Four years of struggles made Sergei Bobrovsky appreciate Panthers’ playoff run even more
Sergei Bobrovsky can admit now, after finally leading the Florida Panthers to a Stanley Cup Final, that the last few years have not always been easy.
He signed with the Panthers in 2019 with big expectations and hasn’t come close to an All-Star season since, despite being the highest paid goaltender in the NHL.
“Some seasons, some circumstances could put you in that position that it doesn’t matter what kind of skill you have,” the star goaltender said June 15, just two days after Florida’s season ended with a loss to the Golden Knights in Vegas. “It feels like a wall on top of you. You can’t do anything.”
He finally broke through the wall this spring. After another underwhelming regular season, Bobrovsky turned back into one of the best goalies in the NHL in the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, saving 16.3 goals above expected throughout the postseason — the most in the Stanley Cup playoffs, according to MoneyPuck.com — and getting the Panthers within three wins of hoisting their first Stanley Cup.
It was reinvigorating for the 34-year-old Russian and especially so because of how challenging most of his first four years in South Florida were.
“The runs like that make it even more special and even more appreciate that so many things come together because in the playoffs especially, it’s so fragile,” he said. “When you have a success, you really appreciate and value them. It makes you, again, appreciate your work, and you feel for those things more and value them more.”
Even at his best, Bobrovsky has been mercurial. He won his first Vezina Trophy in 2013, followed it up with two more good years, fell off a cliff in the 2015-16 NHL season with his save percentage plummeting to .908 and then bounced right back to win another Vezina in 2017. Even though he has twice won the trophy handed out annually to the league’s best goaltender, he has only been an All-Star twice, too.
The 2023 Cup playoffs, though, gave the Panthers a glimpse of what they can look like when their goalie is at his absolute best.
In four regular seasons in Florida, Bobrovsky has a meager .904 save percentage and only once has posted a save percentage better than .906 in a single year. All those struggles were just about forgotten, though, when he put up a .915 save percentage with a 2.75 goals against average in the playoffs.
If he can put together similar runs in future postseasons, he’ll be worth his seven-year, $70 million deal, which runs for three more seasons. He insists this run will help him go on others.
“For those two months that I played for the playoffs, I learned a lot more than for 13 years of my NHL career,” Bobrovsky said.
His play was great. His ability to handle adversity was even better.
Bobrovsky wasn’t even the starter at the beginning of the playoffs, sitting instead behind fellow goaltender Alex Lyon, who got hot at the end of the regular season. Bobrovsky lost his first start after taking over in Round 1, then won 11 of 12 to carry the Panthers to the 2023 Stanley Cup Final and wound up putting together the seventh best postseason since the 2009 Stanley Cup playoffs, in terms of goals saved above expected.
Bobrovsky’s track record — and the nature of goaltending itself — makes it almost impossible to predict whether his postseason success will mean a better regular season next year, but he does believe experience matters.
“It’s been especially so many mental things, mental challenges that you have to overcome and all that stuff,” Bobrovsky said. “Now it’s time to put everything on the shelf, to figure out what you went through and kind of get it digested, and move on.”
To contend for the Cup again, Florida needs Bobrovsky to play at a high level. His salary is taking up nearly 12 percent of the Panthers’ cap space and fellow goaltender Spencer Knight is also owed $4.5 million per year for the next three seasons, and is expected back for the start of the 2023-24 NHL season after entering the NHL’s and NHL Players’ Association’s joint player-assistance program in February. Florida needs to get great goaltending from those two to make the investment worth it.
“All the great players are going to come back, everybody’s going to compete for the playoff spot and then for the Cup,” Bobrovsky said. “It’s going to be an exciting time, but now it’s time to rest, relax, to reset and see what’s next.”
