Austin Bruins goalie Knapp, the team's 'backbone,' has Division I dreams
Apr. 17—AUSTIN — Like any goalie worth his weight in ice shavings, Klayton Knapp despises being scored on.
Knapp's level of competitiveness is off the charts.
In fact, the 18-year-old standout from Waterville, Ohio, might hate getting scored on in practice as much as in a game.
"He's just a great competitor," said forward Anthony Menghini, Knapp's closest friend on the Austin Bruins this season. "He's the backbone of the team and we always can rely on him to make a big save if one of us messes up.
"But I love to score on him in practice. It gets him fired up and that gets me fired up. But he's my best friend on the team and he's our backbone."
Knapp's play over the past month is a big reason — arguably the biggest reason — why the Bruins are in a position they haven't found themselves in since 2018: Holding home-ice advantage in the opening round of the North American Hockey League Central Division playoffs.
Austin will host rival Aberdeen on Friday and Saturday at Riverside Arena in Games 1 and 2 of the best-of-5 series. Games 3 and 4 will be in Aberdeen in on April 29 and 30, with a Game 5 back in Austin on May 1, if necessary.
Knapp is 6-1-0 with a 1.86 goals-against average and a .936 save percentage since March 19, the night he backstopped the Bruins to a 6-3 win at division champion St. Cloud. That victory snapped a nine-game losing streak and started the Bruins on a stretch of eight wins in 10 games, vaulting them from on the verge of missing the playoffs to finishing second in the division and earning the right to host at least two games in the first round of the postseason.
"Overall I think, we got that huge win against St. Cloud and that gave our group a ton of confidence," said Knapp, who is 17-13-1 overall this season with a 2.68 GAA and .907 save percentage. "We've just been riding that wave. We talk about that all the time, how this is a game of momentum."
Knapp's hometown of Waterville — with a population of approximately 5,500 people — in northwestern Ohio is approximately 80 miles south of Detroit. But Knapp's interest in hockey piqued when an aunt took him and his brother to a Columbus Blue Jackets game — approximately 140 miles from Waterville — when Klayton was about 5 years old.
"My older brother and me, we're the first ones from our family to ever play hockey," Klayton said. "The Blue Jackets came in 2000 and I was born shortly after that. My aunt is a huge hockey nerd and she took us to a Blue Jackets game ... I just fell in love with it.
"I played baseball, soccer, track and cross country in high school. Ultimately I had to make a decision and hockey is my passion, so I stuck with it."
That passion — as well as a decision that was out of Knapp's and the Bruins' control — have been Austin's gain.
A scout sent video of Knapp to Bruins head coach Steve Howard last season. Howard liked what he saw, so he asked Bruins goalie coach Cory Lonke for a second opinion.
"Cory said 'Yeah. He's good,'" Howard said. "That's all I needed to hear, so we signed him to a tender."
Knapp was also drafted last spring by Green Bay in the United States Hockey League, the top junior hockey league in the country. He was invited to their main tryout camp last fall, and was impressive among a group of players who were almost all committed to Division I college programs.
"I went over to Green Bay's camp and watched him there," Howard said. "I saw Klayton in warmups and you could see it right away with him. He jumped in and was snapping to spots, always in position. You could just see he was firm, he was good."
Knapp spent the first two months of the USHL season in Green Bay, but when it became clear that — because of his youth and the fact that Green Bay had two other solid goalies in place — he would get more playing time elsewhere, Knapp had no qualms about returning to Austin.
"I went to Green Bay and believed in myself that I could play at that level," the 6-feet-2, 180-pound netminder said. "That situation didn't work out and coach Howard gave me an opportunity to come back here to Austin and prove myself as a goalie here in the NAHL. There's no looking back.
"I've played a good amount of games now. I love it here. We have everything you need to be successful. If you come here and work hard, there's no reason you won't have success."
Howard has no trouble seeing why Knapp has been successful in Austin this season. The young goalie could be the next in a long line of Bruins netminders to excel at the Division I college level and into the pros, joining such former standouts as Mads Sogaard, who recently won his NHL debut with the Ottawa Senators; or Brett Miller, Kyle McClellan, Alex Schilling or Jake Kucharski, all of whom played in Austin within the past five years and are playing at the Division I level now.
"Klayton is always here early and he stays late," Howard said. "He checks all the boxes as far as getting himself prepared. He'll get his off-ice work done. He's a pro in that regard. You don't have to do anything to get him encouraged to work harder. If anything, we're trying to get him to back off a little bit sometimes and don't overdo things."
Knapp is well aware of how many successful goalies have passed through Riverside Arena in the past 11 years. He's happy to add his name to that list, but said he also recognizes that the hardest work is still in front of him.
"There are things in my game that I want to keep improving on day to day, week to week and season to season," said Knapp, who graduated from high school a year ahead of schedule so he could pursue his hockey dreams. "It's just a matter of continuing the work I've put in.
"I think I'm a pretty hard-working kid and super competitive, sometimes maybe a bit too competitive. I just try to keep a level head, stay confident in myself when things get tough. It's cliche, but trust the process and believe you can do it."
