SUNRISE, Fla. — In a whirlwind 41 seconds, Sergei Bobrovsky and Ryan Lomberg turned a potential tie game into the start of a blowout for the Florida Panthers.
On one end, Bobrovsky stopped one shot from Alex DeBrincat and then another right on the doorstep, and then slid all the way to his left to deny Ryan Strome against a briefly wide-open net. On the other, Lomberg wound up with the puck near center ice with one defender to beat and he blew by him, feinting to his left and dashing to his right, then ripping a laser shot past Collin Delia to double the Panthers’ lead.
Florida kept building from there and finished a perfect two-game homestand with a 4-0 win against the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday in Sunrise.
Even though there was a lopsided final score, Bobrovsky kept the game tied for long enough for the Panthers (46-15-6) to finally take a 1-0 lead at the end of the first period and star goaltender bailed out his defense about half a dozen times to keep the Blackhawks (24-34-10) from ever really threatening Florida.
Bobrovsky finished with 37 saves, including 13 against high-danger chances, to notch his third shutout as a Panther and his second of the season. With his spectacular play as the anchor, Florida could survive a relatively slow start and start pull away in the second, even as Chicago doubled the Panthers’ scoring chances in the period.
It was the sort of performance Florida expected to get from the goalie when it signed him to a seven-year, $70 million deal back in 2019 and why it still believes he can be a strength come the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs, even after a first-round meltdown led to his benching just three games into the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs.
The 2022 Cup playoffs are quickly becoming something tangible, too. The Panthers, who now have a seven-point lead on everyone else in the Atlantic Division and still sit atop the Eastern Conference, can officially clinch a playoff spot as early as Saturday. If Bobrovsky can give them more performances like the one he did Thursday, Florida might go into the playoffs as the Stanley Cup favorite.
For more than 18 minutes Thursday, the Panthers needed every one of Bobrovsky’s saves. A first-minute goal by Aleksander Barkov was wiped away when a replay review determined the star center illegally kicked the puck into the net after a big slap shot by defenseman Gustav Forsling led to a rebound chance and Delia, with his own series of spectacular saves, was able to regroup and shut out Florida for the first 18:24. With 1:36 left in the first period, Barkov finally put the Panthers on the board, fielding a point pass from Forsling and dancing his way along the crease, using some tight-area stick-handling to flip a backhanded shot by Delia for a 1-0 lead.
With Bobrovsky locked in the way he was, the one goal was enough. Florida gave him breathing room in the second after he kept them ahead.
His three saves right before Lomberg’s goal made for perhaps his best sequence of the game, but he also stopped Jonathan Toews twice when he got a pair of shots from point-blank range a few minutes earlier and kept his shutout intact in the third period when he dove to his left to deny Strome another look at a temporarily open net, drawing gasps from the crowd at FLA Live Arena.
By then, the Panthers were up 3-0 after another second-period goal by Forsling and Barkov made it 4-0 with a 5-on-3 one-timer — off Jonathan Huberdeau’s 71st assist of the season, which set an NHL record for most in a single season by a left wing — with 6:13 left.
It was Florida’s most emphatic win since the trade deadline brought All-Star forward Claude Giroux, and defensemen Ben Chiarot and Robert Hagg to Broward County, and it happened mostly because of the biggest free-agent addition in franchise history.
