We really thought Saturday was going to end up being the night the Seattle Kraken snapped their losing streak, but instead, they got topsy-turvied in the third period and overtime and fell 4-3 to the Tampa Bay Lightning.
For the first time since Seattle’s 7-1 win over the San Jose Sharks on Nov. 22, the Kraken held a fleeting 3-2 lead in the third period. But Nick Paul tied the game 3-3 at 7:09 of the third, and the NHL’s leading scorer, Nikita Kucherov, scored his second goal of the game in overtime to extend Seattle’s skid to seven games.
“We got ourselves into a 2-0 hole,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “There’s all kinds of things that are not going our way, but through all of that, there was nothing but push from our guys [tonight].”
It was yet another bad first period for the Kraken, but to their credit, they did fight back and gave themselves every chance to win. Still, they came up short, and the bad feelings continued. Oh, and Philipp Grubauer got hurt, and it frankly didn’t look good.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 4-3 overtime Kraken loss to the Lightning.
Takeaway #1: Power play scores, still lets Kraken down
Seattle’s power play has statistically been ok this season, clicking at 21.1 percent of the time, good for 14th in the league. But for some reason, when Seattle gets manpower advantage opportunities late in games and so badly needs to find a clutch goal, it just never comes.
It was the power play that gave Seattle it’s lead just 14 seconds into the third period, when Jared McCann dropped a bomb from the top of the left circle that beat Andrei Vasilevskiy. So, that’s some success.
But the Lightning went down a man at 12:24 of the third period when Tanner Jeannot high sticked Matty Beniers. Nothing doing on that opportunity. More crucially, though, Anthony Cirelli tripped Tye Kartye with just 16 seconds left in the third period, meaning the Kraken started the overtime period with 1:44 of 4-on-3 time.
In that 4-on-3 stretch, Seattle got just one point shot through to Vasilevskiy, and the Lightning defenders blocked three other shots. Tampa Bay’s defenders compressed into a tight formation in front of their netminder, and the Kraken kept the puck on the perimeter for the entirety of the power play without ever really looking dangerous.
You just have to score in that scenario. The Kraken did not do so, and 1:27 after the penalty ended, Brandon Hagel sprinted up the ice and set up Kucherov for the game-winner.
Takeaway #2: What’s up with these starts?
When a team is trying to break out of a long losing streak, a good way to do that would be to do everything it can to come out of the gates flying. Even if the players are struggling to find crisp passing (Seattle’s passing was not crisp in the opening 20 minutes), they can still fly around and play a hard-nosed physical game until they find a higher level of execution.
The Kraken spent most of the first period in their zone, and if it weren’t for Grubauer making several dandy saves, the game would have been out of reach by the first horn.
Cirelli scored with a beautifully done high-tip play halfway through the period.
Just before the end of the frame, Kucherov got his first of the night. On that one, the Kraken had control of the puck in their own zone, but Eeli Tolvanen got crossed up with Jamie Oleksiak and gave Kucherov a chance to pry it free. Then Kucherov intelligently went right to the net, and Cirelli found him for an easy tap-in.
“The second goal is the one that is frustrating for you, right?” Hakstol said. “We’ve got half a line change, a couple of tired bodies still out there. We defend the play, and we kind of skate over the puck, right? And so you go from having five guys inside to it ends up in a tap-in at the backdoor.”
The Lightning really dominated that opening period with a 14-4 shots-on-goal advantage and 86 percent of the shot quality in all situations, according to Natural Stat Trick.
The start against the Devils on Thursday wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t like Seattle tilted the ice, and it again came out of that opening stanza trailing 1-0. And we’re still just one game removed from arguably the team’s worst start of the year in Montreal. Why can’t they get themselves going in the first period?
Give the guys credit, they did push back and managed to find a standings point. But when you chase the game every single night, you’re simply not going to win very often. Lo and behold, Seattle has now lost seven straight.
Takeaway #3: The injury bug bites again
With how things have been going for this team, on a night when Grubauer was playing very well, it was melancholically fitting to see him hunched over and limping to the dressing room at the end of the second period.
We had just finished saying, “Hey, Grubi’s finally over a .900 save percentage tonight!” after 10 consecutive starts in the .800’s or .700’s. But he lunged for a Cirelli shot off a 2-on-1 with under a minute remaining and then slumped over in a heap.
“I mean I hate to see it for [Grubauer], and obviously for our team,” Hakstol said. “He played very well in net tonight. He was outstanding.”
Hakstol said it would take a day or two to get more information about Grubauer’s status, but we think it’s pretty safe to rule him out for Sunday’s game against the Minnesota Wild (Joey Daccord would have played that one anyway, being that it’s a back-to-back, but Chris Driedger is likely on his way to Seattle to back him up).
Justin Schultz also took a puck to the face in the second period and had to leave the game. Again, there was no update on his availability for Sunday, though we would guess that injury will be shorter-term than that of Grubauer.
The two latest injuries come on the heels of Andre Burakovsky returning from a 20-game hiatus, only to be placed right back on injured reserve after a high hit in the Devils game on Thursday. It’s also been fewer than two weeks since Jaden Schwartz exited the lineup.
When it rains, it pours.
“Obviously, we’ve had injuries and guys playing hurt,” Jordan Eberle said. “But our depth has been our key, and we need to bear down. These times are tough. We’ve got to find a way to get out of it and flip the script from a losing streak to a winning streak.”
Darren Brown
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at soundofhockey.com and the host of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is a member of the PHWA and is also usually SOH’s Twitter intern (but please pretend you don’t know that). Follow him @DarrenFunBrown and @sound_hockey or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
Coming out of the gate flat was a chronic issue in season 1 and would typically lead to them being down 1-0 before fans were even in their seats. It’s happening again although the goals are coming a little later. The pregame message in the locker room either isn’t very inspiring or the team is so up in their heads that the message isn’t coming through. The PP is definitely an area where either they’re overthinking or it’s just a bad system. I’ve never been much of a fan of it and quite frankly wouldn’t mind seeing the Assistant responsible shown the door. The injury bug certainly plays a big factor in all of this but these 2 issues can’t be blamed on Burky and Schwartz being out. All of that being said, this team is capable of winning as we’ve all seen but things are not clicking this season. I think I’m more sad than mad now. 😔
One thing really stood out to me in this game. It wasn’t something new, but the contrast was very stark in this one. Three of the four Tampa Bay goals came off of lateral puck play around the crease. All three of the Kraken goals were off of simply throwing the puck on net. They were quite literally lucky to pick up the loser point in this one after creating just 1.57 expected goals in regulation. “Taking the shot” and relying on luck is not a strategy that is going to win games.
Yeah, I agree. Opposing teams seem to get ‘em all the time where a pass gets through the seam, and it’s an easy tap-in.