TIMMY THOMAS!
Game seven shut out!
Tim Thomas looks like the happiest teddy bear in the world.
Now, some of his highlights from the playoffs:
Remember this save during the Tampa Bay series?
Here he his body-checking a Sedin WHILE STOPPING THE PUCK:
And here he is taking care of babypants Burrows after Burrows tried to knock the stick out of his hands:
Finally, this save during the Tampa Bay series is delivered with a 360 spin, because why the fuck not?:
TIMMY THOMAS!
I think someone has a crush.
@1 Psh, noooooo. Why? Did he say something? Do you think he likes me?
The Canucks didn’t choke. That would suggest they were the better team yet somehow lost, which pretty clearly is not the case. They got their butts kicked through and through.
child ..i saw ‘timmy thomas’ and immediately thought of this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGoN1qjs8…
@3 I didn’t say the Canucks choked, I said Luongo choked.
He’s had a pretty awesome run the past few seasons. Vezina trophy, Conn Smyth trophy, Stanley Cup, and a finalist for this year’s Vezina again. And the cinderella story of his career is pretty neat, too.
I do so love the playoff tradition of not shaving. He is so hot!
Our defense made a few huge mistakes. It wasn’t Luongo’s fault. Goal 1, who the hell was the Sedin line covering? Nobody. Goal 3, the refs scored that goal. Would have been disallowed in any other game. Did Lu play amazing the whole playoffs through? No, but he sure stole a few games that we shouldn’t have won.
I don’t care about hockey, but HELLO HOT BEAR.
Canucks are faders. Always have been, always will be. The only difference is that they faded later than usual. No mental toughness.
Hey Canucks fan losers, whose wagon are you going to jump on next season?
I’m so in love with Tim Thom it’s kinda ridiculous. The man only let up 8 goals in 7 Stanley Cup final games. Holy damn.
I want one for my team – no offense to my beloved Marc-Andre Fleury – but Tim Thomas is mesmerizing to watch. So happy to see him get the Conn Smythe last night and then hoist the Cup.
@8, I’ve watched the replay of goal #3 a whole bunch of times, and it was definitely legit. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? The first goal was the game-winner.
@ 8, Luongo still didn’t put in the kind of effort Thomas did.
You are correct in that it was a team loss. You are incorrect about goal # 3 – only a hardcore Canucks fan would think it was clear that it was punched in. (It has to be obvious in the video, or the ruling on the ice stands.) But that goal didn’t matter.
Has anyone else ever seen an NHL game, even with the Cup on the line, where they pulled the goalie with more than 3:00 remaining on the clock? That was a first for me.
Actually, I have to correct myself – goal # 3 did matter because the Canucks were still in it up to that point. That was the moment they lost the game.
The parallels are eerie. Roberto Luongo is now the LeBron James of the NHL.
Michigan represent!
I love Tim Thomas. I love that he stayed classy when his opponent didn’t, and I love how happy he is right now.
Fucking refs.
As usual, Will is wrong. I thought the zebras did an exceptional job in this series, especially considering how contentious and physical it was.
@ 15, I’m seeing that cliché-to-be a lot today, and I don’t see the comparison as valid. For one, Luongo has never been the kind of goalie that Roy, Hasek or Brodeur have been; but LeBron is widely believed to be one of the best NBA players ever. Even Scottie Pippen, just a few weeks ago, said he was probably better than Michael Jordan. For another, Luongo has never promised multiple championships or blamed his teammates and coaches for his own failings.
Luongo chokes under pressure. So does LeBron. So have a lot of other top talent athletes. But Lebron, so far as I know, is the only choker who has also been considered one of his sport’s premier players. (Yes, that reputation is severely tarnished today, but it will go away when he finally gets that championship. And given where he’s at, he may finally be held accountable and be forced to grow up. Maybe.)
