Gold medals, good meals and a short memory: The secrets to Spencer Knight’s rapid rise
Mike Ayers was busy putting his kids to bed when Spencer Knight gave up a goal on the first shot he ever faced in the Stanley Cup playoffs, so he made sure to record the opening moments of Game 5 to be able to soak in everything from his former goaltender’s biggest start yet for the Florida Panthers.
He watched the goal — a basically unstoppable 2-on-1 finish by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the opening minute Monday — a little while after most of the world did and knew the game wasn’t going to have unraveled by the time his DVR caught up to live television.
“With a lot of kids, I think you give up that first goal and there can be a lot of doubt,” said Ayers, who’s the associate head coach and goaltending coach for the Boston College Eagles. “For Spence and just knowing him, it was never an issue for me watching the game last night. I knew he was into it.”
When Knight stopped five shots on a power play late in the first period and smiled as he skated off the ice at the BB&T Center, Ayers knew for sure there wasn’t going to be any more trouble for the 20-year-old rookie and he was right. Knight saved the final 36 shots he faced to lift the Panthers to a 4-1 win and force a Game 6 back at Amalie Arena.
“When he’s smiling like that,” Ayers said, “that’s when I know he’s good.”
Knight will get the starting nod again Wednesday at 8 p.m. in Tampa, trying to once again keep Florida’s season alive against its in-state rival. The Panthers trail 3-2 in the series and need two more wins to stage the 30th 3-1 series comeback in NHL history.
It would be an unprecedented feat for Knight, who became the youngest goalie to start a playoff game since 1992 and the youngest ever to make his postseason debut in a game with his team facing elimination. When Knight signed his entry-level contract with Florida in March, the plan was for the rookie to just start once against the lowly Columbus Blue Jackets to get his feet when. Soon, one start turned into three after fellow goaltender Chris Driedger got hurt, and now it has turned into at least two in the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs after both Driedger and Sergei Bobrovsky faltered in the first four games of this first-round series.
When he made the decision to turn to the young American in a must-win situation, Joel Quenneville had to look at the whole picture. The coach had four solid regular-season NHL appearances to lean on, plus his standout college hockey career and a gold medal-winning performance as the United States’ starter at the 2021 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships (WJHC) in January.
“His whole career coming up to joining us this year gave you every indication that he’s capable of doing it now,” Quenneville said Monday, “and then when he did play for us right off the bat his composure gave you every indication that he’s capable of handling any kind of situation and we’re in a situation where we’ve got nothing to lose.”
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At Boston College
In those rare instances Knight ran into a hiccup in his two years at Boston College, Ayers knew just the subject to pivot to and let his goalie reset.
“If he ever had a bump in the road or something,” Ayers said, “we would always revert back to talking about cooking.”
It’s an unlikely hobby for a teenage college athlete, but Knight and one of his fellow goaltenders would often cook extravagant-looking meals for a group of teammates.
“Some of the pictures of some of the meals he makes are just insane,” Ayers said. “Literally, pictures that are like restaurant quality.”
It’s a love, Ayers said, that blossomed because of Knight’s commitment to nutrition and a well-rounded perspective. Although he orally committed to the Eagles when he was 14, Knight is careful not to let hockey be all he cares about. He was a good student, Ayers said, and “he likes to go for walks or do things that allow him to just get away.”
Cooking is one of those away-from-hockey focuses he found to stay preternaturally even-keeled on the ice.
“To be honest with you, I think that’s what makes him special. When he’s at the rink, he’s into hockey, but he gets away from hockey mentally,” Ayers said. “He’s just like full-bore into whatever he’s doing, so if it’s academics — if he’s working on homework for an hour, he’s full-bore into that.
“That’s just how he is, so when he’s at the rink it’s 100 percent hockey. It’s an interesting attitude to have and obviously it’s worked really well for him, but it is interesting to watch him.”
For the U.S. national team
Knight’s first game of the 2021 WJHC could hardly have gone worse.
He faced 12 shots and gave up four goals. He lasted less than 13 minutes into the second period before getting benched. After one game, the United States faced a goalie controversy with Knight at the center.
The next day, assistant coach Kris Mayotte checked in on him.
“He was like, You know what? I’ve just got to go in the rink with a smile on my face and have fun,” recalled the goaltending coach, who’s now also the coach of the Colorado College Tigers. “For so many guys, it doesn’t go their way and it’s in their brain that, Oh my God, I’m on the world stage, it didn’t go my way, I had a tough game, and then they get inside, where he was like, Let it go. Go have fun. You’re good.”
It makes him unique, Mayotte said. A lot of goalies he has worked with want to relive and go over everything from the previous game. Knight always wants to move on.
“I don’t think that works for everybody,” Mayotte said. “His ability to brush things off is what I think is unique.”
The United States stuck with Knight and 11 days later he shut out Canada in the gold-medal game to win the United States its fifth World Juniors title.
Knight made 34 saves and, the way Mayotte recalls the game, it played out similarly to his playoff debut. Canada peppered Knight with seven shots in the first 10 minutes before the United States finally settled in.
On Monday, Knight faced 13 high-danger chances and only got beat once, and he seldom needed to make the spectacular save. He can deflate an opponent with how easy he makes everything look.
“They came at us early and we had Spence, and he made some big saves and not only did he make some big saves, but he made the big saves look nonchalant,” Mayotte said. “That’s where I think it’s different because your team doesn’t really realize how close the other team is because Spence has the ability to make it look easy and then the other team starts to kind of lose a little momentum because it didn’t look like they were about to score.”
With the Florida Panthers
Not even 15 minutes after Knight picked up his first playoff win, Barkov guessed the goalie was already working out.
He was wrong. It took Knight more like half an hour to get back into the weight room in Sunrise.
Still, Barkov has gotten a sense in the last two months of how Knight is wired.
“Obviously, playoffs, elimination game is huge, but goalies — they usually have a great mind or something that keeps the calm to go in the net,” the star center said Monday. “He’s a special kid like you don’t see that often. He’s so young, he’s so confident, technically really good. I could be here until like tomorrow if you want me to say everything about Spencer.”
When the final whistle blew, a procession of Panthers lined up to wrap arms around their hero.
It was the moment Knight was waiting for because it felt like so many others before.
“I have the same satisfaction of winning a playoff game as winning a regular-season game because it’s not what the moment is,” Knight said Monday. “It’s about the accomplishment we have as a team and to be able to just share it with the guys is special.”
This story was originally published May 25, 2021 at 4:30 PM.
