{"id":23203,"date":"2013-12-11T20:50:33","date_gmt":"2013-12-12T01:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=23203"},"modified":"2013-12-12T15:41:10","modified_gmt":"2013-12-12T20:41:10","slug":"revs-re-acquire-knighton-from-caps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=23203","title":{"rendered":"Revs Re-acquire Knighton from ‘Caps"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Brad-1\"<\/a>

Photo credit: Chris Aduama\/aduamaphotography.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Hours after Matt Reis drew the curtains on his illustrious playing career, the New England Revolution re-acquired his former backup, Brad Knighton, via trade with the Vancouver Whitecaps on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Knighton, who was originally signed by the club in 2007 after a successful preseason tryout, re-joins the club after he was drafted by Philadelphia Union in the 2009 expansion draft. The Revolution sent a conditional pick in the 2015 MLS SuperDraft to Vancouver to bring back the 28-year-old goalkeeper.<\/p>\n

“\u201cMy family and I couldn\u2019t be more excited to be coming back to New England, where I began my career,\u201d Knighton said in a team release on Wednesday. \u201cI had three incredible years here and I couldn\u2019t think of a better city, organization and team to return to. I can\u2019t be happier this worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n

After putting together an impressive display in front of former manager Steve Nicol on a wintry Friday night in February 2007, the undrafted goalkeeper went on to sign a contract before the start of the 2007 regular season.<\/p>\n

Knighton\u00a0didn’t see first team\u00a0action\u00a0during his first season with the Revolution while serving as the third-string keeper behind Reis and backup Doug Warren. Nevertheless, it was just a matter of time before he got his feet between the sticks.<\/p>\n

When Reis suffered an early-season right knee\u00a0injury in 2009, Knighton stepped into the starter’s role and made his MLS debut against the New York Red Bulls on Mar. 28. He made three saves, but was victimized by a Jay Heaps own goal in the 35th minute as the match ended 1-1.<\/p>\n

A week later, he\u00a0earned his first MLS win\u00a0behind a\u00a02-1 win over FC\u00a0Dallas at Gillette Stadium. On the season, Knighton made\u00a0six starts and went 1-2-3, with a 2.33 goals against average.<\/p>\n

Despite the promise he showed during his short stint as a starter, the Revolution left him unprotected during the expansion draft after the end of the 2009 season. Philadelphia picked\u00a0up the keeper, and while he\u00a0remained a backup with\u00a0the\u00a0Union, he\u00a0made eight starts for them during the 2010 season.\u00a0But after going\u00a03-3-1,\u00a0with two shutouts and a 1.10 goals against average, the club\u00a0released him prior to First Kick 2011.<\/p>\n

Knighton later resurfaced with the Carolina Railhawks of the NASL in 2011 and\u00a0earned Best XI honors that season,\u00a0as\u00a0he helped\u00a0guide his\u00a0hometown side to a\u00a0regular-season championship.<\/p>\n

He returned to MLS in 2012 with the Whitecaps – who were guided by former RailHawks boss Martin Rennie – and posted a combined 1.11 goals against average and five shutouts, while going 9-6-5 from 2012-13. In 2013, he went 6-3-2 with a 1.36 GAA in 11 starts.<\/p>\n

Although Knighton was eligible for the Re-Entry Process, which begins tomorrow, the teams had a 5 p.m. deadline today to complete trades. Knighton also opted out of the Re-Entry Process to facilitate the Wednesday’s trade.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very pleased to be able to bring Brad back to the Revolution,\u201d\u00a0Revolution general manager Michael Burns said in a team release on Wednesday. \u201cWe rate Brad highly and we did not expect him to be available to us tomorrow with the 12th pick of the Re-Entry Draft\u2019s first round. We\u2019re looking forward to him coming back to New England.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Revolution brought back former backup Brad Knighton via trade with Vancouver hours after Matt Reis announced his retirement. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Brad-24.bmp","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23203"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23203"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23232,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23203\/revisions\/23232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}