For all of the talk of Tim Thomas leaving his teammates high and dry, he sure did come up big for the guy who sits next to him in the Bruins’ dressing room. 

In deciding to spend next season focused on his “friends, family and faith” (and the more we say it, wouldn’t “The Three Fs” make a great band name?), Thomas gave Tuukka Rask both the starting job and big-time leverage in his negotiations with the Bruins. 

With Thomas out of the picture -- at least for the next season -- the Bruins are going from being able to use their favorite (and not always accurate) cliché about having two No. 1 goalies to having Rask and, assuming they don’t make a move for another netminder, Anton Khudobin as the NHL goalies next season.

No matter how you look at it, that’s a downgrade. Even so, the Bruins have always been confident in what Rask brings to the table. After stealing the starting job from an injured and ineffective Thomas late in the 2009-10, he even began the 2010-11 campaign as the starter before Thomas reclaimed his spot with one of the best single-season performances of the history of the game. 

This season, Rask made 22 starts before suffering an abdomen strain/groin strain on March 3 against the Islanders. The most starts he’s made in the NHL is 39 back in 2009-10, and that was the only time in his three NHL seasons that he’s started 30 or more games. Now, he should probably be looking at something in the ballpark of 60 games. With all due respect to Khudobin, this isn’t like having Thomas and Rask, where the backup can get 35 percent of the starts (essentially what happened in 2010-11). The Bruins remain a Cup contender, and they’ll have to lean on Rask with a bigger workload than Thomas has seen in years past. 

With a bigger workload will come a bigger paycheck, and the timing of Thomas’ decision couldn’t have worked out better for the Finnish netminder. Rask, 25, is a restricted free agent this summer, and after being unable to wrest the No. 1 spot from Thomas in the past two seasons, he figured to be due for an increase in playing time anyway. Still, with Thomas still the better goalie and under contract for one more season, the B’s could have driven a tougher bargain in negotiations. After all, it’s tough to give No. 1 goalie money to someone who might not necessarily be the No. 1 guy in the coming season. 

That’s all in the past now, as agent Bill Zito knows full well that the B’s need Rask (another one of his clients actually coined that “three Fs” thing), so he’ll be looking to score Rask a bigger payday this summer than he would have gotten before all of this Thomas news came out. 

Of course, there is the possibility that Rask could get paid elsewhere this offseason, but don’t count on it. A team could try to sign Rask away with an offer sheet in exchange for draft picks, but as Yahoo! Sports’ Greg Wyshynski noted Monday, if no team made a real play for a restricted free agent like Steven Stamkos (perhaps the league’s most talented scorer) or Drew Doughty (one of the best young defensemen in the game) last summer, it’s tough to imagine a team making one for Rask. Based on last year’s compensation (the information has yet to be made available for this season), if the Bruins declined to match an offer sheet that carried an annual cap hit between $3,134,088 and $4,701,131, they would get first and third round picks. If it was between $4,701,131 and $6,268,175, they’d get picks in the first three rounds. The Bruins would likely prefer Rask to either of those scenarios, so don’t bank on it happening. 

Thomas’ decision also means that fans can kiss the Rick Nash pipedream goodbye unless they want the B’s to part with Tyler Seguin. Rask, as if there was ever a doubt, is going to stay with the Bruins and is going to get a sizable raise from the $1.25 million cap hit he had over the last two seasons. 

Rask will get paid and, assuming he stays healthy, he’ll play a lot more. What will he bring the Bruins? He led the NHL in both goals-against average and save percentage in 2009-10, but he’s always been rather streaky. For example, he allowed just one goal over five games (four starts) from Dec. 10 to Jan. 5 of this season and then allowed at least three goals in six of the next seven games. The Bruins will need more consistency than that, but Rask should also be more comfortable knowing that he won’t be going a week or more without a start. 

Until Rask does it, there will always be the question of whether he can be a true No. 1 goalie. He was right there with Cory Schneider as the best No. 2s in the league, but he’s always had Thomas right there with him and, with the exception of the end of the 2009-10 season, ahead of him. The Bruins might need to pay him like a No. 1 before he can prove that he is one, but that’s the hand they’ve been dealt. It’s Tuukka Time (so close to going the whole column without that cliché) in Boston. 

Oddly enough, he has Tim Thomas to thank for that.