Long before Sergei Bobrovsky signed his name to a Maple Leafs contract, Steven Lorentz had already put in the work that made the reunion feel inevitable.

Teammates together on the 2024 Stanley Cup Champion Florid Panthers,  it was Lorentz who Bobrovsky wanted lined up at the top of the circle, feeding him pucks one at a time until the two-time Vezina Trophy winner felt ready for the rest of the group to join in.

“Word on the street,  as everyone knows , is that I got to be his warm-up shooter for the year,” Lorentz said Tuesday, appearing alongside hosts Aaron Korolnek and Frank Corrado on TSN 1050’s OverDrive in Tuesday.

It became a full-blown routine. Bobrovsky would call for him with a “Steve-O!” and Lorentz would answer “Bob-O!” before taking up his spot, wristing soft shots from the top of the left circle and the bottom of the right, switching sides so the goaltender saw a variety of angles before a single teammate had touched a puck. 

“He tells where to shoot and I put that puck there every time,” Lorentz said of the exacting pre-practice sessions that quietly became part of Florida’s championship formula.

That partnership helped carry the Panthers to the 2024 Stanley Cup, with Lorentz and Bobrovsky both collecting rings on the same title team. Lorentz left Florida as a free agent that summer, landed a professional tryout with Toronto, and turned it into a one-year deal, and eventually his childhood dream of playing for the Maple Leafs. Bobrovsky stayed in Sunrise two more seasons, through a second championship and a third trip to the Final, before Florida’s trade for goaltender Jacob Markstrom on the eve of free agency this July signaled his run there was over. Toronto moved fast, signing him to a three-year, $21-million contract, and suddenly the shooter and his goaltender were reunited, this time in blue and white.

Lorentz didn’t hide his excitement, but he was even more effusive about the person he considers one of the league’s most misunderstood stars. 

“He is calm and a little quirky, but he puts the work in,” Lorentz said of Bobrovsky. “He is one of the first guys in the gym. He is staying after practice for hours. He is just putting the work in and truly cares.”

Asked what people get wrong about a goaltender often reduced to his superstitions, Lorentz called Bobrovsky “an expert planner” whose preparation is “so meticulous with his pre-game routines”, the same trait that made him nearly impossible to solve for long stretches of the past decade. 

“One of the nicest, most humble superstars, you could say, out there,” Lorentz added.

By the time Florida made its third straight run to the Final, the operation had expanded , forward Kyle Okposo joined as a second shooter , but Lorentz remained Bobrovsky’s primary target, the two of them wrapping every session by racing side to side across the ice before the rest of the Panthers even stepped on.

The reunion arrives amid a summer of overhaul at the top of the Maple Leafs’ organizational chart. General manager John Chayka has reshaped the roster around captain Auston Matthews, trading longtime winger Nick Robertson to Pittsburgh for a 2028 fourth-round pick, acquiring forward Nick Paul from Tampa Bay, and signing free agents Teddy Blueger and Bobrovsky within days of each other. Toronto also welcomed No. 1 overall pick Gavin McKenna to development camp, hired Daniel Alfredsson as an associate coach. Bobrovsky’s understudy in Florida, Anthony Stolarz,  had joined the Leafs in the same offseason in 2024.

For Lorentz, all of the new additions to the team’s deptj  adds up to a training camp battle he’s well accustomed to fighting. 

“I’ve been counted out my whole career,” he said of the deepened forward group. “It gives me fuel and is nothing new to me.”

Whether Lorentz keeps his warm-up duties in Toronto remains to be seen. But given the track record,  two Stanley Cups, one very particular goaltender, and a shooter who never missed his spot,  nobody around the Leafs would bet against it continuing.

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