NHL, College Hockey, Football, Dirt Track Racing
Joe Haggerty; CSNNE.COM ---- The B’s goalie was great from his first appearance of the regular season, and broke through with an epic postseason performance after never finding the secret sauce during his previous Game 7 experiences. A .940 save percentage, a 1.98 goals against average, four shutouts, and a 16-9 overall record following a Vezina Trophy-winning season mean that years from now people will refer to 2010-11 as “The Year of Tim Thomas.” But it almost didn’t happen that way for Boston, or for the goalie that went into training camp with a snow white set of goalie pads and a white mask free of all Bruins logos that revealed a few hard feelings headed into the season. That can happen when a player is dangled on the trade market as a necessary evil due to salary cap issues, and it pushed Thomas into “prove people wrong” mode headed into this year. That’s always a good place for Thomas to be once he’d gotten over the initial vexation at being involved in trade whispers. Chiarelli admitted on Friday morning he’d taken phone calls about Tim Thomas, and sources indicated then to CSNNE.com that the most seriously interested parties were Washington and Philadelphia. The Bruins and Flyers had casually discussed a deal involving Thomas to the Flyers while the goalie was recovering from hip surgery after losing his playoff starting role to a younger goaltending model in Tuukka Rask.
