John Tavares scores OT winner as Maple Leafs top Panthers in Matthew Knies' debut

On teams with Stanley Cup aspirations such as the Maple Leafs, highly-anticipated prospect debuts are few and far between.

That’s by design across North American sports, structured in such a way that promising youth enters the professional ranks through the basement, helping clubs escape the cellar and altering fortunes.

It demonstrates, in part, why Matthew Knies, fresh from an overtime loss in the NCAA National Championship game with the University of Minnesota, had eyes peeled across Leafs Nation for his NHL debut on Monday night.

The physically gifted winger — initially not even penciled in Toronto’s lineup before Sam Lafferty was scratched due to lingering bumps and bruises — was plenty effective in his first NHL game, logging 13:09 minutes, playing primarily with Noel Acciari and Alex Kerfoot, as the Maple Leafs defeated the Panthers 2-1 in overtime on the heroics of Ilya Samsonov and John Tavares.

The jitters were visible at times in the early going. Knies began his rookie lap with a mile-wide wrister, then fanned rather meekly on his second shot attempt.

Later into his debut, at the midway mark of the first period, Knies again found the puck on his stick with a chance to register a shot, but had it skip aimlessly off his stick to the opposition.

Flashes of what the Arizona native could be — a puck retrieval hound with enough skill to do damage — showed itself as well from time to time.

On his first even strength shift roughly five minutes in, Knies went to work, battling down low with Marc Staal — a veteran 16 years his senior — fending him off with tenacity before escaping to the corner with good footwork to maintain the offensive cycle.

Later, in the expiring moments of the first, Knies and his linemates generated perhaps Toronto’s best opportunity of the period, with the 20-year-old retrieving a loose puck behind the Panthers net and poking it out front to Alex Kerfoot, only to be turned aside by Alex Lyon, who was sharp when called upon throughout the contest, making 23 saves in the losing effort.

There were also moments that left the 6-foot-3 winger looking physically outmatched on the ice. Twice within a 30-second stretch, Aaron Ekblad and Giovanni Smith had their way with the Maple Leafs rookie, sending him tumbling to the ice in a pair of startling "Welcome to the NHL" moments.

That desperation — the hitting, intensity and disparity in opportunities — was apparent throughout. With one club locked into their postseason matchup and the other just clinging on to their playoff hopes, the Panthers dictated play, eventually ballooning the shots to a lopsided 32-15 after forty minutes, the lone goal in the game coming via an Auston Matthews deflection for his 40th of the season.

Brandon Mountour eventually roused the FLA Live Arena faithful with a goal midway through the third period to bust the shutout, but the evening served primarily as another data point in favour of Ilya Samsonov’s impending Game 1 start, stealing the Maple Leafs a point with his presence between the pipes.

Finally, with the overtime period winding down, a heroic cross crease save by Ilya Samsonov gave way to a John Tavares breakaway, as he slipped a backhander past Alex Lyon to secure the Maple Leafs victory.

Knies was asked post-game what he'll remember most about his first game in the big league.

"That we won. JT’s unreal breakaway goal. It was a pretty fun experience. Stepping on the ice for warm-ups for the first time was a surreal moment & having my family here to watch is pretty cool," Knies said.

The win gives Toronto 107 points on the season, the second-most productive regular season in the 106-year history of the franchise.