BOSTON — In the regular season, Sergei Bobrovsky is known as one of the top goaltenders in the NHL, as evidenced by his nomination for the Vezina Trophy, which he has won twice before.
“I mean, I don’t even know if there’s one word to describe him,” Florida Panthers defenseman Brandon Montour said. “Focus. That’s a good one, I guess.”
“Ultimate compete. Ultimate preparation,” Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad said. “His calm and coolness in the net under any circumstances.”
“He’s just on another level,” Florida captain Aleksander Barkov said.
That’s the perception of Playoff Bob. It’s reinforced by incredible postseason saves like his diving stop in the first round with his back turned to center ice, which was immortalized on a T-shirt as “The Bobbery.”
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Sergei Bobrovsky makes unbelievable save to deny Lightning
Check out this sensational save from Panthers’ Sergei Bobrovsky in Game 2 vs. the Lightning.
But the reality of Playoff Bob, at least in the 2024 postseason, is different from the perception.
Sure, he’s 7-2 for the Panthers, who are one victory away from advancing to the Eastern Conference finals for the second straight season. He has a 2.55 goals-against average, which ranks him fifth among goalies with at least six postseason appearances. But those are largely team-driven stats for a goaltender.
From an individual perspective, Bobrovsky has a .892 save percentage, which ranks eighth out of nine goalies with at least six appearances. Only Stuart Skinner of the Edmonton Oilers ranks lower (.877), a goaltender whose status for Game 4 against the Vancouver Canucks is uncertain due to his ineffectiveness.
Money Puck has Bobrovsky at 0.5 goals saved above expected. Stathletes has him at minus-1.3 goals saved above expected in all situations. Natural Stat Trick has Bobrovsky at minus-1 goals saved above average. His save percentage vs. expected save percentage (-0.70) is 11th in the postseason.
So based on all of that, who is Playoff Bob?
“He’s at a point in his career where he should be oblivious to the stats,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “They don’t matter. His stats won’t be good, but his play is fantastic.”
THIS IS BOBROVSKY’S 14th NHL season. His NHL run started in 2010-11 with the Philadelphia Flyers, who signed him as a free agent out of the KHL. After two seasons in Philadelphia, and one season under big-ticket free agent signing Ilya Bryzgalov, the Flyers traded him to the Columbus Blue Jackets, where Bobrovsky blossomed: He won the Vezina Trophy in his first season in Columbus (2012-13) and then again in the 2016-17 season.
He was signed away from the Blue Jackets by then-Florida GM Dale Tallon on a seven-year, $70 million contract with full trade protection. The size of that contract weighed on him during his first couple of seasons in Florida, but Bobrovsky was a big reason the Panthers became a Stanley Cup contender.
While his career save percentage in the regular season (.915) is higher than in the postseason (.904), he earned the Playoff Bob reputation with a couple of impressive series wins. In 2019, he backstopped the Blue Jackets to a first-round sweep of the Tampa Bay Lightning in one of the biggest upsets in NHL history. In 2022, he battled for a six-game series win over the Washington Capitals, the first playoff series win for the Panthers franchise since its appearance in the Stanley Cup Final in 1996.
Last season, Bobrovsky had a .915 save percentage in leading the Panthers to the Stanley Cup Final again, where they lost to the Vegas Golden Knights. Alex Lyon started the postseason for the Panthers after helping to lead them to a playoff berth in the regular season. Bobrovsky replaced Lyon during Game 3 of the first round and helped them win two critical road games, including Game 7.
But the highlight of his postseason was Game 1 against the Carolina Hurricanes in the conference finals: a four-overtime epic in which Bobrovsky stopped 63 of 65 shots in full Playoff Bob mode.
“At that point you don’t feel much about your body. It’s more mental,” he said at the time. “Your focus is completely on the game. One shot at a time and you don’t think about your body.”
No goalie faced more shots than Bobrovsky last postseason (639), including 31.2 per game at 5-on-5 — a total inflated a bit by overtime games. This playoff run from the Panthers couldn’t be more different: Bobrovsky is facing just 22.9 shots per game.
The good news is that the Panthers are a much better defensive team year over year, tying the Winnipeg Jets for first in the NHL with a 2.41 goals-against average in the regular season.
