The only one of those that I think is meaningful in an All-Time context is being voted the best player in the FEL during the lockout when there were NHL-calibre players in the FEL. The minor league stuff is meaningless when we're talking players of this calibre, IMO - it might be different if it were the AHL in the Original 6 era, but it isn't.
Being voted best goalie in the FEL in 1998 COULD be meaningful if it was over someone who was NHL-calibre, but I highly doubt it was.
Oh I completely agree. Once again, I wasn't trying to use those to show anything more than that Thomas wasn't just some random goalie who lucked into a good situation and managed to put up good numbers. Sorry for this long block of text about someone like Thomas, who probably isn't (an probably shouldn't) be considered in this round. It just came up, and I kinda dove in.
As best as I can tell, in 1997-98, Thomas beat out goalies like Fredrik Norrena, Jussi Markkanen, Vesa Toskala, and Mika Noronen. But he did it playing in only 18 games, which I don't know if that is a boost or a pitfall. The next year, the trophy was won by Miikka Kiprusoff, who didn't play in 1997-98, over players like those above, but also including Niklas Backstrom. Thomas only played in 14 games in 1998-99.
In the 1999-2000 season, Thomas played in the IHL with a remarkable number of goaltenders with NHL experience, including Marty Turco, Nikolai Khabibulin, Robert Esche, Manny Legace, Evgeny Nabokov, Chris Mason, and Tomas Vokoun. However, he didn't do well in this league, whatsoever.
In the 2000-01 season, he played in the SEL, which didn't have an award for goaltenders until the 2001-02 season. However, he did have the best SV% that year beating out a mostly unspectacular list of goalies including Pat Jablonski, Reinhard Divis, Mikael Tellqvist, and a young Henrik Lundqvist who only played in 4 games. He was 4th in GAA.
He returned to SM-Liiga in the 2001-02 season. The Urpo Ylonen trophy was won that year by Kari Lehtonen, over goaltenders such as Thomas, Bruce Racine, Anteri Niittymaki, and Norrena. I cannot find voting records to see where Thomas placed in either the 1998-99 or 2001-02 seasons.
From 2002 until 2006, with the exception of 04-05, he played in the AHL until he was called up for good in the 2005-06 season. In 2002-03 he was pretty unremarkable compared to goalies like Rick DiPietro, Mathieu Garon, Craig Anderson, Cristobal Huet, Ryan Miller, Ilya Bryzgalov, and numerous others. In 2003-04, he improved drastically, posting the 4th best GAA at 1.84 and 2nd best SV%, ahead of goalies like Miller, Niittymaki, Lehtonen, Anderson, and numerous others. In 2005-06, playing only 26 games, he had the best SV% of goalies with more than 20 games (Halak and Fleury played in the low double digits), and tied for the best GAA. He outplayed goalies such as Mike Smith, Jimmy Howard, Josh Harding, Al Montoya, Corey Crawford, and Pekka Rinne.
The year he won the MVP of SM-Liiga, 2004-05, he outplayed goaltenders such as Letohnen, Tomas Vokoun, Pekka Rinne, Dwayne Roloson, Karri Ramo, Andrew Raycroft, Toskala, Backstrom, and others that had NHL experience. Interestingly, Backstrom won the Urpo Ylonen trophy that year, his second in a row, after Lehtonen had taken two in a row. He also beat out skaters such as Jussi Jokinen, Patrik Stefan, Glen Metropolit, Jason Williams, Valterri Flippula, Marek Zidlicky, Brian Campbell, Sami Lepisto, Jarkko Ruutu, and Mike Ribeiro (who didn't play a full season), amongst others.
This is probably way too much information about Tim Thomas pre-NHL, but once I got started, I couldn't stop until I finished it.
