Panthers expected to recall former first-round pick

Goaltender Spencer Knight was left off the Panthers’ opening night roster, but he’s still made the team in effect, reports Fluto Shinzawa of The Athletic. The waiver-exempt netminder was quietly assigned to AHL Charlotte Monday but will be brought back up to the NHL for the first time since 2022-23 as soon as Florida opens up the cap space to do so.

Knight, still just 23, has a career 32-17-6 record in 57 appearances for the Panthers with a .906 SV% and 2.91 GAA. The 2019 first-round pick last saw NHL action in February 2023, entering the NHL/NHLPA Player Assistance Program before spending all of 2023-24 in the minors.

It hasn’t been the workload the Panthers envisioned for Knight after perhaps prematurely signing him to a three-year, $13.5M extension in September 2022 that covered the 2023-24 through 2025-26 seasons. Now in the second year of that deal, Florida is still on the hook for $3.35M of his $4.5M cap hit while he’s in the minors, so they only need to open enough space to add $1.15M in cap hit to their roster. They currently have $130K in cap space, per PuckPedia, so they could create enough space by moving injured forward Tomas Nosek from IR to LTIR and waiving goaltender Chris Driedger, who’s currently slotted as Sergei Bobrovsky’s backup, and his $795K cap hit.

Knight had an underwhelming regular season with Charlotte last year, posting a .905 SV% and 2.41 GAA in 45 games. He ended his season on a high note with a .925 SV% in two postseason games, though, and will look to carry that momentum into his NHL return.