BOSTON ”“ It’s not time to ask the “Tuukka Whuu?” question, at least not yet.

And probably not ever.

Still there is something very heartening about the rebirth of the other half of the Boston Bruins goaltending tandem, grizzly old Tim Thomas.

Written off as being too old, too lame, too bizarre, and not stopping pucks the way his junior partner, Tuukka Rask, does, the 36 year old Thomas is making all his critics munch on their own words.

Thursday night in the Bruins home opener, Thomas stopped 34 shots to lead the B’s to a healthy 4-1 win over the powerful Washington Capitals.

That makes four wins in as many starts for the red-headed wonder, who is clearly enjoying playing the part of hockey’s Lazarus.

“I couldn’t be happier with the way I’m feeling this far,” Thomas said. “You know, now I’ve just got to keep working hard and keep working in practice, and there’s ways that I can make it easier on myself. That will be my goal in practice.”

 One year removed from winning the Vezina Trophy, Thomas muddled through most of last year, then lost his starting job altogether to the talented young Finn, Rask.

However, he appears to have renewed his claim on the No. 1 job by allowing less than a goal per game, while having racked up career shutout No. 18 along the way.

Hampered last year by a torn hip muscle, an off-season operation has made the acrobatic Thomas more Slinky-like than ever.

“Well, I think it’s been exceptional the last couple of weeks since, you know, I got back into the groove,” Thomas said. “You know, it’s fun when you can move.”

Hockey is all about “what have you done lately”.

All Thomas has done is win games for the B’s.

He’s also won back the confidence (if indeed he had ever lost it) of Bruins head coach Claude Julien.

“Well, you know when a goaltender is in the zone” said Julien. “You want to ride him and I think the way he played in Washington the other night, coming back with him was important because, you know, they knew what they were going to face, and he didn’t give them much in Washington and I thought, you know, maybe mentally it was giving us an edge also to put him in net against them again tonight and, I mean, he proved us right. I mean, he was outstanding tonight.”

He might have had shutout No. 19, too, if in the third period, he hadn’t come wandering out of his net too far and given the puck away to Washington’s Jason Chimera, who promptly pocketed Washington’s lone goal.

Known as an incessant wanderer, it was just another case of “Timmy being Timmy”.

“The puck, obviously, was coming to me,” said Thomas, “and I saw a few of the Capitals guys going to change.  I saw [Blake] Wheeler up on the wing there coming back, and you know, ‘Wheels deserves’ to get a goal here pretty soon, and I wanted to get him the puck. I got hungry for an assist and I just got greedy. I should’ve just kept it simple.”

As for a goaltending controversy, Thomas insists that no such animal is brewin’ in Bruin Nation.

You know,” he said, “Tuukka and I are a tandem. There’s room enough for us both to play and for us to get the games that we both can get. Sometimes you might win and then not get to play the next game and, you know, Last year, Tuukka played better at home than I did, so I wouldn’t have been surprised either way. (But) he coach showed confidence in me by giving

me the home opener and I wanted to reward not just him, but the whole home crowd.”

— Contact Dan Hickling at dhickling@journaltribune.com.