Tim Thomas: How Long Can the Aging Goaltender Remain a Dominant Force?

The data does not deceive. Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas had his single-worst outing of the 2011-12 season last Wednesday when he came off the bench in ostensible relief of Tuukka Rask.

Playing 38 minutes and eight seconds, Thomas let the Buffalo Sabres beat him thrice on 19 registered tries. That translated to a season-low, single-night goals-against average of 4.72 coupled with a season-low .842 save percentage.

Thomas’ next outing, a full-length bout with the Nashville Predators that spilled over to a shootout, was not much of an improvement by the reigning Vezina winner’s standards. He authorized three goals on 22 shots in 64:58 of crease time for a day’s save percentage of .864, his third-worst single-game transcript on the year.

Tuesday night against the top-dog New York Rangers? Three goals against and only 17 stops for a .850 save percentage.

Wednesday’s averted disaster of a shootout win at Montreal? Three more pucks in his net along with a .897 save percentage.

Thomas has gone 17 appearances since his last shutout. In that span, he has only confined four opponents to a single goal and has posted a sub-.900 save percentage in nine games.

The 37-year-old, blue-collar backstop’s protracted downward/limbo trend is all the more perplexing given the way he defied all logic from October to the first week of December, all but duplicating his sparkly 2010-11 campaign.

Upon losing a hard-fought staring contest with Florida’s Jose Theodore Dec. 8, which snapped a personal 10-game winning streak, Thomas had a 13-5-0 record and not a single reprehensible outing on his transcript. In addition, he was second on the NHL leaderboard in both save percentage (.941) and goals-against average (1.83).

In the 10 weeks since, he has gone 11-6-0 and tumbled to eighth place among league stoppers with a 2.22 GAA and a tie for fifth with a .928 save percentage. He trails his colleague Rask in both categories.

Granted, those do not appear to be particularly alarming plunges on the surface. But Thomas’ saving grace in that regard is the collateral he collected over the first two months of the season, when the eldest holdover from the Bruins’ Stanley Cup run superhumanly overcame short rest and post-title hangover better than any of his peers.

Was his Dec. 10 outing in Columbus, when he was pulled at the second intermission after allowing three goals on 25 shots, the beginning of the end? Are Thomas’ days of domination irrecoverably lost at this point?

The final month of the regular season and the subsequent postseason will be the best time to answer those questions. With the exception of last season, which nobody can be justifiably beseeched to equate, Thomas has had at least one prolonged, frustrating funk in each of his six full NHL seasons.

The timing and extent of his redress remains to be seen, but in the past, Thomas has tightened the Bruins’ borders in the most critical moments.

Whether it has been for the sake of cementing a playoff passport, elevating Boston’s spot in the bracket or prolonging the team’s stay in the playoffs, Thomas is characteristically stingy when on duty in clutch situations.

In 2007-08, when first-year head coach Claude Julien’s pupils were on a cliffhanger along the playoff bracket borderline, Thomas went on a timely and convincing six-game unbeaten streak. He went 4-0-2 in that span without allowing more than two goals in any of those individual ventures.

The streak began with the season-series finale versus the then-mighty Montreal Canadiens, who had won the first seven meetings, all in regulation, by a cumulative score of 36-14. But on March 22, 2008, Thomas’ 29-save effort at least allowed Boston to whittle a long-awaited point off their rivals in a 3-2 shootout loss.

The streak ended in the penultimate game on the schedule, when Thomas repelled all but one of 18 shots to hold off the Ottawa Senators, 2-1, and secure the Bruins’ first playoff entry in four years.

Since then, Thomas has been tabbed to patrol the crease in three of Boston’s last four postseason runs. In that time, he has aggregated a 26-17 record, including an 8-2 mark when the Bruins are facing elimination.

Although they sputtered in the seventh game against Montreal in 2008 and Carolina in 2009, they valiantly deleted initial 3-1 series deficits to force the deciding tilt. And last spring, Thomas shattered the trend of Game 7 futility with three do-or-die triumphs plus a home win over Vancouver that barred the Canucks from hoisting the Stanley Cup at TD Garden.

Oh, and he pulled off one of those Game 7 wins in overtime, pitched a shutout in the other two and helped Boston rally from a pair of initial two-games-to-none potholes.

Thomas will be hard-pressed to ever equate his 2010-11 game log and transcript, but his exceptional effectiveness has yet to prove it cannot reemerge at the most meaningful points of the season.