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NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: BRUINS v CANUCKSMay 31, 2011Tim ThomasVANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA: Practice Day THE MODERATOR: Questions for Tim Thomas. Q. Talk about the opportunity to be in the Stanley Cup final. TIM THOMAS: Having taken the long road just to get to the NHL, I think I appreciate the opportunity to be here in the Stanley Cup finals, the opportunity that this presents, so... It's exactly where every hockey player wants to be, but it's hard to get to. Now that we're here, we should take advantage of it and try to take home the Cup. Q. A lot is made of your unorthodox style. How did that happen? Have you had to resist a lot of goalie coaches trying to make you change? TIM THOMAS: Well, I don't think it's as unorthodox as everyone else does. The media, they talk about it a lot more than I've even thought about it. But having said that, along the way I've had goalie coaches. They were all pretty good. They didn't necessarily try to change me. They tried to teach me new things. I think they did a good job. They've tried to show me new techniques without saying, You have to use this or that. They've given me the information and kind of backed off and let me apply it to my game myself. I think that's part of the reason that I've grown to this type of success and continued to get better as I've been fortunate enough to have a lot of goalie coaches all the way up that have helped me without trying to change me. Q. Describe where you were last year at this time. TIM THOMAS: I mean, at this time last year we were having summer vacation, just like about 28 teams right now are on vacation, our off-season. The ones who started workouts probably wouldn't be calling it vacation anymore. To be honest with you, at this point last summer, I wasn't thinking, I'm going to be in the Stanley Cup finals next year. I was probably maybe it's got to be close to a year when I had the surgery for my hip. It was at the end of May. I was just barely out of surgery for my hip. My first thoughts were just that I got to get this hip better. That was the first thing on my mind at that point of the summer. Q. Did you ever think you would never get this opportunity? TIM THOMAS: The Stanley Cup, you mean? Q. Yes. TIM THOMAS: You wonder, you know. I'm sure every player wonders whether they're going to get the opportunity. I don't know. As we started to have some success earlier this year, the thought does cross your mind, Is this the type of team that does have what it takes to win a Stanley Cup? There was no definitive answer at that time. You never know until you get there. We've been battle-tested, we've been Game-7 tested a couple of times now. We just found a way to do it. If you would have asked me before the playoffs if we'd be in the Stanley Cup finals, I couldn't have told you, Yes, we're going to be. I would have told you, Well, we have the potential, but you got to keep doing it. That's what this team has found a way to do. Q. Is battle tested the character of this team? TIM THOMAS: It was something that we just learned throughout this season. We just found ways to win, which is why we ended up the third seed in the east. Whether we got down early, there were a few games where we were able to come back and win that game or we took the lead early and let the other team back into it, but we still found a way to put it together so we could win. We found many different ways to get the job done, and that served us well in these playoffs. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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