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Revisionist Sergei Bobrovsky and Philadelphia Flyers History

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jun 18th, 2025 · 12:44 PM EDT

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Bob won his second Stanley Cup on Tuesday night. He played every minute of every game in the Finals and finished with 193 saves on 210 shots, a save percentage of .919 during 417 minutes of ice time over six games.

Naturally, there’s always a bit of Flyers-related chatter when Bob is in the spotlight, so it’s worth revisiting why he was traded.

From last year’s column, titled Jrue Holiday and Sergei Bobrovsky: Can We Really Bemoan the Loss of Two Guys Who Haven’t Played Here in a Full Decade? –

Bob was never drafted. He actually signed an ELC in 2010 after beginning his career in Russia. At the time, Michael Leighton was injured, and rookie Bobrovsky shared goaltending duties with then-veteran Brian Boucher. He wasn’t great in the playoffs, the aggressive Flyers went out and got Ilya Bryzgalov, and then proceeded to turn in a decade of meh.

The part of the story that people may forget is that Ed Snider went on the record back in 2014 to claim that Bob had no interest in being the backup:

“..not only did we make a mistake on the long-term contract (Bryzgalov received), but Bobrovksy’s a young guy and he told Paul (Holmgren), ‘As soon as my contract’s up I’m out of here,’” Snider said. “He wasn’t going to re-sign with us. He was going to go back to Russia (or) he was going to go with another team, but he wasn’t going to be a second-string goalie for the rest of his life. So that was also a problem, and Paul made the best of the situation.”

…

“It’s not that we did not like Bobrovsky,” Snider said. “The whole thing was a fiasco. We can’t look back. What happened, happened, and here we are.”

In a perfect world, they would have convinced him to stay, and Bob would have developed behind Bryz to be ready in 2014 or so. Instead, the Flyers traded him for a couple of draft picks, one turning into Anthony Stolarz, somewhat ironically. They then went and got Steve Mason and the rest is history.

Bob was 23 when the Flyers traded him. He was not even close to the player or person he is now and there was no obvious indication he was ever going to be this player. He had one year remaining on his ELC before becoming a restricted free agent, and so the Flyers I guess felt like they needed to get something for him while there was some remaining value. In an alternate universe, Bob stays, gets better, and the Flyers realize he’s better than Bryz, so they buy out Bryz and hand the starting job back to Bob. Dunno. Everything in hindsight is 20/20.

It’s been some time, but I don’t recall a particularly loud portion of the fan base insisting that Sergei Bobrovsky absolutely was the future. The consensus, from what I remember, is that we wanted him to stick around and get better, in hopes that he could eventually be the first franchise goaltender in forever, but the Bryzgalov move basically turned the goaltender position upside down. The Flyers were trying to “win now” at any cost, and the Bryz thing is a poster child for that movement.