And Vansterdam is riot-burning because of some hockey thing? I thought the Bruins were UCLA? Sweet FSM the Sports is confusin.’ Anyhoo, all five of the Canucks in BC whose brains haven’t been fried by dope have set it off.
If I’m so wrong, why were there riots?
Yeah, thought so.
Fucking refs.
@21, you sound like a true Canuck fan. Whine, blame the refs, then throw a temper tantrum.
Even if goal 3 wasn’t legit (and it was), it would have been a penalty shot and LOLuongo would have been sniped by Bergeron, so it wouldn’t have mattered. High glove, he can’t touch it.
Will – agree that the reffing last night was less than stellar. However, on the goal call they got it right – which is to say they did the only thing they could do when they couldn’t clearly see if the puck was knocked in by a hand. Ruling on the ice stands unless it’s clear via video that it was wrong, and you just can’t tell with that one.
The refs didn’t lose this one for you guys. The Canucks did. They’re just not going to win when the Wonder Twins go -4 on the night.
@21, You are just never not a shit-for-brains, are you? I bet you know less about hockey than you do your own dick.
Matt from Denver @19, I’ll admit that I’m not nearly as knowledgeable about hockey as I am about basketball. I’ve just considered Roberto Luongo one of hockey’s elite goaltenders. He started in the net for Team Canada in the Olympics. He had spectacular regular season stats:
http://espn.go.com/nhl/statistics/player…
http://espn.go.com/nhl/statistics/player…
And I’m talking elite among today’s goalies, not past greats. Does he have the same stature in his league as LeBron does in his? No.
Here’s where I see the parallel, besides the choking part:
1. Most talented player on the most talent team. Granted you could make a case for the Sedin twins–or Dwyane Wade.
2. All throughout the playoffs he was the most intensively scrutinized player on the most intensively scrutinized team.
3. Displayed brilliance throughout the postseason. They wouldn’t have gotten to the championship round without him.
4. Descended into ordinary, or even poor, play in the final. Yeah, choked.
5. Picked up some really bad karma in the final round. LeBron with the premature celebration in Game 2 and the mocking of Dirk Nowitzki’s illness. Luongo with his griping about Tim Thomas’s risky play and Thomas somehow not giving him any credit.
@3 the Canucks were far and away the best team in the league in the regular season, which is probably a better measure of a team’s true talent than how they perform in a 7 game series.
@21 yeah, I’m sure it was the refs, and not the fact that downtown Vancouver was filled with people who started drinking at 5 o’clock at the latest, and probably more like 1.
@8 That 3rd goal was legit. The Canuck had hauled the Bruin down (there was going to be a penalty called if Boston hadn’t scored). No way is that goal typically disallowed.
What does usually happen though, is that the goalie makes more than a cursory attempt to stop the damn puck. I cannot even count the number of times I have seen goalies getting shoved into the net on collisions yet keeping one limb out so the puck doesn’t get pushed across the line. Luongo didn’t even bother to try. He seemed more concerned with not getting hit. To me that goal was more damning than any of the others he let in. He is soft. Hopefully for the Canucks he toughens up since they are stuck with him for the rest of his career.
Oh, come on, Will, the goal was legit. The Canucks played hard, but the Bruins were the clear winners, and I’m happy for them (especially Thomas — he’s phenomenal!). I hated thinking it, but before last night’s game I was already convinced that Boston deserved this cup. It hurts, but it’s true. And yeah, a lot of their players ARE Canadian, and you should be proud of them.
As for the rioters, that was fucked, but I’m not that surprised. These are the same kind of assholes who come into Vancouver from the suburbs to gay-bash on weekends. Greater Vancouver is full of these thugs. It’s one of the reasons I left.
I spent 13 years as a goaltender. That 3rd goal was a breakdown in fundamentals. In a situation where there is going to be contact, you lay down and get your legs stretched to the back of the net (or at least get a skate blade perpendicular to the direction of the momentum. you also back up a trapped puck w/ a pad or a stick
Mr Thomas was outstanding. My heros were Billy Smith and Chico Resch, but if I were a young goalie today, he’d be the one I’d watch.
