Bobrovsky's long journey leads to 1st Cup Final appearance with Panthers

Brian Smith was late getting back to the press box for the start of the third period. It was the first preseason game of the 2010-11 season for the Philadelphia Flyers and Smith, as the team's manager of media services, was running around as usual.

"As I'm walking down the front row to my seat, I look down and see this goalie that I don't recognize go post-to-post on a 2-on-1 or something like that, some spectacular save, and my first thought was, 'Who the [heck] is that?'" Smith recalled.

It was Sergei Bobrovsky.

The day after Bobrovsky's 22nd birthday, on Sept. 21, 2010, the undrafted goalie was seeing the first action of his NHL career after taking over for Flyers starter Michael Leighton. Smith, though, hadn't seen the swap, and he was transfixed.

Thirteen seasons later, it's a question no one is asking anymore.

Bobrovsky, at 34 years old, might be playing some of his best hockey -- and that's saying something for a player who has won the Vezina Trophy as the best goalie in the NHL twice (2012-13, 2016-17), each with the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Now on his third NHL team, after a trade sent him from Philadelphia to Columbus in 2012 and a free agent signing landed him in South Florida on July 1, 2019, Bobrovsky will get his first chance to play for the Stanley Cup when the Florida Panthers open the Stanley Cup Final at the Vegas Golden Knights at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; TNT, TBS, truTV, CBC, TVAS, SN).

He's getting a chance to make good on all the promise he's always shown, on the massive contract he signed with the Panthers (seven years, average annual value $10 million), on the hopes pinned on him throughout his career, a chance to turn the stops and starts of his Florida tenure into the ultimate prize.

Because when the Cup Final begins, he will be in net. It's not where he started this run for the Panthers, with Alex Lyon playing well enough down the stretch to push the team into the postseason, Lyon starting the first three games of the Stanley Cup Playoffs before coach Paul Maurice turned to Bobrovsky.

"When they're on a stretch like that, you throw everything at them and you come home and you just say, 'I could have had four or five (goals) and it didn't happen,'" Carolina Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour said of Bobrovsky. "I've seen it. It's there."

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Brind'Amour had a front-row seat to Bobrovsky's brilliance when the Hurricanes were swept by the Panthers in the Eastern Conference Final, with Bobrovsky allowing just six goals on 174 shots. He had Brind'Amour tossing out comparisons to Hall of Famer Dominik Hasek.

As teammate Anthony Duclair put it, "He's a [heck] of a goalie."

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When Bobrovsky entered the NHL, though, he was far from a guarantee. Having not been selected in the 2006 NHL Draft, he played the next four seasons in Russia before being scouted and signed by Flyers scout Ken Hoodikoff. Bobrovsky joined the team for the 2010 preseason and, after an injury to Leighton, also managed to leapfrog veteran goalie Brian Boucher.

He started the bulk of the games that season in Philadelphia -- 52 to 29 by Boucher -- including the season opener, which at the time left Boucher shocked. Here was this tall, skinny kid, a kid with no experience outside of the Kontinental Hockey League and little English being handed the Flyers net.

"We didn't know much about him," said Danny Briere, then a teammate with the Flyers and now the team's general manager. "He kind of came out of nowhere."

They hadn't known what to expect. Soon, though, there was no denying the obvious.

"What I remember is just him coming on the ice and starting to shoot on him and nobody could score," Briere said. "He was so quick. At first, you're just thinking, he's one of those young guys, he's excited and he's working extra hard. But after a while, you realize that's just who he was."

It's something that comes up again and again, how dedicated Bobrovsky was then (and now). He is tireless on the ice, working long after his teammates have packed it in, working long after they have gone home to their families and their flip flops.

"He was there before everybody," Briere said. "He was there after everybody."

Chris Pryor, then director of scouting for the Flyers, recalled that he'd be up in his office in the middle of the afternoon, long after the team's morning practices. The rest of the players would have dispersed, but Bobrovsky would remain, in the gym, two or three hours later, stretching, working out, a big smile on his face.

"You almost had to kick him out of the gym because of his work ethic," Pryor said. "The talent was there and he put the work in to make himself a goalie. His work ethic was extraordinary."

It was the athleticism. The competitiveness. The character.

It was all there, even then.

But while Philadelphia was the beginning for Bobrovsky, it certainly wasn't the end. With some pressure to opt for a more experienced goaltender, the Flyers signed Ilya Bryzgalov to a nine-year deal worth $51 million on June 23, 2011.

One year later, on June 22, 2012, Bobrovsky was shipped to Columbus.

Two years later, the Flyers bought out Bryzgalov.

"It's probably the best trade I made," said Scott Howson, then the GM of the Blue Jackets, now the president of the American Hockey League. "I was determined to get a goalie and there were three or four available, and then we zeroed in on Sergei and that turned out to be my best trade, without a doubt."

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Columbus was good to Bobrovsky.

In his seven seasons with the Blue Jackets, Bobrovsky would win the Vezina twice and go to the playoffs four times, though Columbus would make it out of the first round only once, in 2019. That was Bobrovsky's final season with the Blue Jackets, before he would enter unrestricted free agency and sign the blockbuster seven-year contract with the Panthers.