But this presented a new challenge to Bobrovsky: getting to his game, and staying on his game, without facing anything close to his previous shot volume.
“He’s not on his A-plus-game right now, but I think he’s playing well,” said Kevin Weekes, ESPN analyst and former NHL goaltender. “It’s different because there’s not a lot of volume. It’s hard to get in and stay in the rhythm in any game right now.”
Weekes said that goalies use shots from a distance to get into a rhythm. “Some clear out point shots where you can make a clean save and get the feel,” he said.
“It’s weird. For the most part, Florida’s dominating. And then when they do give up some chances, they’re kind of Grade A,” he said.
Maurice said that quality vs. quantity change was on full display in the Panthers’ first-round win over the Lightning.
“I think we really noticed it in the Tampa series. Those guys hang on at pucks. They’ve got so much deception in their game. Their shot numbers weren’t high, but they were just so dangerous,” he said. “I feel that a guy that doesn’t have the experience that Bob has would’ve a difficult time doing what Sergei’s been able to do.”
Weekes saw something similar.
“It’s very different than it was last year, because last year he was like stealing games and they were giving up a lot more in the playoffs,” he said. “So far, certainly in this round and even against Tampa, he’s not getting as much volume. It’s a tougher way to stay busy and to stay sharp as easily.”
THERE’S A LOT of psychology involved in Bobrovsky’s postseason workload.
First, there’s his own mentality. Without facing shots to keep him sharp, Bobrovsky (who declined to comment for this story) has had to remain engaged mentally in different ways.
“I believe that he has a mental program that he’s running in those long stretches of time because he’s done it before,” Maurice said. “He’s so routine in what he does, so he would have a routine in the net for staying sharp and staying mentally alert.”
Another mental hurdle for Bobrovsky is the realization that his numbers aren’t going to be as stellar as they’ve been in seasons past.
“I think it’s been an incredibly difficult start for him in the playoffs,” Maurice said. “I don’t mean the quality of his play. He made some saves that we’ll probably be seeing for the next 10 years, like the backhand spin-around. But Tampa Bay is really difficult to game because they have the [David] Pastrnak level of skill [but] they don’t shoot every puck. So the numbers aren’t going to look good against Tampa. They’re not putting up 50 shots.”
When opponents aren’t putting up shots, that can also have a psychological impact.
Maurice recalled when his teams would face Hockey Hall of Famer Martin Brodeur, whose New Jersey Devils teams would prevent shots on goal for long stretches.
“I remember we were going to play New Jersey back in their prime and walking by the door and I hear [former NHL player] Nelson Emerson say, ‘We’re probably only getting three chances tonight, fellas. We’ve got to make good on them,'” recalled the coach.
One goaltending analyst told ESPN that Bobrovsky has an aura about him that makes opponents feel they have to capitalize on the chances they get to score on the Panthers netminder.
“The numbers don’t say he’s dominating. Right,” the analyst said. “But I feel like he’s so mobile, he’s so explosive that there still can be an intimidation factor.”
The final psychological impact of Playoff Bob is on his teammates. For the players on the ice, it’s the way that Bobrovsky can turn his performance around in a single game. Look no further than Game 4 against the Boston Bruins, when he gave up two goals on five shots in the first period, and then didn’t allow a goal for the rest of the game.
“That’s who he is. It’s funny: It’s cliché with every team. You always tell your goalie to shut the door and we’ll get this one back for you,” Panthers forward Evan Rodrigues said. “A lot of people say that, but it feels like when we do, he goes out and actually does it. He’s been incredible for us all year. Steady as can be. Game 4 was another example of it.”
Playoff Bob serves another purpose for his teammates: A great performance in goal could mean less scrutiny of their own mishaps in a victory.
“You don’t have to go to therapy as much, right?” Maurice said. “If he doesn’t [play well], you’re in team therapy, you’re in the video room going, ‘You made these four mistakes and that’s why the goal went in.’ And then if he stops it, we pat them on the back and say, ‘Great job.’ And nobody talks about the mistakes. So there are fewer therapy sessions when he’s playing like that.”
