It’s hard to imagine Tage Thompson being a goal stopper instead of an elite goal scorer. Fortunately, Boston Bruins legend Patrice Bergeron was in the right place at the right time to put an end to such nonsense.
Thompson, the 27-year-old center and alternate captain for the Buffalo Sabres, has developed into one of the top players in the National Hockey League. Originally selected in the first round (No. 26 overall) of the 2016 draft by the St. Louis Blues, Thompson was eventually traded to Buffalo during the summer of 2018 in the deal that sent Ryan O’Reilly to the Blues.
It turned out to be one of those seemingly rare win-win types of transactions. St. Louis got its first-ever Stanley Cup, with O’Reilly earning the Conn Smythe Trophy, while Buffalo received a player who would become the face of the franchise, although not without some bumps along the way.
Tage Thompson Tells of Patrice Bergeron Ending His Desire to be a Goalie
The 6-foot-6, 220-pound Thompson struggled in his first few seasons with the Sabres, but the breakout would come in 2021-22, when Thompson finished with 68 points in 78 games. The next season saw Thompson truly explode, with 47 goals and 47 assists in 78 games, and despite slumping to 29 goals in 2023-24, Thompson rebounded in a big way last year, finishing with 44 goals, which tied for third highest in the league.
Which makes it that much more difficult to understand Thompson actually wanting to be the shot blocker instead of the shot maker. But as he explained about a year ago to the Empty Netters podcast, there was a point in time when Thompson envisioned himself as the man in the mask.
“I had a huge phase where I wanted to be a goalie,” he said.
Turns out that it was Bergeron, the longtime Bruins center and future Hall of Famer, who helped get that out of Thompson’s system.
During the 2004-05 season, Thompson — son of former defenseman and coach Brent Thompson — was living in Providence, Rhode Island, while his father finished his playing career with the AHL’s Providence Bruins. That year, with the NHL shut down by a lockout, Patrice Bergeron also found himself in the AHL, skating for Providence alongside many other NHLers, and as Thompson told the hosts of Empty Netters, his father would ask Bergeron to go out in the street where Thompson was playing in goal and “light him up.”
“So Bergeron would shoot on me and just snipe me, and I was like, ‘I’ve had enough of this, I don’t want to be a goalie,’” Thompson said.
Instead, Thompson said he knew from that point what he wanted to do.
“I was like, ‘I want to be like that. I want to score, that looks cool,’” Thompson said.
Patrice Bergeron Showed Young Tage Thompson That Scoring Goals ‘Looks Cool’
And the rest is history. Thompson would go on to be a member of the U.S. National Development Team in the United States Hockey League, and then play collegiately at the University of Connecticut, before getting drafted.
Eventually, Thompson got the chance to line up as a pro across from Bergeron, and much to Thompson’s surprise, the NHL veteran immediately struck up a quick conversation with the youngster.
“He’s just a class act, too, he’s a great guy, and he was asking about me and my brother and, you know, just the whole family, how we’re doing,” Thompson said. “That was pretty cool to me, because I didn’t even know if he was going to remember me, so it was a pretty cool experience.”
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