Theodore has a shot to flash his old MVP form

When he was shopping for a new goalie last summer, Washington Capitals general manager George McPhee didn’t just want a proven veteran with postseason success.

McPhee wanted someone who had shown character, someone who had overcome professional failure and disappointment and successfully hurdled real-world obstacles. In that regard, he found his man.

Free agent Jose Theodore, 4-0 in first-round playoff series, signed a two-year, $9 million deal with the Caps on July 1.

“When it doesn’t go well for a guy, sometimes it’s a good thing because they know how to come back from that,” McPhee said. “You want all athletes to have experienced failure at some point. Once they get through that and get back on top of their game again, they always have that frame of reference: ‘If things don’t go well, I can always get back.’

“He’s been brilliant at different times in his career. We’ve always felt if you’ve been great once, you can be great again.”

There is no smooth, parabolic arc to that career.

“Up and down,” Theodore said. “Which is part of the process, I think. I’m happy with the way I bounce back. I’m proud of it.”

Theodore, 32, hit the daily double when he won both the Vezina Trophy as the league’s top goalie and the Hart Trophy as the NHL MVP in 2001-02 with Montreal. But within a few years, he was practically booed out of town, traded to Colorado late in the 2005-06 season.

He remained stuck in a post-lockout funk until he led the Avalanche to the playoffs during the second half of last season and practically willed them to a first-round victory against Minnesota. A 3-2 win in Game 5 especially stood out.

“Jose saved us tonight,” Colorado star Peter Forsberg said at the time. “It’s great to have a goalie like that to steal a win on the road.”

Sprinkled in, too, have been rumors and whispers and hard facts. Sometimes things just happened, such as when he slipped on the ice and broke his heel during the 2006 Olympics break. Critics said he grew complacent after his 2002 season, caught up in off-ice activities. He denies that, noting that he made the All-Star team in 2003-04. But he does admit he lost his “focus” and his “edge” for two years after the lockout.

He’s not sure why that happened but insists the arrests of his father and half brothers on dozens of criminal charges, including extortion and “gangsterism,” didn’t distract him. They avoided prison, but a Montreal-based sandwich chain pulled commercials featuring Theodore.

Theodore, who once placed 12th on Sports Illustrated’s list of best-looking male athletes, has a 2-year-old daughter and has toned down an active social life that produced a rite of passage among certain high-profile athletes - an official, linked-with-Paris Hilton tabloid and Internet blitz.

“I have no comment about that,” he said.

During a pre-Olympics screening in 2005, Theodore tested positive for a substance that some athletes have used to mask steroid use. It’s found in the hair-restoring product Propecia, which Theodore said he took for its intended purpose. The NHL took no action.

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