Twenty-three years ago today, Montreal Canadiens goaltender Jose Theodore won the Hart Trophy. It was the 16th time a Hab player had won the MVP honor and only the second time a goaltender had managed it (Jacques Plante won it in 1961-62).
That season, Theodore played 67 games for the Canadiens, posting a 30-24-10 record while maintaining a 2.11 goals-against average and a .931 save percentage. While Plante won 42 games in the year of his win, his numbers weren’t as high as the Laval native’s; he had a 2.37 GAA and a .923 SV.
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That year, Theodore also won the Vezina Trophy and the Roger Crozier MBNA Saving Grace Award, in recognition of the goaltender with the best save percentage in the NHL. It was presented from the 1999-00 season through the 2006-07 season, and only seven goaltenders won it, including another Canadiens’ goaltender, Cristobal Huet.
It looked like the Canadiens were set in goal for a long time with Theodore, but things didn’t go as planned. His stats plummeted in 2005-06, when he posted 17 wins in 38 games with Montreal, but only maintained a 3.46 GAA and a .881 SV%. During that season, he also failed a random drug test because he was taking hair loss medication; he wasn’t sanctioned by the NHL but was banned from international play for two years. Outperformed by backup Cristobal Huet, Theodore was flipped to the Colorado Avalanche at the deadline for Swiss goaltender David Aebischer.
Theodore struggled to find his form back in Denver. He spent part of three seasons in Colorado, with his last being his best, boasting a 2.44 GAA, a .910 SV%, and a 28-21-3 record. Still, the Avs had seen enough, and he wasn’t offered another contract at the end of the 2007-08 season and joined the Washington Capitals on a two-year contract.
Theodore had hoped that joining Alexander Ovechkin’s side would be a path to a Stanley Cup win, but the Caps lost in the second round to eventual Cup champions Sidney Crosby and his Pittsburgh Penguins. Then, in 2009-2010, Theodore was a casualty of the Halak Spring when the Canadiens beat Washington in the first round of the playoffs. The former Hab started the first two games, but was replaced by Semyon Varlamov in the second one, and the Russian remained in the net for the rest of the series. That same year, Theodore won the Bill Masterton Trophy after playing through the trauma of the death of his two-month-old son, who had been born prematurely.
Theodore would go on to play three more seasons in the NHL, one with the Minnesota Wild and two with the Florida Panthers, but he retired without ever winning the Stanley Cup.
Photo credit: James Lang-Imagn Images
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