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Sadowski's Blog |
April 23, 2006, 9:15 PM ET
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The jury is still out on Jose Theodore, but the same can be said for Marty Turco.
The Colorado Avalanche is pinning its playoff hopes on Theodore, who was acquired from Montreal on March 8 for goalie David Aebischer even though Theodore had a fractured right heel at the time and hadn't played particularly well before the injury.
Theodore is healthy now, but he didn't exactly have to stand on his head Saturday when the Avalanche opened first-round play with a 5-2 win over the Dallas Stars at the American Airlines Center.
The Avalanche blocked 19 shots and limited the Stars to 18 shots - nine through the first two periods - after Dallas took a 2-0 lead in the first period when Brenden Morrow and Bill Guerin scored 1:58 apart.
Colorado took over that, pressured the Stars defense with an efficient forechecking game and peppered Turco with quality shots.
Turco hasn't played nearly as well in previous postseasons as he has in the regular season, and he took much of the blame for the Stars' first-round loss to the Avalanche in 2004.
But he didn't get a whole lot of help Saturday, and the Avalanche expects the Stars to play a lot better Monday before the series moves to Denver.
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The most eye-popping performance came from Avalanche rookie forward Wojtek Wolski, 20, who was summoned Tuesday after his junior team, the Brampton Battalion, lost in the second round of the Ontario Hockey League playoffs.
Wolski, the Avalanche's No. 1 draft pick in 2004, impressed everyone in training camp and collected two goals and four assists in nine regular-season games. But the Avalanche felt another year of junior hockey would be best for his long-term future and sent him back to Brampton.
Wolski, a 6-foot-3, 200-pounder, played center there and dominated, amassing 47 goals and 128 points in just 56 games.
Avalanche coach Joel Quenneville has so much faith in the youngster that he has installed him as the No. 2 center, putting him on a line with Alex Tanguay and Ian Laperriere.
Nice move, it turned out. Wolski, who seems mature beyond his years, scored the tying goal, fed Rob Blake for the tie-breaker and added another assist in the Avalanche victory.
"I just tried my best and sometimes it works out," Wolski said. "It doesn't always happen, but everybody played well. I think I was definitely at my peak performance at the end of the year. I've been playing pretty intense hockey lately, but it's definitely different out here."
Avalanche captain Joe Sakic certainly was impressed.
"It's unbelievable," he said. "He was coming in with a lot of confidence and it just carried over. We're all very excited for him. Coming in Game 1 of the playoffs, it's pretty amazing what he did out there."