At Friday’s morning skate, Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said this: “Most importantly, it’s the start of the hockey game. The beginning of the game gives us an opportunity to build a 60-minute performance.” But after a 5-1 loss to the Vancouver Canucks, the Kraken bench boss was not happy with the way his group got out of the gates.
“It’s not an effort issue, it’s a readiness issue,” Hakstol said after the game. “They were the more ready team at the drop of the puck, and you saw that in our execution in the first five minutes of the hockey game. Once you start that way, it’s really hard to catch up in terms of your overall performance.”
Hakstol didn’t mince words in his evaluation. “We had too many guys below the bar tonight, and that’s the bottom line,” he said. “This is not a part-time league. It’s a full 60-minute league.”
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 5-1 Kraken loss to the Canucks.
Takeaway #1 (Curtis): Slow start on the power play
Like so many Americans, the Kraken were a step slower than usual on this day after Thanksgiving, at least to start. Vancouver piled up the first four shot attempts at even strength and seemed to be outworking the boys from Seattle.
Fortunately for the Kraken, though, the team drew the first penalty at 3:23 in the first period, a holding call against Nils Hoglander behind Seattle’s net (Rick Tocchet must have loved that).
And the calls against the Canucks didn’t stop there. J.T. Miller tripped Jaden Schwartz three minutes later, and then Tyler Myers got his stick into Jordan Eberle’s face (with a double-whammy friendly fire on Miller) at 11:33 in the period for a double-minor penalty.
These plays–none of which were particularly “earned” by Seattle–gifted the Kraken eight minutes of first-period manpower advantage time.
These power plays should have been enough to give the Kraken a jolt and get them on the board. Coming into the game, the Kraken were tied for seventh in the league with a 25 percent conversion rate on the man advantage. And the Canucks’ penalty kill has struggled, conceding goals on 23.4 percent of opponent opportunities, 10th worst in the league.
Unfortunately for the Kraken, just the opposite happened. On the team’s first power play, the group seemed disorganized and sluggish, conceding two breakaway counterstrikes to the Canucks penalty killers–the second of which found the back of the goal off Teddy Blueger’s stick.
“The first foot out there, we gave up two short-handed breakaways,” Hakstol said. “Obviously not good enough.”
The second power play seemed to start well when Matty Beniers rifled the puck past Canucks goaltender Thatcher Demko, but the play was ruled offside on the zone entry after a successful Vancouver challenge. From there, the Kraken could never quite find an opening against Demko over the remaining five-plus minutes of power-play time in the first period. The result was a net minus-one on the scoreboard in eight minutes five-on-four.
Kraken defenseman Vince Dunn agreed with Hakstol’s assessment. “It’s awful on all of our parts. Both units will have to take a look at where we were going wrong and come to a quick fix… The foundation of what we were doing out there was not executed well. We made things a lot more complicated than we needed to.”
Takeaway #2 (Darren): Missed opportunities in second period
I agree, Curtis, that the first-period power-play miscues were a big issue on this night. But it’s funny to think that if the Kraken hadn’t been offside some 18ish seconds before Beniers scored an apparent equalizer, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The negated goal changed that narrative dramatically and probably altered the course of the game. Such is life.
The other thing that altered the course of the game was Seattle’s inability to score in the opening eight minutes of the second period, when the Kraken came to life and tilted the ice. In that time, they put eight shots on Thatcher Demko without allowing a shot to Vancouver, and they had a few great looks that Demko shut down.
When a team has a stretch like that, it has to capitalize, because the momentum will eventually swing back the other way. Sure enough, a sloppy-looking play in Seattle’s end led to Conor Garland whacking a loose puck toward Joey Daccord, and Dakota Joshua cleaning up the rebound to make it 2-0.
Tye Kartye scored the Kraken’s lone goal of the night (his first goal in exactly a month), but Seattle didn’t build off of it in the third period, and Vancouver eventually ran away with it.
Takeaway #3 (Darren): Tanev hurt, late response
With 2:46 left in the first period, Tanev got caught off balance in the neutral zone and got lit up by Hoglander with a high, hard (clean) hit. Hoglander had the puck, turned it over to Tanev, and the moment Tanev touched it, Hoglander crushed him. Tanev slammed to the ice with all his weight coming down on his left leg and had to get helped to the bench by linesman Brian Gibbons.
