Spencer Knight Is Back, Will Be a Big Part of the Florida Panthers

FORT LAUDERDALE — Spencer Knight is going to be a starter in the NHL one of these days, only with Sergei Bobrovsky still with the Florida Panthers, it is not going to be today.

And that is OK.

Knight is cool with whatever role the Panthers need him to play right now.

“I am looking forward to this year,” Knight told Florida Hockey Now on Friday morning. “The biggest I have taken from talking to everyone around here is to just play free, don’t think so much. I am having fun at practice, I am mixing in a windmill — which is not my game. When you’re having fun, you’re going off intuition. To me, that’s where I am trying to get to.’’

Knight will open the new season with the Panthers on Tuesday, and should see his first NHL action in 20 months sometime in the coming days.

The 23-year-old had been ordained as Florida’s ‘Goalie of the Future’ ever since the Panthers made him the 13th overall pick of the 2019 NHL Draft.

Ten days later, the Panthers signed Bobrovsky to the largest contract in franchise history — a deal which has two years remaining.

As Bobrovsky likes to say, It Is What It Is.

Knight’s goal is to be a starting goalie in this league and now seems to understand his time will come when it is meant to be.

It was not always that way.