Bobrovsky is one of those guys from peripheral, industrial Russian cities with fascinating back stories.
His parents worked in a coal mine and a steeling plant. The bosses of the mine his dad worked on were big sports fans and organized a lot of amateur events, where Bob first learned to enjoy sports.
He even enjoyed riding a bus for an hour to attend 6:45 am practices as a 7-year-old. When one day both of his kid team's goalies couldn't play, he volunteered for the position, because he was flexible due to the influence of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee movies (and also because the equipment looked cool). But it was 1995, when workers not receiving their wages for months was the norm. So his coach (Alexey Kitsyn, father of former Kings prospect Maxim Kitsyn) turned Sergei's figure skating skates to hockey skates and provided him with handmade goalie equipment. His working class parents don't reflect on the sacrifices they had to make often.
Sergei played his 1st Superleague game at 18 (notably, against future KHL nagibator Sergei Mozyakin), not in a small part due to Metallurg's reluctance to pay the additional tax for icing foreign goalies. He became the starter next year, his work ethic was stellar (his coach and Soviet legend Boris Mikhailov often advised the kid to practice less), but he was a starter for the worst team in the league with pretty mediocre stats and known inconsistencies. He was always behind Semyon Varlamov on his age group's national team and was never drafted because of the 'Russian factor'.
At 21, after Metallurg was once again out of the playoff race early, Bobrovsky was assigned to their MHL team for the 1st ever MHL playoffs. He was really good, led his team to the finals and then was recalled to a national team for a series of friendlies against Team Italy (that decision may or may not have been influenced by their opponent's powerful management). So Bob never won the MHL championship, but it was the 2nd game in MHL playoffs (that he had to miss with pulled groin) when the Flyers scout made contacts to him.
That offseason, Bob was signed by Philadelphia, and the rest of the story is well known.
So happy for Bob.
