When you're Jose Theodore, your life is a perpetually roiling raft trip through Class VI white-water rapids.

You party like a rock star. You hang with international starlets. Your photograph regularly adorns the covers of gossip tabloids. You become entwined in odd, out-of-the-clear-blue-sky scandals that always seem to have some sort of bizarre twist.

When you're Jose Theodore, life is, uh, let's say, eventful.

The honchos who run the Colorado Avalanche knew what they were getting into in March when they shockingly traded regular goaltender David Aebischer, an accomplished and understated young Swiss fellow, to the Montreal Canadiens for Theodore.

The Avalanche people knew about Theodore's history of off-ice incidents, about his unquenchable thirst for the night life. They knew his capacity for igniting forest-fire scandals with personal screw-ups was dangerously high.

But Pierre Lacroix, then the Avalanche general manager and still its president, thought it was worth the risk. He knew Theodore was, albeit briefly, the best goalie in the NHL only four years ago.

Lacroix knew Theodore's performance in goal dropped the past few seasons, but he felt a change of scenery would do him good.

It's too early to tell whether the decision was fruitful for the local hockey team. Theodore was up-and- down during his five-game stretch of Avalanche regular-season play, became a brick wall in the team's first-round playoff victory against the Dallas Stars, then returned to mediocrity, along with his teammates, in the second-round dismantling by the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.

When the trade happened, many knowledgeable hockey mavens said Theodore would come to Colorado and regain the form he showed in 2001-02, when he won the Hart Trophy as the NHL's most valuable player and the Vezina Trophy as its top goalie.

They said the relative calm of Denver's party scene would be good for him, that he would settle down with his longtime girlfriend and infant daughter and live happily ever after.

But a wrench came careening into that scenario two weeks ago, when the mop-haired 29-year-old was photographed holding hands and "canoodling" with omnipresent starlet/ heiress Paris Hilton at a VIP party after the MuchMusic Video Awards in Toronto.

The couple then reportedly repaired to a trendy hotel, where witnesses witnessed more canoodling.

The Paris-Jose canoodling - more on that versatile, multifaceted word later - would not have been such a big deal if our man did not happen to be the most public of figures and happen to have a popular live-in girlfriend, who gave birth to the couple's first child in March.

The girlfriend, Stephanie Cloutier, herself a megacelebrity in Quebec as the offspring of one of the province's richest and most powerful entertainment families, reportedly responded to her man's purported tryst with Hilton by tossing him, flowing-locks-first, out of the house.

Little has been heard from Theodore since, except for a recent sighting of the goalie and Cloutier shopping for sunglasses at Saks Fifth Avenue in Cherry Creek. That is unusual because Jose Theodore's life is all about volume.

What the Avalanche has in its hunky, party-happy goalie surely is the only major athlete in history who has:

• Won a league MVP trophy.

• Tested positive for the hair-restoration drug Propecia, which got him bounced from a chance to compete at the Olympics.

• Been photographed, whiskey bottle in hand, partying with a bunch of menacing Hells Angels.

• Endured a burgeoning family scandal that led to the convictions of his father and four half brothers for their roles in a loan-sharking scam.

• Slipped on some ice in front of his house - or so he says - injuring his right heel and forcing him to miss a portion of last season before the Canadiens unloaded him. Rumors swirled at the time Theodore's story was bogus, that he actually messed up the heel while on a secret ski junket with yet another starlet.

• Canoodled with Paris Hilton.

Doesn't matter who you are or where you are. That's some kind of résumé, right there.

Living in a glass house

Had Theodore produced such a consummate list of extracurricular activities in, say, Nashville, Tenn., or Columbus, Ohio, it wouldn't have been such a big, earth-shaking deal.

But from 1996, when he was a teenage, local-boy-makes-good rookie with the Canadiens, until his trade to the Avalanche, Theodore was one of the most recognizable figures, athlete or otherwise, in his native Quebec.

For a decade, his life has been played out in the province's notorious gossip tabloids, which have all the tact and ethics of London's sleazy Fleet Street rags.

Jose - pronounced Joh-say - was an easy target. He was rich, talented, handsome, famous and local. And he kept messing up in astonishingly spectacular fashion.

He was money at the supermarket checkout counter, and, boy, did this latest misadventure get the tabloids vultures geeked up.

The Paris-Jose story got front- page treatment, complete with photos, alongside such irresistible headlines as "Pamela Anderson Gets Naked in London," "Aguilera Out-Divas Even Herself" and "Angelina Orders Brad to Remove Every Trace Of Jen."

One such enterprising "entertainment publication" came to the fore with an eight-page Paris-Jose spread.

So this was big stuff. Not everyone gets the opportunity to hang with Paris Hilton for a night, much less publicly canoodle with her, and if you're not familiar with that term, we are here to help.

