By all rights, after allowing 10 goals in two games, Dallas Stars goalie Marty Turco should be a jittery mess, with mangled morale, gray hair and a calendar thick with therapy appointments.
Instead, Turco faces critics with a firm jaw and quiet eyes. He offers no excuses. Shows no panic. Even grins now and again. His confidence seems utterly shatterproof, to the point where his coach sums it up in two words: “That’s Marty.”
And just down the hall, there’s Jose Theodore, ever serene despite a second-period storm of F-5 proportions that threatened on Monday to level the Avs’ precious momentum and maybe ding Colorado’s growing faith in its new goaltender.
As he peeled white tape off his socks after Game 2, Theodore was asked what he was thinking while Dallas scored three times in about four minutes to tie the score, then added, as Theodore calls it, a “killer” with three ticks left in the period to take a 4-3 lead.
“They were getting some lucky bounces out there, like tips,” Theodore said, “and all of the sudden there’s an open net, or (the puck that) went up in the air (off his backside and into the net). Those are the kind of plays that, as a goalie, you have to say, well, there’s not much I can do about it. Just try to make the next save.”
In this series, you have similar flavors of goaltender confidence. Turco, so self-assured that his coach, Dave Tippett, doesn’t worry about needing to whisper pep talks in his ear. And Theodore, so apt at quickly shoving the ugly past behind him.
“I say to myself (after the second period Monday), you’ve just got to turn the page. Because in the playoffs it’s not about stats, it’s about winning games,” Theodore said. “And we needed only one goal. And I have confidence in my team that if I was able to make a good save in the third, we’d get the big goal.”
But behind the mask, mental health is more often thought of as a delicate thing, something that can wax and wane with good games or bad. They are famous for odd habits. Some goalies demand solitude before they play. Many are overtly superstitious. Some quietly suffer despite success: After Jean-Sebastien Giguere took Anaheim to the 2003 Stanley Cup Finals, he soon sought advice from a sports psychologist in Montreal.
Which makes Turco’s demeanor, for one, so different.
“I’ve had a lot of other goalies. Sometimes they’re a little quirky or you’ve got to worry about their confidence level,” Tippett said. “That’s not a problem with Marty.
“And I don’t see Marty changing.”
But when goalies need to make a mental 911 call, often Francois Allaire is the man they ring up. And as Allaire says, all goalies have those moments of doubt. Even Patrick Roy, who worked for years with Allaire, once Montreal’s goaltender coach.
“It didn’t happen a lot. He was a confident guy,” said Allaire, now Anaheim’s goaltender coach. “But when he wasn’t feeling really good in the game, we made sure he was coming back to basics.”
Knowledge of those goaltending tenets comes from hard, sincere practice, Allaire said. And confidence grows from knowledge. During some summers, Allaire also worked with former Colorado goalie David Aebischer.
“The problem comes when you have a not very hard-working guy who has no foundation (of skills),” Allaire said. “When his team is playing well, everybody is playing well. But if the team hits a bump in the road, these (goalies) lose it pretty quick.”
That seems to be where Turco stays so sunny. He believes in the diligence his team has turned in all season.
“It’s so much more important … (just) to be like ourselves. That’s going to give us a real good chance to win,” Turco said. “For us, it’s all about us.”
Turco also knows that when Dallas loses, it’s often all about him. At least among the fans.
“It’s the loneliest position in sports,” Allaire said. “You’re all by yourself. If you don’t stop the puck, it’s your fault.”
Staff writer Bill Briggs can be reached at 303-820-1720 or bbriggs@denverpost.com.
Lone strangers
Only the lonely get iced, jinxed, hazed and booed. In sports, these jobs require athletes either to adore the spotlight or ignore the solitude.
1. Place-kicker: Extra points are yawners, but miss one and TV cameras will show you pacing the sideline all game. And is there anything worse than watching a 170-pound kicker look his 350-pound teammates in the eyes after his chip shot just sailed wide with no time left?
2. Baseball closer: When it’s the ninth inning and the ball’s in your hands, the bases are juiced and the count is full, don’t look for Daddy, Momma or Uncle Phil to bail you out. It’s all you.
3. Free-throw shooter: Late in a tight game with the crowd dead silent or screaming bloody murder, making this undefended shot is team sports’ equivalent to sinking a do-or-die putt.
4. The third skater in the hockey shootout: Sometimes it comes down to this: Go down there, right now, and score a goal or your team will lose.
5. Football safety in single coverage: Turn left, you could be toast. Turn right, you could get burned. Put a hand in the wrong place, you’ll get flagged. Good luck.
