SunSentinel.com Article

Theodore not worried about preseason woes so don’t you
by: Harvey Fialkov

While I admit that Jose Theodore’s two preseason games left a lot to be desired and made me miss Tomas Vokoun, however, let’s not hit the panic button and remember a few things.

No. 1 Theodore hadn’t been in the nets in like five months before the Lightning game. No. 2 I was with the Panthers from 9:30 a.m. to 3 a.m. on this one-day road trip and I’m not surprised that they had no legs in the third period while the Stars were sitting at home. Not sure why the Panthers put them through this other than prepare them for back to backs or be in Texas conveniently to drop off their two cuts (Tyler Plante and Tim Kenedy) for the farm team who were in Austin awaiting to play the Texas Stars. Theodore has a proven track record and his numbers are astonishingly similar to Vokoun’s, except he won an MVP and Vezina – although it was 10 years ago. Also, several of his best forwards and defenseman were left at home. Here’s Theodore’s postgame thoughts on his slow start.

“It’s not a good way to end it and for me personally obviously I got to be better. It’s as simple as that. I’ve had training camps where I played well and had bad starts and the other way around. I’ve been around long enough so I know. It all boils down to – for my part – I got to be better.

He made nine saves in the scoreless first period before allowing three in the second and four in the third.

“It’s kind of funny, you look at the result I made some good saves but a couple of goals I should have. You take the positives out of the game; there were some really big saves out there but again I got to focus and play well for 60 minutes and I got to be better for these guys.”
I asked him what he had to do to rebuild his confidence?

“Confident-wise I’m pretty confident. Just use those days to work hard and usually if you practice hard and work ethic overcomes a lot of things and when you work on your practices that’s how you get your game going. I’m confident for the start of the season. I just think we need a big week of practice and I expect more out of myself and I’m going to practice hard.’’

The Rampage worked out goalie Manny Legace today. They may be shopping around for some veteran help if they’re not fully convinced that Jacob Markstrom is ready to back up Theodore.