Bobrovsky saves best for last in triumphant Game 7 for Panthers | NHL.com

But then he was starting and he was great and he outdueled the Carolina Hurricanes in four overtimes in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Final last season, making 63 saves in perhaps his best-ever game. But then again, he cratered in the Stanley Cup Final, allowing 21 goals on 135 shots in the five-game defeat, an .844 save percentage, after allowing 33 goals on 504 shots in the 14 previous games, for a .935 save percentage.

It was more twists in a career full of them.

“I feel like the career, it’s a journey,” Bobrovsky said, back in March. “There are stops. There are bumps and there is smooth. Every time you have a success or failure, you learn from it. Sometimes success is harder to handle than failure.

“Over the course of your career, you have different circumstances that, it’s not good or bad. It just is what it is, and you just have to learn and take the best out of it. The process continues — I would say it’s not only hockey, it’s just life in general — and that’s process goes all the way until you’re dead.”

Before last season’s run to the Stanley Cup Final, Bobrovsky had never made it beyond the second round. He had played 51 postseason games in the first nine years of his NHL career, adding 39 to his total in the past two seasons.

Block by block, game by game, Bobrovsky has added to that Hall of Fame candidacy, a resume that now includes two Vezina Trophies (2013, 2017) as the best goalie in the NHL, two All-Star nods, and a Stanley Cup.

“At the end of the day, you play not for trophies,” Bobrovsky said. “You play for the excitement of the game. It’s a recognition, it’s good, obviously, in some respect. But in the end of the day, you are a little kid inside who loves the game and works every day, work hard and enjoy it. Work maybe is not the right word. I’m just enjoying what I do. And I’m happy to be here and celebrate here.”

He is 14th all-time in wins by a goalie with 396 and, should he remain healthy, could easily rise to 11th next season, passing Glenn Hall and his 407 wins. If he does so — and he recorded 36 wins in 58 games this season — every single goalie above him on the list, other than Curtis Joseph (seventh, 454 wins) and Marc-Andre Fleury (second, 561 wins) are already in the Hall of Fame, and Fleury is guaranteed to join them once he retires.

Bobrovsky is legendary for his work habits, his workouts, his dedication to the details of his game and the game. There is his dance-like warmup, there are his bike rides to the practice rink — when most of his teammates are riding golf carts — there is the work that would often delay buses back to hotels or off to the airport for his teammates, none of whom could summon up the means to be annoyed because they knew he always, always, gave and did everything for them.

That work, now, has paid off. Bobrovsky, once questioned, never will be again.

He is a Stanley Cup champion. He took a Game 7 that would have been easy to let slip through his fingers and he grabbed hold. He allowed only a single goal past him, a single blip, the Mattias Janmark goal at 6:44 of the first period, and nothing else, nearly his every save being greeted by “Bobby! Bobby! Bobby!”

“I’ve got to tip my hat off to him,” Luongo said. “That’s not easy to do what he did. I’ve been in the shoes. To come back and play a game like he did when everybody feels the pressure of the world on your shoulders. It takes somebody special to do that. He proved tonight that he’s one of the best.”