@ 28, funny how trouble like this, no matter where it happend, is ALWAYS the fault of outsiders, isn’t it? Every place is just so nice. The people who live there NEVER do anything bad.
@ 25, you forgot that the Canucks collectivy blew a 3-0 lead in the first round and faced a game 7 then, too. Like last night, that was the fault of all the key players. So, Luongo’s play wasn’t brilliant throughout the playoffs.
I still think his stature as an all-time great who curiously folds under the pressure of winning it all (to say nothing of his immodesty) makes him a bit distinct from Luongo. LeBron lost the finals for Miami, but Luongo had other teammates who failed to deliver.
@25
It’s pretty much a rhetorical parallel intended to gage comparative dislike. You seem to be approaching it as if it’s the task of translating metric to standard.
By the logic of analyzing their roles, their talents and potentials though I will say that Lebron has as much business being stacked up against the greats as Luongo does which is none.
If the NHL were as hot a commodity as the NBA I’m sure Nike, ESPN and SI would have shoved Luongo down our throats like they have Lebron. Lebron’s absolute value has always been physical prowess and potential. It has never been in achievement. Ever since he went pro a demand has been made on the public that they begin treating him as if his accomplishments were a foregone conclusion.
Myself, I have never drank the Kool-Aid. Stats aside, Lebron remains unproven and I remain unimpressed. I’ve gone and watched him play plenty. The Emperor wears no clothes. His juicy, “gift-that-keeps-on-giving approach to inadvertently manufacturing bad publicity is a more recent phenomenon and I think it’s more germane to the comparisons between he and Luongo.
So the imperfect comparison of Luongo and James works for me even in terms of comparing their game and their potential but I don’t think that’s exactly what’s at the heart of the comparisons.
@30: True, Greater Vancouver IS Vancouver. And twice I’ve suffered attempted assaults by strangers, and it was in Vancouver proper. I take your point.
@5: Sorry, you’re absolutely right.
I still might quibble with the idea the Canucks played “lousy.” It implies they were really much better but somehow got their butts kicked. Give credit to Boston.
As awesome as it was, that body check was probably ill-advised.
Matt from Denver @31: Luongo’s play wasn’t brilliant throughout the playoffs.
Good point about Luongo’s poor performance against Chicago in Round 1. I’d been thinking about that weird series, and what I meant to write (and should have written) @25 was:
“3. Displayed flashes of brilliance throughout the postseason. They wouldn’t have gotten to the championship round without him.”
For most of the Canucks’ run to the Final, Luongo was brilliant. A few times he was horrible, but 1-0 wins count as much as blowout losses. They really wouldn’t have gotten there without him.
Another parallel between Roberto Luongo and LeBron James is that both their teams were favorites in the final(s). As for who’s more blameworthy for his team’s ouster, let me put that another way: If you had to pick a single goat on the Heat roster, it was LeBron. And if you had to pick a single goat on the Canucks roster, it was Roberto.
@34 Oh totally, it wasn’t just that the Cancuks played a bad game, but Boston played a good one. That whole post is dedicated to the brilliance of Tim Thomas, in fact. Surely that has to count as giving credit to Boston, yeah?
And now for the bonus round: What-ifs!
What-if #1: I love Ryan Miller but this series begs the question: Would Team USA have won gold if Tim Thomas were in net and Ryan Miller were on the bench?
What-if #2: Who would have won the Stanley Cup if Tampa had won game 7 of the ECF?
What-if #3: Would Vancouver have been torched last night if the Canucks had won?
My answers:
1) Yes
2) Tampa
3) Yes
@ 25 I’d say there’s a difference between holding a TV special to tell everyone you got a new job, then staging what looked like a title celebration before the season even starts, and then making fun of the best player on the other team for being sick, and a guy saying, albeit in a dumb way, that another player has a different style than he does.
