EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — Paul Maurice had seen enough after Sergei Bobrovsky allowed his fifth goal in Fourth game of the Stanley Cup finaldeciding to retire the Florida Panthers goalie, who was the main reason the team is one win away from a championship.
Bobrovsky allowed five of 16 shots, and his coach thought it was time to rest him and bring on substitute Anthony Stolarz five minutes into the second half. Stolarz allowed three more in the Panthers defeat 8-1 to the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday night that sends the series back to Florida for Game 5.
“If you think you’re planning a comeback, rarely does the goalie make a difference for you — something happens at the other end of the ice,” Maurice said. “He has played a lot of hockey. My number for Bob is probably five (goals allowed) overall. “That was the decision.”
Bobrovsky had stopped 82 of the 86 shots he faced during the first three games of the finals and is, along with captain Aleksander Barkov, a leading candidate for the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP. He allowed more goals in 25 minutes of this one than in the rest of the series combined, prompting derisive taunts of “Sergei! Sergei! of the local public.
“Everyone’s human,” Oilers forward Zach Hyman said. “You’ve got to keep going, you’ve got to keep looking and eventually something is going to come in. Obviously we had good looks tonight and we were able to beat him.”
Bobrovsky wasn’t at his best, but neither were the Panthers players in front of him. Mattias Janmark’s shorthanded goal three minutes in came on a 2-on-1 run, and there were plenty of other mistakes that helped give Edmonton so many good looks that they capitalized on.
It wasn’t a great ‘Bob’, but his teammates quickly took the blame off of Bobrovsky for getting the hook.
“He’s been incredible all year, all playoffs,” forward Matthew Tkachuk said. “It was more of a wake-up call for everyone. We know he’s going to come back better than ever, and with that being said, none of it was his fault. He still thought he had made some unreal saves.”
Stolarz, who coincidentally was taken with the 2012 second-round pick that Philadelphia obtained for trading Bobrovsky more than a decade ago, made 16 saves in his NHL playoff debut.
“He was good,” Maurice said. “The kid has watched a lot of hockey for a while. That’s what you need. He comes in and goes to fight to the death. It was great for him to come in. There aren’t many positives here, people, but ‘Bob’ got some rest. I’ll take that.”
There is very little rest for the Panthers, who have another chance to close out the series and hoist the Stanley Cup in Game 5 at Sunrise on Tuesday night.
“There are a lot of things we can do much better,” Barkov said. “They probably outworked us. They had too many opportunities to rush. I think we’ve always been good at defending attacks and I think they had some attacking opportunities that we really should not waste. But obviously the game is already over. All we have to do is recover and think about the next one.”
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AP NHL Playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://www.apnews.com/hub/NHL