Visibly in pain, Tanev stayed on the bench for the remainder of the first and came out to test the leg at the start of the second. But he determined he couldn’t go, went back to the dressing room, and was officially ruled out with a lower-body injury.
A second issue happened in this game that was arguably worse than the hit on Tanev, when Tyler Myers—the same guy that injured Matty Beniers with a cheap shot last season—delivered a high hit on Oliver Bjorkstrand in the third period and appeared to make contact with his head. Sam Lafferty scored to make it 3-1 just moments after this hit that shook up Bjorkstrand.
Before I make this point, I want to be clear that I’m not a big proponent of fighting. I think it’s fine in some scenarios, but if it got removed from the game altogether, I wouldn’t be sad about it. I also don’t think signing or trading for a tough guy or calling up John Hayden is the end-all answer for the lack of response a lot of people think it would be. (Although, to be fair, Hayden did drop the gloves with the 6-foot-8 Myers in pre-season.)
I do think it’s important, though, that players stick up for one another and minimally show opposing teams they’re not willing to accept their teammates getting hurt, regardless of if the hit that causes the injury is technically clean or dirty.
I asked Hakstol if he wants to see a physical response when a key player gets injured on a big hit, and he said, “Depends on the situation. I won’t get into that one.” Fair enough. It’s a sticky subject, and getting into the details of how he wants his team to respond doesn’t benefit Hakstol or his players.
Without trying to guess how I think Hakstol wants his team to handle these issues, the way I view it is that having a physical response doesn’t have to mean somebody squares off in a bare-knuckle boxing match at center ice. But there should be *some* immediate reaction that makes a guy like Hoglander think twice about taking the exact same run at Brandon Tanev that Brett Howden took at him on opening night in Vegas. (I will refrain from saying somebody should immediately jump Myers in this scenario, because I wouldn’t want to go after a guy twice my size either.)
After all, Howden’s hit cost Tanev the first month of the season, and the pesky forward has been showing just how important he is to this team in his seven games since returning from that injury. Now he’s potentially gone again, and still, nobody immediately went after Hoglander, just like how nobody went after Howden, nobody went after Andrew Mangiapane when he smashed Jared McCann’s face into the ice, and nobody went after Jacob Trouba when he cost Andre Burakovsky six-to-eight weeks on the shelf.
It is worth noting that Kartye did seem to be challenging Hoglander late in the game when he got his 10-minute misconduct, and Yanni Gourde dropped the gloves with Blueger. Were those instances related to the hits on Tanev and Bjorkstrand? Perhaps. But those challenges came at the very end of the game when Seattle was already down 5-1.
Anecdotally, I seem to recall that last season almost anyone on the team (heck, Ryan Donato seemed to do it semi-regularly, and he is not known for his toughness) would jump on an offending player, sometimes getting his own clock cleaned in the process. What happened to that mindset? It’s not about having guys that will stand toe-to-toe and get their faces punched in, but rather having a pack mentality that simply doesn’t accept opposing teams taking liberties with your players.
I think more than unwillingness to fight, what bothers me is that we don’t see the Kraken taking (legal, clean) runs at players after bad hits. There’s no rise in intensity in terms of shot pressure or (legal) physical play. I think that’s why people get frustrated with the lack of (literal) fight, because there’s a lack of any other form of punishment.
Last year Borgen was pretty good about going into attack mode immediately after a big hit on one of our guys. Maybe he’s been off the ice in these instances, but I haven’t seen it this year. Being that our two biggest/best defenders are of the docile type doesn’t help either. Yanni going after Blueger doesn’t tell Hogslander anything. Payment must be immediate. Otherwise the word will get out.
I can’t help but feel like we’ve been talking about this long enough that the word is probably out by now.
What bothers me more than the lack of fighting is that the Kraken don’t step up their intensity in response to bad hits. You don’t see Kraken laying (legal, clean) hits on guys after bad hits and you don’t see increased shot pressure. Shot pressure is harder to organically generate, but you can pretty much always choose to finish your checks. I think that’s why people are so frustrated at the lack of (literal) fighting. There’s no punishment of any kind being doled out.
