Sergei Bobrovsky’s late-game heroics steal shootout win for Florida Panthers in Minnesota
The Florida Panthers’ defense was out of sorts at the worst possible moment. The final seconds were ticking away in overtime and all three Panthers on the ice were watching Matt Boldy behind the net. None of them were watching Jared Spurgeon.
Sergei Bobrovsky was. The Minnesota Wild’s top defenseman went for the win and the star goaltender wiped away his chance. With 12.5 seconds left, Bobrovsky slid to his left and robbed the 33-year-old Canadian, and he wasn’t done. After two more saves in the shootout, Bobrovsky stole a 2-1 win for the Panthers to open up a four-game road trip.
Bobrovsky finished with 27 saves, stopped all three shots he faced in overtime, and stuffed All-Star winger Kirill Kaprizov and versatile Wild forward Frederik Gaudreau to get the win in St. Paul, Minnesota.
“That was one of the hardest games this year,” All-Star center Aleksander Barkov told Bally Sports Florida.
Ultimately, Barkov scored the decisive goal in the shootout, following up forward Anton Lundell’s goal to put the Panthers up 2-1. When Bobrovsky stopped Gaudreau, Florida’s celebration began.
The win pulled the Panthers (27-23-6) back within a point of postseason position with 28 games left in the regular season. Despite 34 total shots and seven power plays, Florida came dangerously close to letting it slip away.
The Panthers’ only non-shootout goal came on a tip-in by forward Eetu Luostarinen — off something close to a desperation shot by defenseman Gustav Forsling, all the way up at the blue line — and Florida only held its 1-0 lead for 3:09 before the Wild (28-20-5) answered. The real problem for the Panthers’ offense was their performance on the power play.
Florida went 0 of 7 on their extra-man opportunities — squandering 11:40 of 5-on-4 time and even 44 seconds with a 5-on-3 advantage — and have now converted on just one of their last 21 power plays, giving up three short-handed goals in the same time frame.
The closest the Panthers came to cashing in was on a shot by star defenseman Brandon Montour with three seconds left on their third-period 5-on-3 chance. The star defense ripped a slap shot through traffic and past Filip Gustavsson, only a goal signal never came. Matthew Tkachuk, the officials quickly determined, made incidental contact with Gustavsson — the All-Star right wing barely grazed Minnesota’s goaltender — and the would-be game-winning goal was disallowed. The Panthers only managed two shots in the last 15 minutes of regulation and none in the five-minute, 3-on-3 overtime period, leaving them to play a shootout against one of the best shootout teams in the NHL.
Bobrovsky, however, was the best player on the ice and silenced the Xcel Energy Center crowd of 17,453 with his late-game heroics.
This story was originally published February 14, 2023 at 12:01 AM.
