​After the Panthers’ final game of last season, Florida star Matthew Tkachuk made his feelings about Sergei Bobrovsky abundantly clear. “The only guy I will be recruiting, and I hope I don’t have to recruit him, and that’s Bob,” Tkachuk said after Florida’s season-closing 8-1 victory over the Detroit Red Wings in Sunrise. “We cannot lose him. He’s our guy. He is going to get us back to where we want to be. [He is] the most important piece of our team, the past couple of years, with what he has done. It’s the character, the work ethic, the drive. He sets the tone on and off the ice. I don’t care what age he is, he is the backbone of this team. If we’re going to get back there, we’re going to need him.”
But a few months later, the Panthers and Bobrovsky parted ways. After attempting to negotiate a new deal, Florida moved on and acquired Jacob Markstrom in a trade with the New Jersey Devils, while Bobrovsky became a free agent and signed a three-year, $21 million contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs. In a conversation on their Wingmen podcast with his brother and new Florida teammate, Brady Tkachuk, Matthew reflected on the separation, saying he would miss Bobrovsky on and off the ice, even as he looked forward to reuniting with Markstrom, with whom he shared the blazer in Calgary.
Tkachuk spent four seasons with Bobrovsky in South Florida, during which the Panthers reached the Stanley Cup Final three consecutive years, winning it all in 2024 and 2025. “The backbone,” Tkachuk said of Bobrovsky, adding, “Obviously, all of our lives have changed forever since the Cups. Our lives would have been the exact same [because] 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. One of my favorite teammates, ever.”
To secure Markstrom, the Panthers had to part with two of their unsung heroes, Evan Rodrigues and Jesper Boqvist, sending them to the Devils. Rodrigues had helped the Panthers win the Stanley Cup twice after signing a four-year deal with Florida in 2023, while Boqvist joined the team in 2024. “E-Rod? Both Finals, both playoff runs … he is such a Swiss Army knife,” Tkachuk said. “Jersey is getting a good one. I was talking with Jack [Hughes] afterward, and I’m like, ‘dude, you are going to love playing with this guy.’ I love playing with him. The performance he had in the Finals is the legit stuff of legends. We are not winning the Cup without him. He was that good. And, such a great guy, great family. Sad to see him go.”
Rodrigues is a free agent after this coming season, and the departure of Boqvist marked another significant change for the Panthers as they looked to adjust to life after two veteran contributors who had left a lasting imprint on the franchise.