Oops. I had a log in issue. Wasn’t sure my comment would post the first time. haha
…and you didn’t even mention another dismal third period, two shots on goal. Start slow, no response, can’t finish… they’re like a team without a Captain.
Funny that you should mention that because I got halfway through writing that as my takeaway before I (1) realized this is more of a standalone piece I hope to get around to writing, and (2) heard Dunn’s quote on the power play, which was pretty forceful.
To be fair, I fell in love with hockey in the early 90s and my favorite teams were the physical ones (Flyers, Devils, and Bruins) so I continually beat the drum how this team lacks any physical pushback. There is the rare occasion where someone has finally had enough and gets into a tussle but that point it is far removed from the timing of the “offense” and late in a game where there is little to no hope of mounting a comeback. We’re soft and far too often we seem unprepared to play when the puck drops. These guys are in serious need of an identity this season and unless Hack gets these guys on track he’ll been shown the door and Bylsma will be the new bench boss.
We can only hope that Hack is gone soon!!
I remember Giordano taking a guy apart for roughing up a Kraken teammate in Season 1. I don’t like too much fighting either but the Kraken probably have the rep for being soft. It”s time to toughen up.
We need a goon. Every team has at least 1. The team is too small. I will say it all year until this is fixed. We have a GM who knows how toughness helps a team and he is doing nothing. We do not even have one on the Firebirds that play hockey too.
The best way to answer a hit is with a goal. We need players who score goals, which is notoriously not a goon trait. We had zero goons last year and did just fine, but our 4th line is now garbage and Beniers looks weak and lost. This team also seems to completely disappear in the third period and plays terribly at home. Maybe it’s a focus/fitness issue?
Last year’s charmed season bought another season or two of Hakstol, but I don’t think he’s anything special considering the team is pretty awful at the pure coaching-related parts of the game (transition strategy, consistency, special teams). They’re okay if the dumps & chases come up heads, but that’s about it. The loser point will keep this team in the hunt for a while, but don’t let it distract you from the fact that this team is much worse (and less lucky) than last year’s.
Take a look at all the teams that have beat us this year. All of them were bigger and us, especially the D-men. We get muscled off the puck more often than not because bigger stronger players can do that. The boards are out problem. Our smaller players get taken advantage of due to their size and we have no protection. That is the key protection, for guys like Bernier and McCann for example. They get beat up during the season, just like Bernier is now. He is not out of shape. You cannot blame a coach for any of this. He coaches a team that he is given. Haskol is a great coach and does not coach a heavy-handed style and got fired in Philly for that reason. The fans in Philly hated that. “On a side note: I was at the game in Philly(my first nhl game) when the flyers came into the stands. Hockey fans loved it but Seattle is a children friendly city and he has to coach that way. I call for a goon but we will never get one.
(Reply to harpdog – sorry this website kinda sucks for comments)
This team has lost 14 times and won 8. I’m not sure how you could make a cogent argument that it has more to do with the 14 other teams being “bigger” rather than the much simpler explanation that our team got worse and isn’t as lucky as last year, which every objective analyst predicted, and is borne out by numbers. The personnel changed in a significantly negative way in the scoring department, but not in the physical/goon department. None of the departures were goons, or even goon-ish, but they were great possession players, played against the weaker parts of other teams, and could put the puck in the back of the net. Maybe you could want our current players to be more physical and get to the front of the net, which I wouldn’t argue against, but just asking for a useless goon on our 4th line would make our problems worse, not better.
Agree with Harpdog. Closest thing we have to a goon is Hayden. Bring him up.
Anyone know how Bjorkstrand is?
Totally disagree! Hakstol was a .500 coach with Philly exactly because of his “soft” style. It’s suited for the NCAA but not the NHL. The Kraken are a reflection of Hakstol. The playoff success last year was because of their physical play and hot goaltending.
I think you’re finally coming around to my feeling that this team is soft and that starts at the top: Hakstol. Did you appreciate how Rick Tocchet’s Canucks always finish checks vs our Kraken turning away from contact or reaching with their sticks? We’re going nowhere fast unless this team’s physical and approach changes!