The Toronto Maple Leafs upgraded their goaltending as free agency opened in the NHL earlier this month, signing legendary netminder Sergei Bobrovsky to a three-year contract. And one former teammate of his can't stop praising him after he put pen to paper in Toronto.
On a recent episode of Wingmen with Matthew and Brady Tkachuk, Bobrovsky's former teammate in Matthew raved about the new Leafs goalie and how much he truly meant to that Florida Panthers team they shared.
“The backbone,’’ Tkachuk said of his teammate Bobrovsky. “Obviously, all of our lives have changed forever since the Cups. Our lives would have been the exact same, we wouldn’t have won without him. He was the guy, the guy you relied on, the guy that if you were playing bad, you knew he would be great. He kept us in so many games that we didn’t deserve to be in, and he won us a lot of games that we didn’t deserve to win. Just an outstanding teammate. I’m going to miss him a ton.”
Sergei Bobrovsky can be that 'backbone' in Toronto
Tkachuk and Bobrovsky won back-to-back Stanley Cups on the Panthers and both were seen as massive reasons at least one of those championships reached South Florida. Whether it was Bobrovsky putting up a .914 save percentage in the 2025 playoffs, or completely stealing some series (like he did against the Leafs), the 37-year-old was really the glue that held that team together whenever they might break down defensively.
And now, he's in Toronto and is backstopping a team that has expectations to be a whole lot better than what we all just experienced in the 2025-26 season. A lot of that will depend on Bobrovsky returning to be that "backbone".
Last season, Bobrovsky earned an abysmal .877 save percentage on a Panthers team that was ravaged by injuries and fell far from their previous championship heights. It was not a good team in front of him so that affected the number, but considering he is approaching 40 years old, there could be a massive concern that he's just showing his age and the decline is going to be rapid.
But instead, the Leafs locked him up to a three-year, $21-million contract and are hoping and praying that he can be so much better than what he showed over the last several months. Because that's all that they will need -- someone better and healthy and at least so much more consistent than the tandem partner in Anthony Stolarz.
It is going to be an interesting season no matter what and we're really depending on the entire year being a good one based on how Bobrovsky performs.
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