NEWARK — Paul Maurice couldn’t contain his excitement. “I was really happy with that game tonight, I don’t know if you could tell,” said the Florida Panthers head coach, several minutes into a postgame press conference after a 2-1 shootout win over the New Jersey Devils at the Prudential Center on Tuesday night. As he should have been. The defending Stanley Cup champs played the type of game they’ll need to once the playoffs start: a gritty, defense-first style of play in which they remained persistent against a team that gives very little in the way of high-danger chances against. It was a unique test midway through the regular season, one his team passed with flying colors, and one that provided the type of opportunity not often seen for games played in January. “I loved the game that we played tonight on back-to-back nights,” he said. “It was hard, we contested just about everything up and down the ice. Every guy on the bench sold. You don’t get a lot of those in a season, those wins that help you cement your culture. I loved that game tonight.” Former Devils forward Jesper Boqvist opened the scoring at the 41-second mark of the third period for the Panthers, but New Jersey captain Nico Hischier tied the game just a minute and 46 seconds later, eventually sending it to overtime and the shootout. Anton Lundell scored the game-winner in the extra session to gain the extra point in the standings. It was, as Maurice said, the second night of a back-to-back scenario after a loss in Philadelphia on Monday night, which meant an opportunity for backup Spencer Knight to shine. The team’s first round pick back in 2019, the former Boston College star dazzled at times in Newark, making 26 saves to pick up his eighth win of the season. Still just 23 years old, Knight served as Florida’s third goaltender during their Stanley Cup run last season; he spent the majority of the year in the American Hockey League, working his way back from a nearly two-year battle with OCD that led him to enter the NHL and NHLPA’s joint player assistance program. Deemed the Panthers goaltender of the future upon being drafted, that’ll be a hard ceiling to reach with future Hall of Famer Sergei Bobrovsky signed long-term, but Knight has cemented himself as the number two netminder with New Jersey native Anthony Stolarz having moved on to Toronto, and is able to enjoy moments like Tuesday night, where he helped deliver one of the biggest wins of the year. “The Devils are tremendous offensively, so going up 1-0 isn’t really anything,” he said. “It’s kind of like, ‘Let’s just see what happens, one play at a time, one TV timeout at a time,’ and just sticking to that. And it might take a shootout to end it.”