Spencer Knight Takes Ownership for Loss in First Start in Two Years

Spencer Knight allowed four goals on 26 shots in a 5-2 thumping at the hands of the Buffalo Sabres, and he is not making excuses for himself despite it being his first start since Feb. 18, 2022.

Spencer Knight could have made a lot of excuses for himself after allowing four goals in his first NHL start in nearly two full years.

The Florida Panthers were missing both Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk for the first time since the team acquired the latter in a blockbuster trade during the 2022 offseason and the rest of the team did not play particularly well.

They were thumped 5-2 by the Buffalo Sabres after two late first-period goals sent them spralling.

But the 23-year-old netminder took the blame for the loss in his season debut.

“Obviously, that’s not the way you want the game to go,’’ said Knight, who spent the latter half of the 2022-23 season in the NHL/NHLPA Player Assistance program before playing in the AHL for the entirety of last season.

“That loss starts with me, and ends with me. I think, really, the whole thing is on me. I can’t be making plays like that. There were some good thingse done, but you have to take ownership of the good things and the bad. The loss starts with me.”

That two-goal run late in the second period started with a puck that took a funny bounce in front of the net that ended up on Jordan Greenway’s stick and ended with a Tage Thompson goal off the rush that beat Knight five-hole less than a minute later.

Knight probably would have wanted the second one back.

The Sabres came in hot to start the second period, with Henri Jokiharju beating Knight with a blast from the point 1:34 into the second period.

Late in the period, Knight turned the puck over, dove down to make a desperation save, but could not get himself back in position once Buffalo regained possession of the puck and continued to get second-chance opportunities.

Some of it was on the team in front of him for not clearing the front of the net and getting pinned in its own end for minutes at a time, but Knight knew he had to stay composed in those moments.

“We asked him to make a lot of saves, especially in the back half of the game,” Maurice said.

“A lot of it, he looked solid in. There’s some communication things with his defense, he hasn’t played with a lot of those guys back there because a bunch of them were new. It was fine. He made some good ones, probably wants a couple of them back. It’s been a while since he has been in an NHL net. We’ll build from there.”

Knight held things down in the third period, stopping all seven shots in the third period in a frame where the Panthers only mustered up two shots before pulling him for the extra attacker with just over three minutes to go.

But just like a similar situation faced the preseason — when Knight allowed six goals on 20 shots behind a team filled with minor leaguers against, for all intents and purposes, the Carolina Hurricanes’ NHL roster — it gives him an opportunity to learn and bounce back.

He did that in his next outing after that horrid game in Raleigh, stopping 26 of 27 shots against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

“It’s a long season and a long career, hopefully, but you just kind of stick with it,” Knight said. “You take the good and the bad and you just keep battling.”