This year, Enkhael’s stars weren’t particularly keen to go to the World Championship, but the 2019 tournament was star-studded. After a stunning first-round exit in San Jose, a group of Las Vegas hockey players headed to Slovakia: Mark Stone, who had already built a reputation as the best defensive end in the league, Jonathan Marchesseau, who became the hero of the first season. of Las Vegas, and the powerful defenseman Shea Theodore. Shi and his teammates were one step away from gold, but thanks to a trip to the national team he got something else.
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Writing for the Players Tribune website, Theodore recalls: “After the final, I was walking to the locker room and a guy in a suit said, ‘Shi, come with me.’ I knew what that meant: a doping test, nothing out.” I was surprised, though, because I passed it before the quarterfinals, and two events in one tournament is very rare. They took me to a room with four other people in suits, and then I thought, “This is very strange”.
They said that I failed the first doping test. All she could think was, “That’s impossible. I never took crap, kind of a nightmare. They made me sweat, they poured medical terms and I only thought of one thing: “How was this possible? Was there a problem with the protein shake? maybe i’m sleeping? They explained to me that the hormone found in me is found only in pregnant women, but in some cases it can be a symptom of testicular cancer.
Shea Theodore at the 2019 World Cup
Photo: CHRISTIAN BRUNA/EPA/TASS
My agent reassured me: I was working with Phil Kessel, who was facing the same situation. At home, I went to the doctor, did all the tests. When the doctor said the result, it was not like a movie, without dramatic music or pauses, it was as calm and honest as possible. Maybe I was supposed to reassure myself, but it’s hard to be prepared for the fact that you find out you have cancer. I was scared.
There were a lot of emotional conversations, especially with my girlfriend: she almost lost several members of her family to cancer. This also affected my relatives: thanks to early detection, my grandmother beat breast cancer and my grandfather beat prostate and kidney cancer. Hockey players are taught from a young age to be stoic, not to show your emotions, you have to face anything.
The examination showed that the player has a tumor measuring 5×5 millimeters. Theodore says that just before the day of the operation, he met Kessel at the golf club and asked him a lot of questions about how his operation and recovery went, but he himself did not reveal his diagnosis. It’s funny that two players have spent this season on the same team, even if the NHL’s iron man lost his place at the base in the middle of the playoffs.
Theodore wrote: “The operation went smoothly: they put a mask on your face and the light went out. When it was all over, I felt like I had a good sleep, and the doctors said that the tumor was successfully removed. I felt fine, but the only problem was that I couldn’t laugh; after that, it was like a knife was stuck in me. I specifically asked all my friends not to send me anything funny!
The defender did not miss a single game due to illness and continued to progress: In the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 seasons, Theodore ranked sixth in the Norris Trophy voting, as he not only scored points, but also came out against the leaders of the opponents, often lying under the puck. After the arrival of Alex Pietrangelo, the general wagon lost a bit of playing time, but remained just as important to the team. In the winter of 2021, TSN and Sportsnet, Canada’s two largest broadcasters, simultaneously placed Theodore on the first pair of virtual Canadian rosters for the Olympics, where NHL players have yet to make it.
shea theodore
Photo: Jeff Chiu/AP/TASS
Theodore’s pairing with hometown Braden McNabb is one of the most consistent pairings in the NHL this season, even though Shea has missed quite a few games this year due to a collision with Philadelphia’s Travis Sanheim. It is significant that in 20 games without Theodore, the Knights have lost more games than they have won, and their performance has declined during that time. In this playoff, McNabb-Theodore is second in the NHL in expected goal percentage (among those who have played a lot). The Athletic recently named the defenseman’s contract ($5.2 million a year) the best in Las Vegas.
With all this, Theodore has not scored anything in the playoffs this year, although he finished every game with shots on the scoresheet. However, in the first game of the final, the Las Vegas defenseman was able to keep the puck in a strange “dancing” zone near the blue line, despite pressure from the Florida forward, and Theodore scored, taking advantage of the moment in which Bobrovsky blocked both. his defender and someone else’s striker, thanks to which our goalkeeper would no longer have time to react.
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Theodore is one of the few remaining members of the “Knights” from the first season in Las Vegas: with the light hand of James Neal, they began to be called “golden trash”, and later this name was fixed in the press. Significantly, both Smith and Marchesseau, who were also in Las Vegas from the start, scored today. Marchessault was Theodore’s roommate on the national team, and the two Las Vegas players became especially close because of this. Of course, most of the neutral Russian viewers at this final will surely root for the Florida Cinderellas and Sergey Bobrovsky, but the stories of the Las Vegas players look no less inspiring.
