Spencer Knight stood alone, halfway between the blue line and his goal, while the Star Spangled Banner played before the biggest game of the Florida Panthers’ season and certainly the biggest of his young NHL career.
With the best season in franchise history on the line, the Panthers turned to him — a 20-year-old rookie with just four games of NHL experience and less than two months as a professional under his belt — and he delivered with 36 saves and a 4-1 win against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday to extend Florida’s season.
The five other starters stood behind him while he fought back a smile and basked in the energy from the largest crowd of the season. The Panthers upped attendance to nearly 75 percent for their must-win Game 5 and almost everyone inside the BB&T Center shouted the goaltender’s last name when the lyrics to national anthem presented the opportunity.
“...gave proof through the ‘KNIGHT!’ that our flag was still there...”
After he gave up a goal on the first save he faced in the opening minute, Knight stopped 36 in a row to let Florida rally for a season-saving win in Sunrise and cut the Lightning’s series lead to 3-2.
The Panthers are headed back to Tampa for another must-win Game 6 on Wednesday and now need two wins from completing the 30th 3-1 series comeback in NHL history.
First, they just had to win an elimination game for the first time since 1996 and they took an unprecedented path to pull it off.
At 20, Knight is the youngest goalie to start a playoff game since 1992, the seventh youngest goalie in history to start a game in the Stanley Cup playoffs and the youngest ever to start a playoff game with his team facing elimination.
It was certainly not the original plan. When they took Knight with the No. 13 overall pick in the 2019 NHL Entry Draft, the Panthers signed Sergei Bobrovsky to a seven-year, $70-million deal less than two weeks later. The two-time Vezina Trophy winner was the primary starter throughout the regular season and fellow goaltender Chris Driedger was one of the league’s best backups, tied for the NHL’s fourth best save percentage in the regular season. Through four games, Florida exhausted its option, though.
Bobrovsky started twice and posted a 5.33 goals against average with an abysmal .841 save percentage. Driedger started twice and posted a 3.70 goals against average with a nearly-as-bad .871 save percentage.
Knight didn’t dress for any of the first four games. The plan was not to use him at all in the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs. He only turned 20 in April and was playing for the Boston College Eagles in March. He only played four games in the regular season and, even though he’s the No. 27 prospect in ESPN.com’s rankings, he had a pedestrian .875 save percentage in his last two starts. The rookie was clearly third in the pecking order heading into the postseason.
The last two games from Bobrovsky and Driedger didn’t give Florida a choice. Driedger gave up five goals on 12 shots in the second period of Game 3 and got benched. Bobrovsky gave up five goals on 13 shots in Game 4 and got benched. Knight was the last remaining option, so the young American — who might not even be old enough to legally drink when the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs begin — led the Panthers on to the ice for their pregame warm-ups in Sunrise and situated himself in goal to face the defending Stanley Cup champion with his season on the line.
In just 53 seconds, he fell behind.
In the opening minute, defenseman Keith Yandle got caught in no-man’s land and the Lightning got an early 2-on-1 chance. Tampa Bay winger Blake Coleman zipped a pass from right to left across the front of the net and Lightning center Ross Colton banged home the opening goal to give Tampa Bay a 1-0 lead.
It was Knight’s only blemish, even as he faced a first-period onslaught from the Lightning. Tampa Bay fired 22 shots at Knight — it only averaged 28.7 total in the last three games — and he stopped 21 in a row to end the first for the second most saves in a period in franchise playoff history. He helped shut down all three of the Lightning’s power-play opportunities, including five saves on a critical penalty kill in the final five minutes of the period to keep the score at 1-0.
With 13:41 left in the second period, Florida finally tied the game at 1-1, setting up star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar for a slap shot on a designed play off a faceoff. With 3:05 left in the second, left wing Mason Marchment put the Panthers ahead for good at 2-1, finishing off a pass from behind the net from star center Aleksander Barkov, who drew three defenders while he danced with the puck.
Less than a minute into the third period, Florida beat star goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy again when Barkov fired from the slot on a power-play and right wing Patric Hornqvist deflected another puck past the star goaltender for a 3-1 lead.
Although the Panthers only had a 38-37 edge in shots on goal, Knight outdueled the Vezina favorite to keep the Panthers’ season alive for at least two more days.