@ 36 I don’t think there were any goats for the Heat besides James, whereas Luongo, the Sedins and Kesler were all pretty useless, not to mention. I mean, they scored 8 goals in 7 games. 8! And 3 of those were meaningless.
It’s also how funny people are so ready to jump on the anti-Canuck media train about Luongo’s comment about Thomas being out of the paint. It was a candid quip that he shouldn’t have made but if you listen to the whole sound bite he goes on to talk about how many saves Thomas makes that he himself would not due to his own style of play.
I just also love how everyone harps on the Canucks for being such cheaters, divers, crybabys, etc… Yet the Bruins were darling angles doing no harm. What a frickin’ joke. After 20 slashes to the back of my legs not getting called I’d probably embellish calls as well. Consistency in the refs was the problem. If they called penalties by the book, there’d be no reason to embellish.
@40
Consistent calls in the NHL will be more common when the Board of Governors take steps to cultivate a traditional style of play (ala MLB) with a conservative interpretation of the rules as opposed to perennial rule tweaks in the interest of driving up scoring.
They need to decide on the NHL system’s rules and put a 40 year moratorium on amending their rule book. Plain and simple. Consistency in calls is destroying the legitimacy of the league.
You can’t blame the refs for the Canucks though. They are historically dirty. They dive excessively and people aren’t imagining that or blind to it in other teams. Everyone does it. The Canucks live and die by it.
Do you understand the history of the Vancouver organization? They have an institutional grudge against the NHL and a historically adversarial relationship with the Toronto warroom dating back to the Patrick Brothers paranoid hatred of Stafford Smythe and visa versa. The culture of the team is paranoid and disaffected from the roots out. Don’t take my word for it. Go dig around. Talk to some old timers.
This isn’t some recent manufactured narrative. This isn’t a band-wagon thing and it’s not new. Hockey fans have been shaking their heads at the Nucks for decades. Nobody questions the perception of the Raiders or the Yankees but there sure are an awful lot of people on this Stranger blog who are calling bullshit on the perception of the Canucks.
And for what it’s worth it would sure take an awful lot of fancy refpuck to level up a 25-8 disparity in goals.
Hell yeah, Tim Thomas stole the show. He deserves every minute of the glory.
UnoriginalAndrew @39, I’ll concede the LeBron parallels only go so far. LeBron deserves to be called classless. Luongo no, some dumb comments notwithstanding. And you and Matt from Denver are right that LeBron was a far bigger goat than Luongo was.
Besides, my little meme detracts from what a great accomplishment this was for the Bruins. I went into this series wanting Vancouver to finally get the Cup but not really having my heart in it. I came out happy the Bruins won.
Fuck all you vultures! It was a great year for hockey in bc, we all really enjoyed the playoff run. So we lost, that doesn’t mean we’re the biggest losers on earth. What have you wieners ever done? Nothing! That’s what.
Seriously, listening to all these know-it-all jerks after the loss, then that fucking embarrassing riot is just too much salt on the wounds. Look for me when seattle gets its hopes crushed and burns, I’ll come here laughing telling you all what a bunch of stupid assholes you are. Oh wait, I did come to Seattle the day after bush won the election in ’04. All you bastards were moping around acting sorry for yourselves. Did I laugh in your faces and say what stupid americans you are? No! All you little SOBs like to drool all over canada, and joke about moving here every time your ass-backwards country does something idiotic, and then you heap scorn on us because a few little jackasses broke some windows. Fuck you all! And leave Luongo alone!
Sorry Megan, you’re great. I just can’t take this today!!
Megan,
I’d love to see someone look into the art on Thomas’ helmet. “Don’t tread on me”? Is he a teabagger? 🙂
This is exactly the Stranger’s type of story! Pretty please?
Q: What time is it in Vancouver?
A: 20 past Luongo.