Florida State freshman linebacker Ethan Pritchard was shot in the back of the head Sunday night, his father said, and remains in stable condition at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital.
Earl Pritchard told WFTV in Orlando that Ethan Pritchard was shot while driving his aunt home from a family gathering in Havana, Florida, which is about 16 miles from Tallahassee, near the Georgia state line.
“He was actually in the car taking my sister around the corner to her daughter’s house to drop her off,” Earl Pritchard told WFTV. “They turned the corner, and as soon as they turned the corner, they heard gunshots.”
Earl Pritchard said doctors continue to monitor the swelling in Ethan’s head.
An investigation into the shooting by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office is ongoing.
Florida State coach Mike Norvell said Wednesday he has been able to briefly visit Ethan Pritchard in the hospital, and he has remained in contact with Earl Pritchard.
“It’s a lot, not going to say it’s not,” Norvell said. “I try to give the players a daily update. … I was able to go by yesterday for a short period of time with limited visitation, just getting a chance to be there for a handful of minutes. It was good to be with him.
“He’s still in stable condition. … We are absolutely praying for him every day and trying to be there for our players, too. Yes, it’s one thing on the field, but it’s also off the field, that’s one of their brothers and a guy they deeply care about. Just working through this part of the tragedy of what it is.”
Pritchard, who is from the Central Florida area, did not play in the Seminoles’ season-opening victory against Alabama.
Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer still believes he has a good football team, even after last week’s surprising 31-17 loss at Florida State.
The season-opening loss to the Seminoles, who went 2-10 last season, was the Crimson Tide’s fifth loss in their past 10 games under DeBoer, who was hired in January 2024 to replace Nick Saban.
“My message is that our team is, I think we have a good football team that can do some big things still this year,” DeBoer said during Wednesday’s SEC coaches teleconference. “We’ve got to prove it. We’ve got to go do it.”
DeBoer, 50, went 9-4 in his first season as Alabama’s coach, the first time the Tide lost more than three games since Saban’s first team went 7-6 in 2007.
Most alarming to some Alabama fans is that the Tide have lost four times as a double-digit favorite in DeBoer’s first 14 games. They were a 13½-point favorite over Florida State, which ended Alabama’s 23-game winning streak in season openers.
DeBoer said he is trying to stay the course heading into Saturday’s home game against Louisiana-Monroe (7:45 p.m. ET, SEC Network), despite widespread criticism surrounding his program.
DeBoer said Keenan, who had 40 tackles and 2½ sacks last season, was “doing really well” and it wasn’t a long-term injury.
Miller, the Tide’s top returning rusher with 668 yards with seven touchdowns in 2024, might be able to return for a Sept. 13 home game against Wisconsin, DeBoer said.
“Jam is doing really well,” DeBoer said. “Will not be available this week but coming along, again, as good as you could’ve expected. We knew there would be a possibility for next week and that’s certainly still the case.”
Eli Lederman covers college football and recruiting for ESPN.com. He joined ESPN in 2024 after covering the University of Oklahoma for Sellout Crowd and the Tulsa World.
NORMAN, Okla. — From a Denny’s in Rolla, Missouri, John Mateer settled one of the most consequential transfer decisions of the college football offseason last December. Four months after he won the starting job at Washington State, Mateer had closed an explosive 2024 regular season on Nov. 30, with 3,965 all-purpose yards and more touchdowns — 44 — than any other FBS quarterback. When he sat down with family to discuss his future two weeks later, over 24-hour breakfast a day after his sister’s college graduation, Mateer had the attention of every QB-needy program in the country.
The Cougars tried to keep him with an improved NIL package. Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski FaceTimed on behalf of newly hired North Carolina coach Bill Belichick, whose Tar Heels lodged a sizable bid. Miami stepped in with a substantial financial figure of its own, too.
“They were throwing some freaking money at me, man — oh my god,” Mateer told ESPN this spring. “But it wasn’t about that. The money was always going to come. The scheme and the fit had to be right.”
The interested parties waited patiently into mid-December. In reality, by the time his name officially landed in the NCAA transfer portal on Dec. 16, Mateer’s mind had been effectively made up since Dec. 2. Once Oklahoma hired Ben Arbuckle, the 29-year-old playcaller behind his breakout season, Mateer’s next move became a “no-brainer.”
