Sergei Bobrovsky was great in Game 3. The Panthers’ defense might have been even better
Sergei Bobrovsky skated back to his net at the end of the timeout and the chants grew louder.
“Bobby! Bobby! Bobby!” The crowd at FLA Live Arena had fully thrown its support behind the star goaltender and this wasn’t always a given. Bobrovsky’s seven-year, $70 million contract was finally paying off in the way the Florida Panthers hoped it would when they gave it to him in 2019.
He already had 31 saves by this point and was only 3:22 away from his first shutout of the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs. The timeout ended, Sebastian Aho zipped one shot at Bobrovsky and then his work was done. For the final 3:11, the 34-year-old goalie didn’t face a single shot and the Panthers finished off a 1-0 shutout of the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 3 on Monday to go up 3-0 in the Eastern Conference finals.
“My teammates did a great job with all those little details,” Bobrovsky said Monday. “It’s a big team effort.”
A historic run from Bobrovsky has pushed Florida to brink of the Stanley Cup Finals and his performance Monday stood alone as his first ever postseason shutout, and the Panthers’ fourth ever. He finished with 32 saves and has now stopped 182 of the last 187 shots he has faced across the last four games — really, more like five and a half, given the four overtimes he played in Game 1 of the East finals Wednesday. Since he gave up a game-tying goal in the third period of Game 1, Bobrovsky has been scored on just once in his last 218 minutes.
He’s the driver behind Florida’s unlikely run from No. 8 seed to the brink of the Cup Finals, but those last few minutes — and, really, most of the Panthers’ shut-out win in South Florida — were a holistic effort.
The 32 saves were huge. The Panthers’ 23 blocked shots were nearly as important, as was Florida limiting the Hurricanes to just six rebound attempts.
“No matter what the score is,” forward Sam Reinhart said Monday, “we are trying to make it as easy as possible for him.”
The forward’s second-period power-play goal was the difference, but he also blocked three shots. Overall, four different Panthers blocked at least three shots — defenseman Josh Mahura led the team with four — and 12 of their 18 skaters blocked at least one and one of the six who didn’t was All-Star center Aleksander Barkov, who played only 3:51 before leaving with a first-period lower-body injury.
Florida also had 25 hits and 11 takeaways. Even though Carolina outshot them 32-17, the Panthers were never really in serious trouble, limiting the Hurricanes to just 12 high-danger chances and none on their lone power play. Florida took the lead with 9:55 left in the second period — center Sam Bennett and superstar right wing Matthew Tkachuk assisted on Reinhart’s goal, and they also each blocked one shot — and was content to hang onto a one-goal lead the rest of the way.
It was the type of game Paul Maurice envisioned the Panthers learning how to win when he took over as coach last year.
A year ago, Florida became the first team in a quarter of a century to average more than four goals per game in the regular season, only to crash out of the second round of the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs without winning a game and watching their their goals average — when including regular season and the Stanley Cup playoffs — dip beneath four per game. This year, the idea was to learn how to win with defense, so the Cup playoffs, when scoring always tends to plummet, would become more manageable.
It was hard to find a better proof of concept than this Game 3. It was Florida’s first 1-0 win since 2017.
“We have learned so many lessons to get to where we are today,” Maurice said Monday. “The small, grinding details, regardless of edge of play or if the other team’s getting action on you—whatever it is, just stay kind of in that moment. All the cliches, they’re the cliches because it’s true. Next shift, next shift, it doesn’t matter what happened on the last one, grind the next one.”
Bobrovsky’s play helps make this all possible — his .935 save percentage leads all goalies who have played at least eight games in the playoffs — and yet it’s not the whole story.
In those last three minutes Monday, there was a hit by star defenseman Aaron Ekblad, a takeaway by Tkachuk, and blocked shots by defenseman Gustav Forsling, forward Nick Cousins and Reinhart. Carolina only had three high-danger chances in the whole final period, even as it chased a one-goal lead.
Even with their advantage in shots and scoring chances, the Hurricanes barely finished with an edge in expected goals. Florida’s special teams advantage helped, but so did its effort around the net and in the middle of the ice, and it has the Panthers within a win of the Finals.
“They had action, they had the territorial advantage, the shot advantage,” Maurice said. “The areas that we had the advantage of was probably clearing net front and blocking shot. ... Both of those are filthy, hard things.”
This story was originally published May 23, 2023 at 8:25 AM.
