{"id":89810,"date":"2025-08-17T15:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T15:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/89810\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T15:30:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T15:30:11","slug":"blackhawks-biggest-x-factor-is-spencer-knight-whos-preparing-for-big-workload-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/89810\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackhawks’ biggest X factor is Spencer Knight, who’s preparing for big workload this season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, Blackhawks<\/a> goalie Spencer Knight successfully found a place to live in Chicago that\u2019s nowhere near any CTA train tracks.<\/p>\n

But yes, Knight\u2019s friends at home in Connecticut \u2014 where he has spent most of the summer \u2014 also sufficiently ribbed him for his viral train quote<\/a> from exit interviews in April: \u201cI don\u2019t know why they\u2019re above ground and so loud all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re always like, \u2018Oh, not the trains!\u2019\u2009\u201d Knight said this week.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s sticking to his opinion, though.<\/p>\n

\u201c[My mom and I] were in the West Loop for dinner, and there were three trains going by and a guy on his motorcycle revving his engine,\u201d Knight said. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018I can\u2019t live in this. I need to be either 50 stories up or in an area that doesn\u2019t have this.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

With his housing situation sorted out, Knight, 24, has been able to focus on preparing for the upcoming season. He instantly has become one of the Hawks\u2019 cornerstones, and his performance will have a big effect on how much the team improves.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce [I got] over the initial shock of being traded, I was ecstatic to have landed in Chicago,\u201d said Knight, who arrived from the Panthers in March in exchange for Seth Jones and a 2026 first-round pick. \u201cEveryone who asks how it is, I tell them, \u2018I love it. It just feels like hockey.\u2019 You can feel the energy in the building, in the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m really excited for this year is for us to .\u2009.\u2009. become better hockey players and become a better team. Us playing together for another year is just going to drive everyone closer as friends and teammates. We\u2019re going to battle each other. I\u2019ve got everyone else on the team\u2019s back, I know they have mine, and we\u2019re going to drive this in the right direction and get to a point where [we can say], \u2018OK, we\u2019re in this.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you see this team take off, things turn around fast. You saw that with Montreal last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Los<\/p>\n

Knight has high hopes for this young Hawks team.<\/p>\n

Michael Reaves\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Crucial ingredient<\/p>\n

Before the Jones-for-Knight trade, goalie was probably the weakest position in the Hawks\u2019 prospect pool. <\/p>\n

Drew Commesso is an intriguing piece, and his late-season surge in Rockford increased his stock after Knight\u2019s arrival, but he\u2019s not an elite prospect. Arvid Soderblom improved significantly last season and now has 86 games of NHL experience, but he\u2019ll probably never be more than a backup.<\/p>\n

In Knight, the Hawks have a potential long-term franchise goalie. But now it\u2019s up to him \u2014 with the help of Hawks goalie coach Jimmy Waite and longtime Connecticut-based trainers Ben Prentiss and Brian Elser \u2014 to reach that potential.<\/p>\n

In his first 95 NHL games, he has been a roughly middle-of-the-pack goalie. His career save percentage is .904; the league average was .900 last season. His career GSAA (goals saved above average) is plus-0.8.<\/p>\n

His save percentage and GSAA dipped to .893 and minus-2.9, respectively, with the Hawks last season, but that was over a small 15-game sample.<\/p>\n

Talent-wise, however, he\u2019s well ahead of the pack. He\u2019s one of the most technically precise goalies to enter the league in some time, with outstanding technique, particularly his lower-body technique.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat impresses me is his explosiveness to move side-to-side \u2014 and, after a save, how quick he is to react to a second shot,\u201d Waite said in March<\/a>. \u201cHe gets really low and wide, and his edges are really good at pushing left and right. He\u2019s able to make saves that other guys don\u2019t make because of how quick he is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knight\u2019s observant and thoughtful mindset, in addition to the unique experience he gained<\/a> watching Sergei Bobrovsky lead the Panthers to the Stanley Cup in 2024, add more tools to his box. He has a lot going for him.<\/p>\n

The challenge will be putting it all together. Whether he does or doesn\u2019t will determine whether he follows a career trajectory like that of Jacob Markstrom or like Ilya Samsonov. Those goalies\u2019 save percentages also were .904 after their first 95 games, but they\u2019ve diverged greatly since.<\/p>\n

Knight putting it all together \u2014 or at least most of it together \u2014 this season might also be the Hawks\u2019 most viable path to stepping out of the NHL basement and reaching the fringe of the playoff picture. <\/p>\n

He isn\u2019t quite Connor Bedard, but he\u2019s arguably the Hawks\u2019 biggest X-factor.<\/p>\n

Stance change<\/p>\n

Most NHL players take one lengthy break immediately after their season ends, then gradually ramp up training in the summer. Knight prefers to take multiple short breaks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to continuously stay in shape,\u201d he said. \u201cThen, toward the end of the summer, when I feel like I need a break, I take another one instead of taking a full break at the beginning of the summer and then playing catch-up.\u201d<\/p>\n

That meant he continued skating for a few weeks after the Hawks\u2019 season finale April\u2009\u200915. It wasn\u2019t warm yet, so it didn\u2019t feel like time for a vacation. The lessons he learned during his initial six-week stint were also still fresh in his mind.<\/p>\n

One of those lessons was that he needed to improve his glove use after getting beat on that side often during the final weeks of the season. He has tweaked his goaltending posture this offseason to be slightly more forward and upright.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s times where you skate around and end up with your hips back a little bit, and then you go down and it\u2019s almost like you\u2019re sitting back while in your butterfly,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo [I changed to] more forward hips, which increases the height of your upper body. That way, your hands are presenting more forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has also worked on making more \u201cdesperation saves\u201d in his usual butterfly stance \u2014 just moving laterally in that stance \u2014 instead of sprawling out on the ice.<\/p>\n

Conditioning has been an area of emphasis, too, since he knows he\u2019ll have a much larger workload this season than he ever did as Bobrovsky\u2019s backup in Florida.<\/p>\n

He enjoyed how frequently he played this spring, starting 15 of the final 22 games, but he knows it\u2019ll take stamina to do that over 82.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you play once every week and a half or so .\u2009.\u2009. you\u2019re preparing yourself a few days in advance and then recovering for a few days after,\u201d Knight said. \u201cWhereas when you\u2019re playing every other day, you\u2019re not looking past that next day. And I really
enjoyed that. It kept me in the zone, kept me in the present.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy body felt great. My mind felt great. Everything felt natural. But [now I\u2019m] .\u2009.\u2009. getting myself ready to handle that workload this coming season and into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yes, Blackhawks goalie Spencer Knight successfully found a place to live in Chicago that\u2019s nowhere near any CTA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-89810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}