The Florida Panthers can’t afford to throw away any of their final 17 games of the regular season, and it could mean a particularly daunting workload for Sergei Bobrovsky this weekend.
It’s just the way he likes it.
The star gotaltender has started all 12 games for the Panthers since the All-Star break, but Florida hasn’t had a back-to-back set in this run of games. This weekend, the Panthers will play on back-to-back days for the first time since January and Bobrovsky could get the nod for both.
“We won’t make any [decision] until after the first,” coach Paul Maurice said, “see the numbers, see the workload.”
Either way, Bobrovsky will get the starting nod Friday at 7 p.m. when Florida (32-27-6) hosts the last-place Chicago Blackhawks (22-37-5) at FLA Live Arena in Sunrise. If all goes well, the Panthers would like to let Bobrovsky start again Saturday when they host the Winnipeg Jets.
Florida entered Wednesday three points out of the second wild card and has fewer than 20 games left to make up ground. Bobrovsky is trying to will it to happen.
Bobrovsky, 34, Russian missed the last five games in January before the 2023 NHL All-Star Game, but came back fully healthy after the break in February and has posted a .932 save percentage and 2.18 goals against average to help the Panthers win 8 of 12. His numbers since New Year’s Day aren’t much worse, either: a .924 save percentage and 2.46 goals against average with 12 wins in 18 decisions.
With a win Friday, Florida would climb back to .500 for the first time in more than three months.
“It’s huge to have a goalie like that playing on the level he is,” All-Star center Aleksander Barkov said Tuesday.
A stretch like this is why the Panthers gave Bobrovsky a seven-year, $70 million deal in 2019, making him the highest-paid goalie in the NHL. He already had a pair of Vezina Trophies on his resume when he got to Florida and had just led the Columbus Blue Jackets to a first-round sweep of the top-seeded Tampa Bay Lightning in the 2019 Stanley Cup playoffs. He was, the Panthers hoped, a one-man fix to their longstanding defensive issues and the type of goalie capable of covering up all other weaknesses.
So far, Bobrovsky’s time in South Florida has mostly been marked by inconsistency, although the narrative could shift depending on how this season finishes. Bobrovsky is far from the biggest reason the Panthers are sitting outside postseason position, and his improved play has coincided directly with Florida’s furious playoff push.
“He’s there for a reason,” Barkov said.
If there’s anyone suited to play on back-to-back days during the most important time of the year, it might be Bobrovsky.
Even in the notoriously structured world of NHL goaltending, Bobrovsky stands out.
“He would be maybe the most-routined goalie I’ve seen,” said Maurice, who has coached the fourth most games in NHL history.
Bobrovsky checks off all the cliches: He’s usually the first player at the rink every day and usually the last one to leave on game days, outlasting even the coaches with his postgame weight-room sessions. Although they have been managing some of Bobrovsky’s work load by holding him out of most practices, the Panthers mostly defer to the two-time All-Star and the plan he has put together with goaltending coach Rob Tallas.
Right now, routine has Bobrovsky in a rhythm, and Florida is going to try to ride him to the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs.
“If he could play three games a week, that would be the perfect rhythm for him and he’s probably going to stick fairly close to that for the rest of the year,” Maurice said. “He’s off a day, get a good day’s practice, he likes the morning skate and he’s wired, and he’s done that throughout the course of his career, so there is a rhythm.”
Panthers’ Anthony Duclair misses practice
Anthony Duclair’s status is in doubt for Friday against the Blackhawks after an illness kept him out of practice Thursday.
The right wing has played in five consecutive games since making his season debut last month following offseason surgery to repair his left Achilles tendon. He has one goal and two assists, and the Panthers have won three of five since he returned.
They also take a two-game winning streak into the weekend because they have won back-to-back games since getting their full lineup back together for the first time Saturday.
If Duclair can’t play, forward Sam Reinhart would likely move up to the top line to play right wing next to Barkov and left wing Eetu Luostarinen.
