What a night for Chris Driedger, who triumphantly returned to NHL action for the first time since May 1, 2022, and backstopped the Kraken to a 2-1 win over the Calgary Flames.
Seattle took a familiar route to victory in this one, getting heavily outshot but cashing in on a strong goaltending performance and a couple quick offensive strikes at key moments in the game.
“We were far from perfect tonight, but our effort was really good,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “We had some good individual performances, and that adds up to two very valuable points.”
Those two points were Seattle’s 11th and 12th in its last seven games (5-0-2). Here are our Three Takeaways from a 2-1 Kraken win over the Flames.
Takeaway #1: Chris Driedger night
If you were surprised to see Chris Driedger get the nod from Hakstol Wednesday, you were not alone. Joey Daccord has been on fire, and although he had started the previous seven games in a row, Seattle was coming off a three-day holiday break. So we too assumed it would be Daccord between the pipes once again.
But it was an unusual road game day, in which the team traveled to Calgary the morning of the game instead of its typical night before. Hakstol felt that with the odd day, it was as good a time as any to get Driedger into a game, so he pulled a Kansas City Shuffle. In went Driedger for the first time since tearing his ACL at the IIHF World Championship after Seattle’s inaugural season.
“Today’s not an easy day,” Hakstol said. “It’s not a perfect day by any stretch of the imagination. To wake up, jump on a plane, fly to a different time zone, a lot of different things involved. Bottom line is Driedgs was the guy to go today, and he was ready for the opportunity. He played extremely well.”
Driedger had been good in Coachella Valley this season before getting recalled on Dec. 10, but you never know how a goaltender is going to perform in these scenarios, especially after he had been watching Daccord from the bench for two-plus weeks.
The 29-year-old former Calgary Hitmen netminder did not disappoint in his return to his old junior barn and stopped 37 of 38 offerings by the Flames to earn a storybook win.
“It’s definitely some of the most adversity I’ve ever faced in my career,” Driedger said of his journey back to an NHL crease. “It’s been a long road, a lot of hours spent with the medical staff, putting in hours while the guys are skating and just kind of doing my own thing and watching from the stands. So to come out and finally get back in, it was pretty emotional.”
The Kraken skaters didn’t do a great job of easing him back in, either, allowing plenty of volume (a hallmark of every Flames/Kraken game, since Calgary is a high-volume team), but also significant quality. Driedger dazzled with 2.69 goals saved above expected and a .974 save percentage on the night.
“He did amazing,” Alex Wennberg said. “It’s been a while, but you can just tell how good of a goalie he is. I mean it takes a lot to actually come in—you play games down there [in the AHL]—but it’s a different game up here. And just making those big saves, I mean, he’s obviously winning that game for us.”
Here was Driedger’s best save of the night, a sprawling right-pad robbery on Elias Lindholm at the end of the second period.
Takeaway #2: Two elite plays
This game had a similar feel to Seattle’s Dec. 20 win over the Los Angeles Kings, when the Kraken relied heavily on Daccord and used just enough opportunistic offense to get through to a 2-1 win.
On this night, the team got its goals on two elite plays, and those two plays proved to be enough in the end.
The first was Vince Dunn’s stretch pass to spring Kailer Yamamoto for an early icebreaker at 2:24 of the first period. Dunn was falling to his left in the corner of Seattle’s zone, yet somehow—in one fluid motion—found Yamamoto and whipped the puck 100 feet to hit the winger in stride.
The other elite play was a combo platter made up of a saucy dish from Jared McCann and a top-shelf cocktail shaken by Alex Wennberg.
Wennberg always takes flak from Kraken fans for not shooting enough (John Barr will have none of that!), but he chooses his spots wisely. In this scenario, the pass to Brandon Tanev at the backdoor was cut off, so after receiving the pass from McCann, he quickly snapped it into the smallest of openings in the top corner over Jakob Markstrom.
“It’s a great sauce pass, and I feel like Turbo was open on the back side,” Wennberg said. “[So maybe] the goalie was cheating a little bit on it, and I mean I didn’t really see where it went, but it was a good result for sure.”
That goal came at a big moment, too, six minutes into the third period.
Takeaway #3: Kraken officially rolling
For the first time this season, Seattle has won three games in a row, and now, since snapping an eight-game skid, has racked up points in seven straight. If they can manage another win Friday against Philadelphia, the Kraken will hit the .500 mark in the standings, which would also be a first for the current campaign.
“There’s got to be urgency, we’ve got to fight for each other, and that’s what we’re doing right now,” Wennberg said. “Tonight it’s not really a pretty win, but I mean we’re working hard, and we just try to find a way to win.”
With the latest victory, the Kraken jumped over the Flames and are up to fourth place in the Pacific Division. They are three points out of a playoff spot but still have plenty of work to do to get back into that bubble and have to leapfrog over three teams.
Even so, considering how dire things felt a few weeks ago, this team is finding ways to win even on nights when it perhaps should not. That goes a long way for a group’s confidence, which should be reaching higher levels with every passing victory.
Bonus Takeaway (John) – Scoring first
We had a little miscommunication on this edition of Three Takeaways, which resulted in John throwing together an extra one. You’re welcome.
The Kraken have scored first in six out of the seven games on the current point streak. Conventional wisdom suggests that a team scoring first has a better chance of winning the game compared to the trailing team. League-wide, statistics support this notion. Of the 541 games played this season, the team that scored first won the game 66.7 percent of the time. However, for the Kraken, this has not been the case for most of 2023-24 so far.
The Kraken scored first in 11 out of their first 20 games but managed to win just three of them. It is challenging to pinpoint what has changed, but they have recently bucked that strange trend of scoring first and then losing.
Playing with the lead enables teams to dictate pace and gameplay. It also provides the players, including the goalies, with the confidence to play more freely rather than worrying about making mistakes. This game against Calgary is how it’s normally supposed to go when Seattle scores first, so it was good to see the boys get rewarded with another win.
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.
Good article, I love that we are getting goaltending that gives us a chance to get an early advantage. This feels a lot like last season when Gru went down with an injury. I really hope that we can find a solution to get rid of Gru’s contract and move on from him. Wouldn’t it be nice to have an extra 6 mil to spend on a top six forward? Going through our third season it’s becoming very clear that Gru hasn’t worked in Seattle for whatever reason.
Last season when Gru went down, the team was scoring it’s way to wins… this is different. I just don’t see any reasonable way they can move Grubauer… and Ron Francis is nothing if not reasonable. With his expiring contract, I could see Driedger playing his way into a trade though.
Totally agree. Driedger could be a great trade chip for a lot of contending teams in need of a goaltender. They could retain 50% of his expiring contract, which would come to less than $1M by the time March comes around. He just needs semi-regular playing time for the next few months to build up his value.
Hopefully they’ll keep Grubauer on IR with an unrelenting case of suck (upper body?).