The first pair has been determined in the National Hockey League (NHL) semi-finalists of the 2024 Stanley Cup. The Florida Panthers finally won their dispute with the Boston Bruins, beating the Bears in the sixth game of the series. The Panthers knocked the Bruins out of the playoffs for the second season in a row.
Paul Maurice's team could have dealt with this task earlier, but allowed their opponents to extend the course of the confrontation by one game. Everything was decided in Boston, where Florida won the sixth meeting in a row, including last year's tournament. This battle turned out to be as dramatic as possible.
“Boston” opened the scoring already in the first period, when Pavel Zakha opened the gate of Sergei Bobrovsky with a beautiful move just before the break. Subsequently, the Russian goalkeeper did not give his opponents a chance to succeed and made a total of 22 saves. Some of them are bright and spectacular. Everything the famous Russian goalkeeper can do. It was Bobrovsky who was and remains the key figure of the “Panthers” both in today’s match (even though he was recognized only as the second star of the meeting), and throughout the entire tournament.
The visitors from Sunrise responded to Boston's goal twice. First, Anton Lundell restored the status quo in the middle of the match, and then Gustav Forsling caught Jeremy Sveyman by surprise in the last minutes of normal time. The American goalkeeper of the Bruins had a glorious duel with Bobrovsky, and today he also repeatedly helped his team out, but at the most crucial moment he could not cope. The decisive goal of the entire series was the result of his mistake. Sveyman coped with a light throw from the same Lundell, but did not see the moment of finishing from Forsling, and the puck treacherously slipped under the pancake from the Boston goalkeeper into the near corner. The Bears' fans didn't even immediately understand what had happened.
2:1 in the match and 4-2 in the series – Florida will play in the Eastern Conference finals for the second season in a row. Now the Panthers' opponents will be the New York Rangers, who defeated the Carolina Hurricanes the day before. In their entire history, the teams met in the playoffs only once – in 1997, the Rangers won in five matches.
Their new battle promises to be truly spectacular: Sergei Bobrovsky against Igor Shesterkin, Vladimir Tarasenko against Artemi Panarin. This series will be a duel between the best Russian goalkeepers (and the whole world too), as well as a meeting of old friends. Bobrovsky and Tarasenko played together with Panarin in the NHL at different points in their careers, but all this time they were united by a strong friendship. The comrades will have to forget about her during the dispute for the right to reach the 2024 Stanley Cup final.
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