The Panthers announced today that they have signed goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky to a seven-year contract worth $70 million ($10 million AAV). Bobrovsky played 62 games last season for the Columbus Blue Jackets and he had a 2.58 goals against average and 0.913 save percentage for them in the regular season. In the playoffs, he had a 2.41 GAA and 0.925 SV% in 10 games, the best postseason marks of his career. Signed by the Philadelphia Flyers as an undrafted free agent before the 2010-11 season, Bobrosky is on his third team over his nine-year career, and is leaving his team of the past seven seasons in Columbus. This contract is a staggering raise from his previous one, which paid him $29.7 million over four seasons (a $7.425 million AAV).
Lydia’s Reaction: Holy overpay. It was nearly a guarantee he’d be overpaid and be given too much term, but I didn’t think he’d get a contract with an average annual value in the double digits. He’s a great goalie, don’t get me wrong, but is he worth $10 million a year? Absolutely not in my opinion. Over his career, he has a 2.46 GAA and 0.919 SV% in 457 games played, and those are good numbers, but they certainly aren’t worth $10 million. No goalie is given how unpredictable of a position it can be. One year they can be good the next they could really suck. You just never know. It’s true for skaters too, but it seems more exaggerated with goalies. The Canadiens regret giving Carey Price $10.5 million a year, and that doesn’t mean he’s not an excellent goalie because he is (and as a diehard Bruins fan trained to hate everything about the Canadiens since the day I was born, that pains me to say), it just means that’s way too much money to have tied up in a starting goalie. Also, the term is insane at this amount of money. Bob is 30 years old, meaning he’ll be 37 at the end of this contract. Is anyone really going to say he’s gonna be worth anywheres near $10 million when he’s out of his prime and at the end of his career by then? No! A lot of people think this is a bad contract now, including myself, but imagine what we are going to think of it in a few years. Bob is one of the league’s top goalies, winning the Vezina trophy in 2013 and 2017, but I have no idea what Florida was thinking here. Yes, wherever he went he was going to command a lot of money and likely for the max term or close to it, but to pay him $10 million a year for seven years is completely insane. Florida needed a goalie now with Luongo retiring, and Bob will certainly help them and will be a good fit as the team looks to get back in the playoffs, but I don’t get the logic behind the AAV and term here. Florida will regret this contract, especially when newly drafted Spencer Knight is ready in a few years and Bob is out of his prime and loses the starting job and they are then stuck with an immovable contract and are paying their back-up $10 million season. That’s not what you want.
Stephen’s Reaction: This is a great signing for Florida. This is someone they need. Bobrovsky is an established goalie in the league that’s played in a lot of tough situations and has shown, he is an elite goalie. I think the money is a little too much. Maybe 8.5 million dollar range would have been more appropriate but it isn’t too bad. After the Panthers made their last playoff appearance in 2016, you could tell that they were right there as being a team that could make it every season, but they were missing some pieces. They had good forwards, but they shuffled them around. They had ok D depth, and they’ve added since then. Their weakest point happened to be their goaltending. Luongo is a great goalie, but he hasn’t been a starter for about five years now. They tried out several different goalies with the hope that they could split time with him but it never worked. Now, they have a clear number one goalie. Bobrovsky will fit in well and I bet we see the Panthers back in the playoffs within the next few years, in large part due to him.
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