BOSTON – Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas says he’ll sit out next season.

“At the age of 38, I believe it is time to put my time and energies into those areas and relationships that I have neglected,” Thomas said on his Facebook page Sunday. “That is why at this time I feel the most important thing I can do in my life is to reconnect with the three F’s. Friends, Family, and Faith.”

On Friday, General Manager Peter Chiarelli said Thomas told the team he was thinking about sitting out a season.

A late bloomer who played in Finland before finally breaking into an NHL lineup at the age of 32, Thomas emerged as one of the league’s top goalies when he won the Vezina Trophy in 2009. He won it again along with the playoff MVP in 2011 while leading Boston to the Stanley Cup championship.

But he is also an iconoclast who was known to wander far from the crease in games and occasionally leave his comfort zone off the ice as well. When the Bruins met President Barack Obama to celebrate their NHL title, Thomas skipped the White House visit and issued a political diatribe on his Facebook page as explanation.

Chiarelli said Friday that Thomas appeared tired after the championship season, when he played in 82 games, including every minute of the longest postseason in Bruins history. He got very little time off down the stretch this year after backup Tuukka Rask was injured at the beginning of March.

If Thomas sits out, the Bruins would be left with Rask and Anton Khudobin as their top two goaltenders. Rask has long been projected as a rising star; he supplanted Thomas as the starter in 2009-10, but Thomas regained his position the next year.

STANLEY CUP: Although Mike Richards has only been in Los Angeles for less than a year, he has a pretty good idea what 45 years of simmering frustration will sound like when his Kings take the ice with the Stanley Cup nearly in reach.

“That’s probably one of the loudest rinks I’ve ever played in, and it’s going to be even louder tomorrow,” the center said Sunday, anticipating the energy at Staples Center for Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals tonight.

A coronation feels imminent for the Kings, who opened the finals by adding two more victories in New Jersey to the longest run of road perfection in NHL playoff history — 10-0 this season, and 12-0 dating to last season.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been on a team like this where everybody is locked in,” said Jeff Carter, who scored the overtime goal that won Game 2. “Everybody knows what they need to do to go out on the ice and get it done.”

 

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