Paul Maurice was leaving the Florida Panthers practice facility the day of a game when he saw Sergei Bobrovsky lifting weights in a hallway. “The hell’s he doing?” Maurice thought, knowing Bobrovsky was starting in goal that night.

Maurice then did what any veteran coach, any smart coach — anyone who has dealt with a successful star does. He walked out the door.

“It’s really important that sometimes you just shut up and keep your eyes closed, keep moving,’’ Maurice said.

All the Panthers have these small glimpses inside Bobrovsky’s World, little moments, dots on the graph of a quiet star that are mere snapshots by themselves on the way to a second straight Stanley Cup Final. Teammate Carter Verhaeghe has watched Bobrovsky walk a wooden beam for balance. Or at least, Verhaeghe thinks that’s the reason for it.

“None of us do it,’’ he said.

Anthony Stolarz, the Panthers’ backup goalie, notes Bobrovsky is on the ice 15 to 20 minutes doing some self-regulated work before the goalies meet for practice, and before games he does a series breathing and eye exercises. (“Like tracking things, for peripheral vision.”)

“The hardest worker on the team,’’ Aleksander Barkov calls Bobrovsky.

String such snippets together, carry them through the years, and maybe you can start to crack the riddle wrapped in a mystery behind the positional mask that’s Bobrovsky.

A bigger riddle remains, though: How did Bobrovsky reconfigure himself, or his game, or his career — something — from a player whose NHL career appeared in trouble last spring to one of the game’s best goalies at age 35?

Maurice considers the question and begins his answer the way most people do.

“I don’t know,’’ he says.

Q: “Sergei, what did you see on the goal?

Bobrovsky: “Oh, there was a pass in the middle and ... I don’t like to talk about the goals, you know. He just shoot and score.”

So much talk of the Panthers run to a second straight Stanley Cup Final has been about the other goalie. Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy, a two-time Stanley Cup champion, was the prime reason the Tampa Bay Lightning were given a chance to steal the series.

Boston’s Jeremy Swayman was anointed superstar status for his stellar play in the second round.

The New York Rangers’ Igor Shesterkin was the reason the Eastern Conference final even went six games.

Bobrovsky, at the other end, anchors a defense that’s held opponents to two goals or less in 13 of its 17 playoff games. The Panthers have won 12 of those 13 games. For all the offensive aggression, all the goal-scoring grace, the Panthers know their blueprint to win. So do opponents.

“They weren’t giving up much,’’ Rangers coach Peter Laviolette said after losing the series.

Bobrovsky keeps doing everything asked, just as he has since the franchise-changing save of Boston forward Brad Marchand’s breakaway in the final seconds of a tied Game 5 last season. The Panthers trailed that series 3-1.

“My heart was in my throat,’’ Maurice said.

A Marchand goal would eliminate the Panthers and mean no historic comeback that series, no advance to the Stanley Cup Final, maybe an organizational shakeup and no run this season.

“Forever,’’ Marchand said when asked this season if he remembered that stop last spring.

Bobrovsky is asked about that save’s importance.

“Oh, I don’t know,’’ he said. “It was good to win that game.”

But you can draw a symbolic line across the ice for the before-and-after of that save.

Before: He was benched in favor of rookie Spencer Knight during the Tampa Bay series in 2022. He didn’t start the first three games of the playoffs last year as the Panthers rode the hot hand of career minor-leaguer Alex Lyon. Sources said then the Panthers might have bought out Bobrovsky’s contract to let him finish his career in his native Russia.

After: He was the driving force of the Panthers’ run to last year’s Final. He followed it up with a strong regular season. He’s become one of the rocks this second postseason run is built on.

Did he change? Was it the team’s systematic change to the defensive style when Maurice arrived last season?

“The style of play, how much structure I have in front of me — it’s definitely helped,’’ Bobrovsky said.

“I wasn’t here early on,’’ Maurice said. “I think our team got better. I think it has a lot to do with it, right? And there might be, I don’t know, an inflection point or a threshold when you can give a guy just a little better chance to make that save.

“Then confidence starts to build daily and things come back. So, we would say that if we know Sergei, he is very committed. He’s not casual about anything that he does. So, the losses and the goals, he would certainly look at them, carry them, try to learn from them, and if there’s a lot of them you may get overwhelmed by them.

“I don’t know about that. I know that he had done everything that he could do to be great, and I think that the team in front of him improved, and the two of them kind of went hand in hand. We’re a much better hockey team with the way he’s played.”

Q: “Is there anything about your developed routine you can share?”

Bobrovsky: “Oh, I don’t know (pause). Everything I do is to stay healthy and happy and in balance.”

Goaltending is the mystery wing of hockey. Maurice, like most coaches, claims to know nothing about their trade. Former Panthers coach Doug MacLean used to chuckle during the run to the 1996 Stanley Cup when questions came about goalie John Vanbiesbrouck, saying, “Don’t ask me about anything he does.”

But early last season, as the Panthers struggled at the start under Maurice’s new system, the coach went on a walk with Bobrovsky. Hockey wasn’t on the menu. Getting to know each other was.

Bobrovsky grew up in a Siberian mining town where his father was a coal miner and his mother a crane operator. Maurice had coached in Russia for a year a decade ago. They found some common ground.

“If you could read a transcript of that conversation, you’d think the other guy was 57 and I was (35),’’ Maurice said. “This is a good, very wise man, an old soul. He’s had some experience, very sophisticated in some ways, in understanding life.

“So, it as a really interesting conversation. His part was. Not mine. It was him telling me about growing up and what his life was like there. Because I was interested in having a little bit of an idea of what it’s like there. And that was all. Those of us born in North America, you don’t get to see some of the challenges that a guy like Sergei would have had to go through daily to become great. And he’s done it.”

Q: “Do you think of a save or a moment ...”

Bobrovsky: “There is only wins and losses, and that’s it, and you focus on one moment at a time, and you don’t think about anything else.”

So, now it’s the Panthers versus Edmonton, which means Aleksander Barkov versus Connor McDavid and Bobrovsky versus Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner.

Like Bobrovsky, Skinner has redefined himself. Just these playoffs, the Edmonton goalie was benched for two games against Vancouver. He then rallied to be the focal point of a series-clinching win against Dallas with 35 saves as Edmonton managed just 10 shots.

Skinner also is 24. He’s rising into his career. Who redefines their career at 35? There’s Kurt Warner, the Hall-of-Fame quarterback, did in returning to the Super Bowl at age 38 with Arizona after being cut by two teams. Boston center Al Horford, at 38, is back in the NBA Finals in supporting role after being on two other teams.

Bobrovsky, asked what he’s learned with age, says: “I rely a lot on my trust, on my mind trusting what I see and think. What’s better. What works for me. It’s always changing, always dynamic. It’s everything moving. There are no steady pieces.”

He paused. “I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s kind of a tough question to answer.”

Maurice knows his role is only so much now that it’s this series with Edmonton. He told Bobrovsky in practice on Wednesday, “I spend more time cheering out there now.”

The season is on the players and none more than Bobrovsky. He’ll walk his balance beam, do his eye exercises, trust his mind and keep redefining the greatness that looked gone a season ago.

____