“It ended up being a really easy decision after Ben Arbuckle came here,” said Mateer, who sources tell ESPN will earn between $2.4-3 million in his first season with the Sooners in 2025.
By following Arbuckle, Mateer, a preseason Heisman hopeful, placed his faith in continuity and a partnership that produced 36.6 points per game a year ago.
This fall, Oklahoma coach Brent Venables is betting even bigger on the connection between his imported QB/OC duo in a potentially make-or-break 2025 campaign. The first major test comes Saturday when the Sooners host No. 15 Michigan (7:30 PM EST, ABC).
How quickly can Mateer and Arbuckle restore an offense that ranked 97th in scoring and 113th in total offense a year ago? It’s a central question of Oklahoma’s 2025 season, which began with a 35-3 Week 1 win over Illinois State that lifted the Sooners to No. 18 in the latest AP poll.
Last season, hamstrung by injuries and inconsistent quarterback play between former five-star recruit Jackson Arnold and freshman Michael Hawkins Jr., the Sooners fired playcaller Seth Littrell seven games into the season and floundered to a 6-7 finish in their SEC debut. Oklahoma’s 24.0 points per game marked its lowest scoring figure since 1998, the year before Bob Stoops took over.
On the hook for the program’s only pair of losing seasons in the 21st century, Venables vowed to fix that offense last November. Less than a month later, he landed Mateer and Arbuckle — the tandem engines to the nation’s sixth-ranked scoring offense in 2024 — and placed them at the core of the critical rebuild.
Mateer is now in his third season operating Arbuckle’s aggressive, up-tempo system, and the duo has developed a steadfast, mutual trust. Born in Texas only nine years and 335 miles apart, they’re jelled personally, too, bonded by a tight relationship that’s brought them both closer to home in 2025 and a shared kinetic energy that can shift the vibe of an entire offense.
When Mateer finalized his decision last December from the Denny’s in mid-Missouri, his first text message went to Arbuckle. Forty-eight hours later, Mateer flew to Oklahoma and committed, sealing the high-stakes move that transported one of the nation’s most dynamic offenses to Norman.
“When John made the decision that he wanted to come to Oklahoma … it was special,” said Arbuckle. “Because it said, ‘OK, we get to keep this thing rolling.'”
BEFORE HE DIVES into the details of a Friday night game-prep meeting, Arbuckle will usually open with a little something extra for his players.
A history lesson, an anecdote related to the next day’s opponent, clips from 2000s comedy classics like “Old School” and “Superbad” — anything that might ease the pregame tension or get his player’s minds engaged. When Wazzu hosted Texas Tech this past fall, Arbuckle delivered a speech on Doc Holliday, the 19th-century gunslinger who, apocryphally, never lost a shootout.
A group reenactment of Matthew McConaughey’s chest-thumping bit from “The Wolf of Wall Street” once proved especially popular.
“They both care about football and they take the serious things seriously,” Clay McGuire, WSU’s offensive line coach in 2023, said of Mateer and Arbuckle. “But the minute you’re around them, you know, your energy level and your comfort level just raises automatically. And it’s a gift.”
That presence is part of the secret sauce that transformed WSU’s offense into appointment television in 2024, and part of what Oklahoma paid for when it onboarded the QB/OC duo.
In Jan. 2023, the Cougars needed it, too. Arbuckle had just finished his first season as a Division I playcaller.
Four years removed from his role as quality control staffer at Houston Baptist, where Arbuckle famously moonlighted as an Uber Eats driver to make ends meet, Western Kentucky coach Tyson Helton promoted him as one of three co-offensive coordinators in 2022. The arrangement ultimately lasted all of one game. “Everyone knew Ben was the guy,” Helton said.
While Arbuckle’s offense averaged nearly 500 yards per game and turned Austin Reed into the nation’s leading passer, WSU had dropped five of its final eight games that fall.
Players flooded into the portal in December. The Cougars got blown out by Fresno State in the LA Bowl later in the month. And, for the third time in as many years, the Cougars were hunting for a new offensive coordinator. Djouvensky Schlenbaker, a former Wazzu running back who is now at UT Rio Grande Valley, recalled a sour mood hovering over the program when Arbuckle arrived in early 2023.
