeing the puck well,” said Theodore, who finished with 16 saves. “I was just telling myself, ‘Make sure they don’t get that third goal, and give my team a chance to win.”‘
Theodore was helped by great Avalanche team defense that limited Dallas to 18 shots for the game. He was strong in the third period, when Dallas finally started to put pressure on him again.
“The guys in front of me deserve all the credit for the win,” Theodore said.
Must-win time
Stars captain Mike Modano already is calling Monday “a must win for us.”
Dallas will need to address what he called the “penalty situation.” Dallas averaged 18.2 penalty minutes during the regular season. Only five NHL teams averaged more.
“Their bread and butter is the power play, and that got them back in the game and got them going,” Modano said. “They’re fast. They’re quick. They’re smart. And we weren’t.”
Reasonable rust
Turco blamed some of the Stars’ poor play on the fact they had salted away the No. 2 seed weeks before the end of the regular season.
“We’ve been on coast mode now for a couple of weeks and tonight it caught up with us,” Turco said. “You remember how hard it is to win … We’ve been saying, ‘It’s time to do it.’ And that time has past us.”
But Modano doesn’t buy that theory. “I don’t think so,” he said. “They went through the same thing. They lost three games in a row before they played us.”
“Frozen Fury”
Word already has gotten out about one of the Avalanche’s exhibition games next season.
The Los Angeles Kings didn’t make the playoffs, and the team sent e-mails to fans who purchased tickets online thanking them for their support. In exchange for filling out a questionnaire, the fans will receive a voucher for two tickets to a Los Angeles Riptide outdoor lacrosse game, plus an entry into a drawing for a trip for two to Las Vegas. The Las Vegas trip is for the Kings-Avalanche “Frozen Fury” exhibition Sept. 23 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
Footnotes
Former Stars winger Brett Hull was at the game and chatted afterward with his former St. Louis Blues coach, Joel Quenneville. … Avalanche rookie Wojtek Wolski took a slash to the hand area in the first period and was in pain on the bench, but shook it off and said he felt fine after the game.
