Knight, Panthers shut out Hurricanes, 3-0

In Sunrise, Spencer Knight stopped all 40 shots he faced on Wednesday night, and the Panthers shut out the Carolina Hurricanes, 3-0.“[He was] stronger as the game went on and required to be stronger as the game went on, especially with the penalty kills in the third period,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “I think he was mentally tested. That’s just a good sign for any goaltender, for a young man to be able to build his game like that.”

Nick Cousins scored his first goal of the season in the opening frame to give the Panthers a 1-0 lead.

Florida improved to 8-5-1.

“I kind of approached it like every other game,” Knight said. “The guys played really well, stuck to the team game and obviously got a good result.”

Alexander Barkov picked up a loose puck in the neutral zone and passed it off to Carter Verhaeghe, raced to the slot and tipped in a pass on the power play for a 2-0 lead midway through the third period.

“We have the right mindset, trying to get pucks to the net,” Barkov said. “We recognize that they have a really good penalty kill. There’s not going to be too many clean plays, so you just have to find your chances and put more pucks to the net and create chances from that.”

The Canes dropped to 8-4-1.

“We’re giving up too much,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “Especially when you’re not scoring, you start doing some things that you shouldn’t be doing, and that opens it up the other way. [Raanta] was really good, saved a bunch of odd-man rushes that we were giving up. That’s an area of concern. If we don’t have 20 guys doing it the right way, it looks like that.”

Sam Bennett added an empty-net goal with six seconds to go in the third period for the 3-0 final.