Florida Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky defends against Edmonton Oilers during game two of the 2024 Stanley Cup Final in Sunrise, Fla.Jim Rassol/Reuters
On his first go round, Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky wasn’t drafted. Sixty-three other guys were, including three who never played a game in the NHL.
Years later, he was signed by the Flyers. They traded him to the Blue Jackets for a second-round pick.
Bobrovsky won two Vézina Trophies in Columbus. But when it came time to shower him in money, the Blue Jackets preferred not to. He signed in Florida instead.
Since then, his seven-year, US$70-million deal regularly features on or at the top of listicles about the worst contracts in hockey.
Now, at 35, Bobrovsky is in the midst of pretty much single-handedly winning the Panthers a Stanley Cup final.
This all goes to show that William Goldman’s rule for Hollywood applies just as well in the NHL: nobody knows anything.
In the capology era, it is a rule that you should not spend real money on the goalie.
Centres? Yes. They score goals. No amount spent on centres is too much.
No. 1 defencemen? Sure. They discourage goals. Two for the price of three is even better.
But the only guy on the ice who can be fully determinative of the result, because if he doesn’t fail at his job, your team wins by definition? No. Plenty of them around. Waste of resources.
This rule goes unquestioned through the six months of the regular season, regardless of who’s doing what. There has never been a November where the big talking point in the NHL is a goalie. Some guy somewhere is always on a 20-game point streak or on his way to scoring 70.
The rule survives the first three rounds of the playoffs. For every goalie standing on his head, there’s one somewhere else who’s hanging off the post in a daze, but still managing to win.
It’s only in the final that a goalie can come to the fore. Like right now.
Forget about talent. Edmonton came into this series with something better – a formula. The Oilers have a power play that scores a third of the time and a penalty kill that allows goals almost never.
Five-on-five is fine for the regular season. In the playoffs, when the guy across from you is throwing himself in front of shots as if he’s in a John Woo action shot, the only time you’re going to have real space is on a man advantage.
In a typical playoff game, either team should expect to take four or five penalties. That should add up to a one- or two-goal Oilers lead every night.
Except for Bobrovsky. In two hours of final hockey, he has allowed one goal. And it’s not just that he’s stopping pucks. It’s the dispiriting way he’s doing it.
Edmonton is getting its one-on-one chances. When it does, Bobrovsky is spread across the ice like an octopus who’s just been dumped from a bucket. There is no part of the net he cannot get a tentacle on.
Great goalies have their house styles, but they all do one thing average goalies can’t – extend to full stretch and then keep on stretching. Sometimes when he’s bouncing around in a full splits, Bobrovsky looks like a man born without tendons.
Losing the first two games on the road is not the end of the world, but it is the point in the story when someone looks up and sees a mushroom cloud on the horizon. The end of the world is coming.
The Oilers are working hard to talk themselves into the idea that they’re doing great despite everything.
After losing on Monday night, Connor McDavid used the word “excited” four times in one answer. To hear him tell it, no one’s ever been more revved up by the possibilities losing creates.
“I’m looking forward to people doubting us again,” McDavid said.
This is conventional thinking. McDavid believes the Oilers will win because they have better scorers. You can’t blame the guy. He’s reflecting settled wisdom.
What it does not take into account is Florida’s unconventional weapon – Bobrovsky.
Goalies are not supposed to be the difference, because if they were they’d be drafted that way, fought over that way and paid that way. Yet here we are.
If Bobrovsky plays two of the next five games the way he’s played the first couple, this thing is over.
Let’s imagine a world where that happens. Bobrovsky wins the Conn Smythe. The same people who were saying a month ago that only a GM who’d hit his head would sign a goalie to an eight-figure salary will now be wondering if Bobrovsky is the great goalie of his generation. This will filter into an agitated conversation amongst the most anxious section of fandom about how and why their team does not properly prioritize the goalie.
If that’s where The Conversation is headed, the Oilers will suffer most of all. They had their shot to get a big-ticket goalie and chose someone (Jack Campbell) who played for the Maple Leafs. How did they think that would turn out?
After a few days of hand-wringing, nothing will change. Teams will continue to act as if the best goalie is whichever one happens to be lolling around in free agency when they’re looking. They will continue down the path of lowest resistance, developing scorers who already score, and defenders who defend, rather than puck stoppers who have to be taught how to stop pucks.
When things don’t work out, they’ll say, “But that’s how everyone does it.”
If the Panthers conspire to lose this thing, they won’t even have to go that far.
But if the Panthers win, they will have made something approaching a straight trade. About US$35-million – the difference between what Bobrovsky is paid vs. what the average, non-Stanley-Cup-winning No. 1 goalie gets – for a championship.
It’s less than what the Leafs paid head coach Mike Babcock to not win anything for four years.
In a more competitive industry, teams would be falling over themselves to steal the Florida formula. But since it is the hard, unpopular way of doing things in a league that prizes easy and popular, no one will.