“The year before was just rough,” he said. “He came in and flipped a switch. Arbuckle made the game fun again.”
In his first player’s meeting at WSU, Arbuckle presented his plan. The Cougars were going to throw the ball. They were going to take chances. And they were going to be explosive.
Arbuckle also introduced a favored acronym to ensure they understood his precise philosophy. Oklahoma players are accustomed to the term now, too. Publicly, “ATFA” stands for accountable, tough, fast, aggressive. Behind closed doors, it carries a different meaning.
“Attack their f—-ing a–,” Cougars tight end Cooper Mathers explained. “That was our thing. If we’re up by a lot or down by a lot, Arbuckle is calling the game the same way. If it doesn’t work? So what? F— it.”
The Cougars posted 45.7 points per game in four wins to open the 2023 season, then lost all but one of their eight remaining contests. But with future No. 1 NFL draft pick Cam Ward under center, WSU finished the season 35th in total yards and 38th in scoring, up 59 and 42 spots, respectively, from the year before.
In the backdrop, Mateer sat behind Ward and absorbed the system as a redshirt freshman.
MATEER APPEARED IN 12 games off the bench in 2023. Decoy packages, two-quarterback sets, short-yardage runs — Arbuckle scripted something to get him on the field every week.
When Ward left for Miami after the 2023 season, the Cougars brought in Zevi Eckhaus, a veteran FCS transfer to compete for the starting job. But, among the staff, there was little doubt.
“Our confidence was high because John was such a pro backup,” Arbuckle said. “He very easily could have been the starter the year before. I knew we had a chance to be really special in 2024.”
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John Mateer says he’s not impressed by record-setting OU debut
Despite throwing for 392 yards vs. Marshall, the most in program history for an Oklahoma QB playing his first game, Mateer tells SEC This Morning he can play better.
The son of collegiate swimmers, Mateer was a four-year starter at Little Elm High School, an underdog program within Texas’ top classification situated 35 miles north of Dallas.
Despite promising dual-threat ability and a pair of school passing records, Mateer went almost entirely overlooked in the 2022 recruiting class. He finished his senior season prepared to sign with FCS Central Arkansas. But when Eric Morris, Arbuckle’s predecessor in Pullman, left Incarnate Word for WSU in Dec. 2021, he used his first flight in the job to fly back to Texas and flipped Mateer to the Cougars.
“Every coach I talked to told me that kid’s the best player in this area,” said Morris, now in his third year as coach at North Texas. “He’s smart, he’s fun to be around. He’s not an a–hole. Players are drawn to him. Some people need to start paying attention to that stuff in recruiting.”
Schlenbaker, a fellow 2022 signee, quickly clocked a quiet confidence in his quarterback early on at WSU.
“He has calmness in him,” Schlenbaker said of Mateer. “Wherever he goes, there’s no anxiety at all. Football comes easy for him. It’s just another day for him.”
That personality clicked with the way Arbuckle and John Kuceyeski, an offensive analyst who followed Arbuckle to WSU from Western Kentucky, approached the game. Loose, easygoing and fiercely competitive, the trio meshed immediately.
Maeteer hung in their offices, peppering the coaches with questions. He watched football from their living rooms and got close to Arbuckle’s family, too. Fellow Texans, Mateer and Arbuckle spent offseason Saturdays cutting into brisket at Miss Huddy’s Barbecue, the Central Texas-style food cart in Pullman that gave Mateer one of his first NIL deals. On Sundays, Mateer and Kuceyeski met up for church.
“They put their faith in me, and those relationships are deep,” Mateer said. “Those guys taught me how to be a quarterback. But they also showed me how to be a man and a teammate.”
After Mateer beat Eckhaus for the starting job, he and Arbuckle compiled a catalog of memorable performances this past fall: The night Mateer torched Texas Tech for 197 rushing yards. WSU’s second win over Washington in more than a decade. The close call at San Diego State.
Yet none resonated among the Cougars better than Mateer’s fourth career start on Sept. 20, when the duo produced 627 yards of offense in a 54-52, double-overtime win over San José State.
