ITR 26ers AAA Hockey

Birthday - 19.Jänner, 1984

Place of birth - Baden, Austria
Jersey# - 26
Position - LW
Height - 6'2"
Weight - 207 pounds

DRAFTED: BUF / 2003 NHL ENTRY DRAFT

ROUND: 1ST (5TH OVERALL)Thomas played his Junior Hockey for the Sioux Falls Stampede of the USHL. There Thomas registered 80 goals and 73 assists during his three year and 108 game-stint with the Stampede. In his last year with Sioux Falls Thomas even broke the club record by scoring 46 goals and 45 assists.

During the season 2002/03 Thomas became the first European ever to take the ice for the MN Gophers.

What followed was one of the most outstanding rookie-seasons in US-college-hockey: 31 goals, 31 assists in 45 regular season games, and finally the triumph at the "frozen four". Thomas scored the game winning goals in the semi-finals and in the final. Furthermore, Thomas was voted MVP of the tournament, voted into the All-Star-Team of the tournament and  rookie of the year.

Thomas made his NHL debut on the 5th of October 2005. On November 9th he scored his first goal in a Sabres uniform (his 14th NHL-game) against Carolina.  Thomas went on to become the second best goal-scorer of the Sabres. All in all he recorded 25 goals and 23 assists during his rookie-season with the Sabres.

Thomas became the Sabres leading goal scorer during his sophomore season: 84 points (43 goals, 41 assists) in the regular season were only topped by the Sabres' superstar Danny Briere.  Amongst goal-scorers Thomas was the best on an outstanding Sabres roster and number 5 in the whole league. Even more important: Thomas had radically improved his defensive play, which showed in a staggering +47 (as opposed to the -11 the year before) in the NHL's plus/minus ranking - as the first Austrian ever Thomas was regular-season-winner in one of the important NHL-rankings.

Furthermore, Thomas was the first NHL-player since Milan Hejduk during the 2002/03 campaign to record a 40/40-season: more than 40 goals and more than a +40 in the plus/minus rankings. The playoffs saw yet another fruitless Cup-run for the Sabres. Ottawa proved to be too strong. Still, the summer of 2007 will be an unforgettable one for Thomas. First, he signed a new seven-year-contract with Buffalo over 50 Million Dollars, second, Thomas became daddy of son Blake Thomas in mid of August.

The season 07/08 saw the first major break in Tom’s steady rise to the top.  In October Tom was voted "athlete of the year" in Austria. He was the first hockey-player in the history of this most important sports-award in Austria to achieve this feat. But then the Sabres just couldn’t get over the loss of Daniel Briere and Chris Drury who had left the club in the summer of 2007. Especially the first few months without their co-captains saw the Sabres string together some wins and a lot more losses. Of course, Tom’s performance was affected by that, too. But the Sabres wouldn’t back down and got better and more consistent from the All-star-break on. Tom netted four hat-tricks, in the end Buffalo missed the playoffs by 4 points. Despite the slow start, Thomas finished the season with 36 goals and 28 assists.