Since then, his career has been less straightforward.

"He's had some up and down years and I'm so glad that he's rebounded right now," Howson said. "That's great to see. I'm happy for him. He's a wonderful person."

But that doesn't mean that most people saw this run coming. Not after a season in which Bobrovsky went 24-20-3 in 50 games (49 starts) with a 3.07 goals-against average and .901 save percentage, beginning the season in an open competition with Spencer Knight to be the team's starter and losing his grip on the starting spot at times.

So, no, this wasn't guaranteed.

"No," longtime hockey executive Brian Burke told the "NHL @TheRink" podcast, when asked if he saw this coming. "No and anyone who says they did is lying."

Since Bobrovsky landed in South Florida, his numbers have taken a definite dive. In four seasons with the Panthers, Bobrovsky has a 2.97 GAA and .905 save percentage in 185 games, down from the 2.41 GAA and .921 save percentage in his seven seasons in Columbus.

"The fact of the matter is, this guy has been average since the last couple years and his great performances in Columbus seem like days gone by," Burke continued.

At least, they seemed that way.

After Bobrovsky replaced Lyon in Game 3 of the first round, having not played for more than three weeks from March 28 to April 20, Maurice went back to him for Game 4, though it wasn't a slam-dunk decision. Bobrovsky allowed five goals on 30 shots in a 6-2 loss that put the Bruins up 3-1 in the best-of-7 series and the Panthers one loss away from elimination.

He responded with 44 saves on 47 shots in a 4-3 overtime win in Game 5, stopping a breakaway by Brad Marchand in the final seconds of regulation. He has lost only once since, 2-1 in Game 4 against the Maple Leafs in the second round, and has stopped 438 of 465 shots since that Game 4 against the Bruins, including 63 of 65 shots in the 3-2 quadruple overtime Game 1 win of the conference final, a series in which he allowed just six goals in four games.

"He is outstanding right now," Burke said. "It's not just he's stopping the puck, he reminds me of Carey Price in his prime. Like, he's so calm and unruffled by what's happening. He economical, he's calm, he's moving quietly. He's not making big kick saves. Everything's hitting him because he's getting in the right place.

"So to me, it's not just that he's putting up these mind-boggling numbers. It's that he's doing it proficiently and economically. It's really like a clinic. This, to me, is Bob at his best. He's a great player when he's on and he's been on now for the last couple weeks. I don't see that stopping."

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This is what they were hoping for, when the Panthers signed Bobrovsky. And, if he can bring the Stanley Cup to South Florida for the first time in the organization's history, it will all have been worth it, all the ups and downs, all of the ride.

"The team gets in and he's not even starting in the first two or three games, now he's front and center, leading them in the Final," said John Paddock, who was the assistant GM of the Flyers when Bobrovsky was signed. "I think that's the uniqueness and the greatness about sports is things can change on a dime. From having a promising start to his career to really good goalie to mediocre … to now a chance to lead them to a Stanley Cup. Talk about a rollercoaster in the last calendar year."

It has been Bobrovsky's calmness that has been most notable during this run, the steadiness he has provided the Panthers. As injured forward Patric Hornqvist put it, "Every save he makes looks like a routine save. Doesn't matter if it's a breakaway or a shot from the blue line, no screen. It's just everything looks the same, he's always square to the puck, and he's so calm. That's his strength."

He works at it, works at it just as he did when he broke into the League at 22 years old, just as he did when he was winning the Vezina Trophy, just as he has done in Florida, even as it hasn't exactly gone according to plan.

"If he's not the hardest working guy I've seen in the NHL or in my hockey career, he's in the top 10," Howson said. "His commitment to his craft is second to none. And the thing I liked about him as a goaltender [is] he never looked around to blame anybody else. He felt his job is to stop the puck. It didn't matter how many mistakes were made in front of them.

"Let's face it, there's always mistakes on goals. He really genuinely doesn't care about that. It's his job to stop the puck. And if he doesn't, then he feels he's let his teammates down. I just love that attitude."

When Bobrovsky came into Philadelphia, they had dreamed on him a bit. Could this be the goalie that turned around the fortunes of the Flyers? Could he make the difference? In Bobrovsky's two seasons with Philadelphia, they made the playoffs each year after a trip to the Stanley Cup Final the year before he arrived.

Since then, they have been back four times in 11 seasons.

"You have hopes," Paddock said. "Is he a Stanley Cup goaltender? Can he take the team to the promised land? I think there were certainly signs of it. But you can probably say there's signs about it in lots of different people and their careers don't continue on that path.

"Everybody's going to have ups and downs, there's nobody who's come in and had a perfect slate from the start. But when you think about it and when you see what he's doing now, I think his character-slash-his work ethic, which probably are tied together, that goes to say, we shouldn't be surprised that it's finally happening."

And he's not alone.

"I can't say I'm surprised with Bob," Briere said. "You always knew he had that in him."