Mateer was superb, accounting for five touchdowns and 501 of those yards. He helped WSU overcome a 14-point, fourth-quarter deficit, then threatened to undercut the comeback with an ill-fated, end zone interception on the Cougars’ first series of overtime.
The mistake could have been a backbreaker. Undeterred, Arbuckle went back to his quarterback on the next possession. Minutes later, Mateer ran in the winning 2-point conversion.
“You felt the confidence with him and Ben on the sideline that night,” Mathers said. “Even when things weren’t going our way. They made us feel like we always had a chance.”
THE BRAND OF indefatigable confidence between Mateer and Arbuckle is one of the pillars Oklahoma is counting on in 2025. Another, slightly more tangible pillar: the offense itself and the scheme the Sooners have spent the offseason “importing” from Washington State.
Oklahoma is now the latest on the short, but growing list of programs to hand its offense over to a proven QB/OC from elsewhere in college football’s transfer portal era. To date, the Sooners’ Pullman-sourced revamp is likely the most ambitious experiment of its kind.
However, if there’s an FBS coordinator uniquely positioned to know what it takes to pull it off successfully, it’s Arbuckle. He got his start at Houston Baptist in 2018 with then-offensive coordinator Zach Kittley. In Dec. 2020, Kittley took Arbuckle with him to Western Kentucky and HBU quarterback Bailey Zappe joined them via the portal soon after.
A year later, the Hilltoppers had the nation’s No. 1 passing offense and Zappe owned the single-season Division I record for yards (5,967) and touchdowns (62). The parallels between the two processes, with Mateer and Kuceyski with him at Oklahoma, are not lost on Arbuckle.
“This situation, honestly, kind of mirrored that one [at Western Kentucky] a lot,” he said. “When you have a quarterback who knows the system, it just speeds everything else up.”
In that sense, Mateer is not only the Sooners’ new QB1. He becomes one of the most essential cogs in the structural implementation of Oklahoma’s offense in 2025.
Oklahoma has retooled elsewhere across its offense. To reinforce the previous season’s trouble spots, the Sooners used the portal to add four wide receivers and a trio of experienced offensive linemen, headlined by Jake Maikkula (Stanford) and Derek Simmons (Western Carolina). Oklahoma hit the portal again in April to secure Cal‘s Jaydn Ott, one of the nation’s top returning running backs.
Even so, questions remain over how the Sooners can cope offensively this fall up against the nation’s third-toughest schedule per ESPN’s College Football Power Index.
But just as it was at WSU last fall, Mateer, Arbuckle and Kuceyski are at the helm. Perhaps influenced by his experience with Zappe at WKU, Arbuckle has consistently referred to his quarterback as an extra coach as they’ve slowly introduced the offense since January.
Players like offensive lineman Troy Everett, Mateer’s locker neighbor, second that notion.
“Those two are on the same page,” he said. “It’s like having Arbuckle on the field.”
Mateer and Arbuckle delivered a promising start in Week 1. With 392 passing yards, Mateer passed Baker Mayfield for the most by an Oklahoma quarterback in a Sooners debut.
Days before the opener with Illinois State, Mateer’s mind floated back to March 6. If the Sooners’ new quarterback hadn’t yet fully grasped the lingering impact of the program’s offensive despair in 2024, it was apparent by the end of the first initial spring camp practice.
One of Mateer’s first throws in an Oklahoma uniform was an over-the-shoulder touchdown connection to Arkansas-Pine Bluff transfer wide receiver JaVonnie Gibson. The moment qualified as one of the earliest on-field successes for Arbuckle’s offense in Norman. Mateer reacted by sprinting the length of the field to meet Gibson in the end zone.
Only after he got there did Mateer realize he was celebrating almost entirely alone.
“The culture of the offense wasn’t where it needed to be,” Mateer told ESPN at the time. “Nobody was used to scoring touchdowns and celebrating like that. I was like, ‘Dude, that’s what we’re here for.'”
Six months later, Mateer and his Sooners teammates celebrated plenty against Illinois State. If the QB/OC duo had two jobs when it got to Oklahoma — to restore the confidence of Oklahoma’s offense and to rejuvenate the unit itself — it is at least halfway there.