Panthers challenged Bobrovsky to ‘carry that weight’ in Game 5 in Boston. He responded.
All that stood between Brad Marchand and the end of the Florida Panthers’ season was the most heavily scrutinized, highest paid goaltender in the NHL and Paul Maurice — at least in hindsight — swore he had no doubt Sergei Bobrovsky would make the stop.
“I knew it wasn’t going in,” the coach said Wednesday after his Panthers kept their season alive by beating the Boston Bruins, 4-3, in overtime in Massachusetts. “I just felt that we had scored up enough karma that that puck shouldn’t go in.”
Marchand was all alone after Florida won a face-off with 7.7 seconds left and promptly gave away the puck. There was just barely enough for the Bruins left wing to get all the way down the ice to try for one game-winning shot before the third-period buzzer sounded and Bobrovsky stood his ground.
A little while later, the star goaltender swore he had forgotten about the play. There were 43 other saves, including four in overtime, that Bobrovsky had to worry about in Game 5 and if even one more shot had gotten past him, the Panthers’ season would be over.
A game like this one, with the season on the line and the best team in the NHL bombarding him for 66:05 in the first round of the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, is why Florida gave Bobrovsky a seven-year, $70 million contract back in 2019 and the 34-year-old Russian earned his pay by stopping 44 of 47 shots in Boston.
“That game that Sergei played because of the pressure that it was an elimination game, he gets to carry that with him now and the team will respect that win for Sergei going forward for years, truly,” Maurice said. “Veteran players and your highest paid players, these are the games where the pressure has to be on their shoulders and they have to rise to the occasion, and he did.”
There was goaltending drama just hours before, with Maurice refusing to name a starter until the last possible moment, and now there should be little doubt as to who will be in net when Game 6 begins at 7:30 p.m. on Friday at FLA Live Arena in Sunrise.
The Panthers are still down 3-2 in this first-round series, but Bobrovsky, if he can play the way he did at TD Garden, gives them yet another reason to believe they can stun the Bruins.
“He was our best player tonight,” center Sam Bennett said Wednesday, “and you need your goalie to be your best player if you’re going to have success in the playoffs.”
It was exactly the challenge Maurice was trying to set up for Bobrovsky.
When the Stanley Cup playoffs began, there wasn’t much doubt about who would lead Florida. Alex Lyon, a 30-year-old goaltender with fewer than 50 games of NHL experience, took over last month when Bobrovsky missed four games with an illness posted a .943 save percentage in the final eight games of the regular season. He also started the first three games of the Cup playoffs with mixed results until Maurice pulled him for Bobrovsky in the third period of Game 3 on Friday.
In Game 4, Maurice stuck with Bobrovsky and claimed it was more about playing the fresher goalie, with two days off coming between Games 4 and 5.
For Game 5, there was no obvious choice. Lyon had been better in the last month, but Bobrovsky, with a pair of Vezina Trophies on his resume, had the better track record.
He’s also part of the Panthers’ long-term plans — the starting goalie, whether they like it or not, for the foreseeable future — and it played a role in Maurice’s decision.
“I had an even call on both goaltenders, in my mind, going into this game, but I felt that the pressure needed to be on Sergei to play this game,” Maurice said. “He needed to carry that weight, like Matthew Tkachuk carries that weight, like [Aleksander] Barkov. The leaders carry the weight of your team and he needed to carry that weight.”
He responded by stopping all of the eight 5-on-5 high-danger shots he faced and making four saves in overtime, including one on a wide-open one-timer by superstar right wing David Pastrnak with 15:54 left in OT.
There was a reason Tkachuk sought out Bobrovsky and leaped into the goalie after he scored his game-winning goal 1:59 later.
When Florida needed it most, Bobrovsky gave the Panthers their best goaltending performance of the playoffs so far to send this series back to South Florida.
“There is so much emotions, there is so much high emotions. We have to settle down, be humble and reset, regroup and do it again,” Bobrovsky said Wednesday. “The next game is even bigger. It’s not different. It’s our back against the wall.”
