Avs at Montreal 5-8

In a supremely embarrassing night, the Avs lost 8-5 in the final game of their Canadian road trip versus the Montreal Canadians. Jose Theodore was given the start after his stellar performance in Ottawa and looked pretty good in the first period allowing only 1 goal on 11 shots. It was slippery slope to failure from there. In the next two periods, Jose allowed 7 goals on 25 shots from six different Canadians players. After scoring three goals in the space of 1 minute and 15 seconds in the first period, the Avs seemed to be unable to stay out of the penalty box, having 4 penalties called on them in the second period alone. Things fell apart from there. The Habs scored an astonishing 5 goals in the final period.

A few notes about the game:
-In one of the classiest moves this season, John-Michael Liles gave his number (26) to Paul Stastny in favor of his college number (4), previously held by Rob Blake.
-Paul Stastny scored his first NHL goal at the 16:41 mark of the first period. Perhaps the number change spurred Stastny on? An interesting tidbit is that Paul’s brother Yan also scored his first NHL goal against the Canadians, a team their father, Hall of Famer Peter Stastny had great success against in his illustrious NHL career.
-the crowd in Montreal was loud…so loud that I could distinctly hear them chanting Theo, Theo, Theo every time the puck came near him. After one of these instances when play stopped, those witty French-Canadians who run the Bell Centre played “Stars go Blind” by none other than Paris Hilton. The crowd thought this was so funny that they could be heard laughing and cheering, much to the chagrin of Jose Theodore.
-Former Av David Aebischer garnered the start for the Canadians. He did well in his first game against his former team, allowing 5 goals on 36 shots.

On a final note, there was a great article on NHL.com about the Stastny brothers.
Click here to read the full story.