Canoodle (ke-n-d'l), a term nearly as prevalent in celebrity gossip sheets as "boy toy" and "gal pal," is a verb defined as "to engage in caressing, petting or lovemaking."

That takes in a lot of possible territory, and the extent of the Paris-Jose canoodling remains unclear.

The published photos show the pair holding hands with their faces perilously close together. After the post-event party, the dashingly handsome hockey star and the painfully cute heiress were off to a trendy restaurant, where they reportedly were seen in "a passionate embrace."

After that, further canoodling may or may not have occurred at Hilton's hotel.

If you're thinking, "The paparazzi doesn't follow Joe Sakic or Todd Helton around like that," you're right.

But those guys, and both will gladly tell you this, have personal lives that are, by design, contentedly boring.

They avoid the spotlight like a plague. They aren't tripping the light fantastic every night along The Main, Montreal's rollicking downtown nightclub district, a party enclave that rivals that of any city in the world.

They haven't been banned from the Olympics for ingesting Propecia. They haven't partied and posed with Hells Angels. Five members of their immediate family haven't done jail time.

And they definitely haven't canoodled with Paris Hilton.

Curious decisions

Of all the Theodore shenanigans, the Propecia story might be the most befuddling. Here's a man, all of 29, with the flowing dark mane of a hair- band rock guitarist. His follicles are to die for. And he's using a hair-restoration product?

Huh?

So, obviously, when the story broke to a breathless province in February, people began fishing around. It turns out Propecia can be used to mask illegal steroids.

Theodore, who carries a skinny 180 pounds on his angular 5-foot-11 frame, laughed off the steroids accusation, saying he must not have much of a doctor because the steroids

weren't working.

The goalie said he had used Propecia for nine years not to regrow his hair but to stave off the horrors of future hair loss. This explanation, while failing to speak to Theodore's intelligence, clearly speaks to his vanity.

His family's legal struggles haven't helped Theodore's image, either.

In June 2003, his father, Ted Nicholas Theodore, and four of Jose's half brothers were arrested for an unseemly loan-sharking scheme run out of a Quebec casino.

The Theodores were charging in- debt sports gamblers obscene interest rates for loans, with videotape and wiretaps confirming to the court that one poor borrower was squeezed for $80,000 over a 15-year period on an $8,000 loan.

The long legal process finally came to its climax in September, when Ted Theodore, 71, was fined $30,000 and sentenced to six months of court-ordered detention by the Quebec Court of Appeal.

Jose was not connected directly to the scam and wasn't charged, but at one point, authorities audited the goalie's finances.

That ongoing mess, along with all the other stuff, makes you wonder if Theodore ever will work himself free of personal controversy.

But is he really that bad a guy? Let's examine what he did and didn't do.

He didn't punch anyone, didn't break any laws, didn't pull a Terrell Owens, didn't denigrate his teammates, didn't go AWOL from his team. No DUIs, no hit-and-runs. Never has he been suspected of alcohol or narcotics abuse.

By all accounts, he has been a good teammate, although a controversial one.

He posed with a menacing motorcycle gang. Dumb mistake, but basically harmless.

He has a bunch of unscrupulous criminals in his family. So do a lot of people. Doesn't mean he's a criminal himself.

He got hurt off-duty and may or may not have made up a story about it. Does Clint Barmes and venison ring a bell?

Oh, and he cheated on his girlfriend. Yeah, right, like he's the only taken man who has ever done that.

Most folks in Montreal believe the trade might be the best thing to happen to Theodore. The theory makes sense. He's out of Montreal, away from home, away from the tabloids.

Denver, as increasingly hip as it has become over the years, remains a tough place for a prominent athlete to get into real trouble, a town with relatively few opportunities to canoodle with starlets. Denver is not Los Angeles or New York or Montreal. This, indeed, might be a good thing for an errant hero.

"There's no doubt that Jose needed to get out of Montreal," said Pat Hickey, who covers the Canadiens for The (Montreal) Gazette. "A lot of hockey people felt that way, that what Jose and everybody involved

really needed was a new start. He was in those gossip magazines every day for something. It was just time.

"He'd just reached that point with this team. He knew it. The team knew it. Everybody around here knew it."

Hickey believes Theodore's lifestyle affected his performance between the Canadiens pipes. He also believes Theodore can become a dominant force again for the Avalanche if he really wants to be, if he truly is dedicated to ratcheting down his nocturnal meanderings and making his lifestyle less tumultuous.

"This past season was his worst in goal," Hickey said. "I don't think it's a coincidence that it's the year when all this stuff off the ice came to a head. I think he can become a great goalie again if he works harder and commits himself to it. And it wouldn't surprise me if it happens."

If it does, the Avalanche once again will have a dashing, popular, effective presence in goal.

As long as he takes it easy with the canoodling.

holtzr@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5439

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