Imagine if the Boston Bruins had traded Tim Thomas to the Philadelphia Flyers or the Washington Capitals? I don't think they would have made it out of the first series against the Montreal Canadians. Going back to last season I can remember a lot of fans wanting to get rid of Tim Thomas who ended up getting hip surgery in the off-season and returned to his Vezina Trophy winning form of 2008-2009.
Tim Thomas of old
Tim Thomas came back like gang busters during the 2010-2011 regular season posting a record breaking 2.00 GAA and .938 Save percentage and a 35-11-9 record. Tim Thomas was even more impressive in the post season racking up an impressive 1.98 GAA and a .940 save percentage with a 16-9 record in 25 playoff games. Thomas retook the starting job away from the younger Tuukka Rask 2.67 GAA and .918 save percentage and a regular season record 11-14-2. I think Thomas proved the Nay Sayers wrong by proving that he could still play at a high level. I can't even phantom what would have happened to the Boston Bruins had Thomas been traded.
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.
