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Quirky Thomas gets medieval on Habs
BOSTON – “Stronger ’til dawn, like
Lancelot.”
It’s hard to anticipate exactly what’s going to come
out of a goalie’s mouth, especially when that goalie is Tim
Thomas. The Bruin netminder has wowed fans with his play on ice,
won two Vezina Trophies, a Jennings Trophy, and of course a Stanley
Cup and Conn Smythe Trophy during his time in Boston. He’s
done so with an inimitable style that confounds just about every
stodgy hockey purist from Vancouver to Montreal.
Off-ice, he can be just as quirky.
After Monday night’s 3-2 win over Montreal, in which
he stopped 33 of 35 Canadien shots, Thomas held court for reporters
in front of his locker stall. He answered most of the routine
questions, well, routinely. Then a reporter asked him about the
team’s ability to hold on to third-period leads, since the
B’s withstood the Montreal assault after taking a 3-1 lead in
the third, albeit not without giving up a goal to Erik Cole with
1:14 to go.
“I don’t know, well, probably because we just
try to play every period just the same, not put an over-emphasis
on, ‘oh, this is the third period,’” he said
“We have confidence that we get stronger as the game goes
along.”
And then Thomas took the small gathering of scribes for a
spin through history.
“Stronger ‘til dawn, like Lancelot,” he
said, then looked at one reporter left bewildered by the reference.
“You know Lancelot, the knight? The real duels they had, some
of them would go all night, because they had so much armor and they
were so heavy, they could hardly move. Legend is that he just kept
getting stronger the longer it went, so that’s what I mean by
that.”
While the quote is prime material for ad hoc T-shirts, and
could plausibly end up an unofficial slogan for a team that has
several on its dressing room wall, it wasn’t without
reason.
The Bruins are undefeated when taking a two-goal lead this
year (17-0-0), and have the same record when leading after the
second periods. Their killer instinct has served them well,
especially on nights like Monday, when they seemed to hit a lull in
the second period.
“I didn’t like the fact that we only had a
one-goal lead against this team,” Bruins coach Claude Julien
said. “They always give us a hard game. They always give us a
real good challenge, so when you have a one-goal lead against that
team, it’s not something you want to sit on.
“Our motto has always been create the lead, and then
once you create it, you’ve got to work to extend the lead,
and we did that tonight, and thank goodness for that, because they
came back and scored a late goal.”
The line of Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and Tyler Seguin
looked disjointed early in the game, a somewhat ominous sign
considering the usually electrifying trio has combined for just
five goals in eight games in December.
“Part of it was us not taking the body, not being
first on the puck,” Bergeron said. “We gave them too
much time there and they created some offense and some play out of
it.
Then it combined for the play of the game and the eventual
game winner. Bergeron made a good pinch on Travis Moen just inside
the Canadien zone, and although he didn’t win the puck away
cleanly, Seguin was there to pick it up and run, dashing for the
net before feeding Marchand for a pretty backhander to make it 3-1
Boston with 5:46 to go.
It was a big play then, and even bigger four and a half
minutes later when Cole cut the B’s lead to 1.
“I thought our third period was much better and
that’s where we found our gear and we were executing and
being first on the puck,” Bergeron said. “That’s
how we got that turnover there for the goal.”
Thomas was also at his best in the third, including a huge
sequence at the 3:42 mark, in which he stopped a Mathieu Darche
drive, kicked away Darche’s rebound attempt, then tracked
Tomas Kaberle on the second rebound and stopped the former
Bruin’s backhander in traffic. He made 16 saves in the third,
including seven over the final 10 minutes.
After his “stronger ’til dawn” play, and
his brief dissertation on medieval legend, one reporter mused that
“Lancelot” might find its way into the lexicon as a new
nickname for the Michigan-born, Vermont-educated
goaltender.
He balked at the idea.
“I don’t know how you’re going to put that
one on me,” he said with a grin. “It probably
won’t fit with ‘Tank.’”
