Tim Thomas’ Diving Stick Save Keeps Bruins Alive in Playoffs, Helps Reebok Advertise

The immediate effect of Tim Thomas‘ unforgettable save on Monday night was that the Bruins kept their 2-1 lead over the Lightning. They eventually won the game.

The long-term effect, at least from Reebok’s perspective, is a free advertisement that will live forever in hockey history.

Reebok manufactured the stick that Thomas used to rob Steve Downie in Game 5, and the Massachusetts-based company could not have paid for a better advertisement, as reported by the Boston Herald.

“This was picture perfect,” Glen Thornborough, Reebok’s sports marketing chief for hockey equipment, told the Herald. “It’s almost like someone from our marketing team went down there to set it up the way it actually needed to be placed.”

The report said that Thomas has no sponsorship deal to exclusively use Reebok and that he just happened to prefer that stick over others.

“It was serendipitous,” Boston University advertising professor Chris Cakebread told the Herald. “To me, it was a fluke that the camera caught it so cleanly. That’s why brands invest in sports, because they get the ancillary benefits of dramatic moments.”