What. A. Weekend. The Seattle Kraken knocked off the defending champion Vegas Golden Knights in the 2024 Discover NHL Winter Classic on Monday in a core-memory-making event for everyone involved (except Vegas and its fans).
The pageantry, the hoopla, the flying fish, heck, even the weather… It all exceeded our expectations, and the game itself was fantastic.
“It’s honestly one of the greatest sporting events that I’ve been involved in or participated in, for sure,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “In terms of sporting events, it was pretty awesome. The field, and just the energy at the stadium throughout the hockey game… We got off to a good start, so that continued to fuel it, but just the spectacle and the feel for the event itself was outstanding.”
While this one felt very different than a standard home game, Seattle stuck to its same formula that has helped it reach nine straight games with standings points (7-0-2), five straight wins, and a record above .500 for the first time this season (15-14-9).
Here are our Three Takeaways from an unforgettable 3-0 Kraken win over the Golden Knights at the Winter Classic.
Takeaway #1: The Joey Show turns up
Joey Daccord took a big step toward cementing himself as one of the fan favorite athletes for the entire Seattle sports scene Monday. He has been on fire throughout this streak, and on one of hockey’s biggest stages, he pitched his second shutout of the nine-game span with 35 saves.
It was the first shutout in the history of the Winter Classic and earned Daccord the new “Cocoa Cup” MVP trophy.
“It’s just a special day for everybody,” Daccord said. “For our team, for the city, for hockey, that was an incredible day, and I’m just so grateful to be a part of it. It’s really special, and it’s a huge win for our group. That’s a good team over there. It’s a big two points, and at the same time, it was something that I’ll never forget and probably one of the coolest days of my whole life.”
Daccord’s performance helped make it one of the coolest days of a lot of people’s lives. For all the pomp and circumstance, if he had come out and had a dud of a game, the memories of the day would have faded quickly for the fans that shelled out big bucks for a chance to watch a hockey game outside from hundreds of feet away.
For his efforts, those fans regaled Daccord with chants of “Joey! Joey! Joey!” on several occasions throughout the day, and the goalie leaned into it after the game, hamming it up for the crowd as he headed for the Mariners Kraken dugout.
“He loves the fans, and he likes to put on a show,” said Matty Beniers. “And he did [today], he put up a shutout. He’s awesome. He deserves all the chants and all the glory he gets.”
For the second time in this nine-game stretch, Daccord briefly looked like he might have a chance for an empty-net goalie goal. Vegas had pulled Logan Thompson with more than three minutes left, and with a three-goal lead, the risk for Daccord to try for it was minimal.
Before a reporter could finish asking if Daccord wanted to try for the empty net, Joey interrupted and said, “Yes.” Then he elaborated, “I would have shot, but right before it got to me, it just bounced… I was going to try to catch it, place it, and shoot it. I was definitely shooting, but it just bounced away from me, so I didn’t get the chance there.”
Even Hakstol was pulling for him to fire one toward Vegas’s net.
“I thought Joey was going to settle one down there with just under a minute to go and try to shoot at the other end,” Hakstol said. “He couldn’t get it settled, so maybe that was one of the only disappointments for the crowd today.”
Imagine if he had scored a goalie goal right after doing THIS to Jack Eichel!
Takeaway #2: Stick to the formula
We’ve said it time and again over the three-season existence of the Kraken, but this formula works; solid goaltending, good team structure, and opportunistic goal scoring.
The Kraken jumped out to an early lead after Eeli Tolvanen made an outstanding tip out of midair on a Vince Dunn point shot, and you could see the confidence on the Kraken players, even from farther away than normal. They had jump and swagger after that and tilted the ice for several stretches in each period.
Thought Daccord bailed out his mates a couple times, Seattle did a great job of thwarting most prime scoring opportunities for the Golden Knights. And when the Kraken had chances to strike offensively, Tolvanen, Will Borgen, and Yanni Gourde came through with clutch goals.
Hakstol had interesting insight about the identity of this season’s team compared to last season and what it is doing now to string these wins together.
“This team is different [than last season],” Hakstol said. “In order to gain some traction and push the right direction here, we’ve had to do it with a defensive mindset and a real grinding type of mindset. We haven’t been able to score our way to wins. We were able to do that at times last year. We became very confident in that type of mindset.”
This new identity and this old formula is working.
It’s yet another example of how this coaching staff has been able to identify issues with the team, make mid-season adjustments, and turn things around. Here, they’ve changed the whole mantra of the group, and the result has been undeniably positive.
Takeaway #3: An unforgettable day
I wanted to use this last Takeaway to share some of my favorite moments from the day. First, getting to the stadium in time to see the Kraken arrive in their fishmonger garb and the Golden Knights get off the bus in head-to-toe Elvis costumes was a heckuva start.
But then some incredible touches were put on the event to make it uniquely Seattle, with the most shining example being Sir Mix-a-Lot playing Jump On It with altered lyrics like, “What’s up, Kraken, what’s up?” while the players walked through a tunnel of real salmon being yeeted over their heads.
And can we talk about the helicopter flyover with the guys dangling from cables hundreds of feet in the air?
What the hell was that?! That was insane!
Oh, and I also got a good kick out of Will Borgen—one of the heroes of the day with his Borgy Blast™️ goal in the second period—returning to his stall after the game to talk to media with two beers in his hands, only to have a Kraken PR representative sneak in behind him and rip them away.
Aside from the “Drop the puck” thing getting botched at the beginning and Joey not scoring a goalie goal, the day could not have gone better for the NHL, the city of Seattle, the Kraken organization, its fans, and… most importantly… yours truly. I had never been to a Winter Classic before, so I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, but it could not have been a better experience.
Thanks for following along with all of our coverage of the Winter Classic across this website, our social media channels, and our podcast. I truly hope you enjoyed consuming it as much as we enjoyed creating it.
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.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Truly a fairytale day! I am still on cloud 9
Thank you guys for everything you do. It was a pleasure getting to meet you, and John, during this amazing long weekend here with the Kraken. Keep up the great work.
Amazing game.
Amazing turnaround.
Jo-ey! Jo-ey! Jo-ey!
Go Kraken!!!
What. A. Game!!! An all around banger.
I still have to pinch myself that we’re getting this quality goaltending. It doesn’t just look like Joey is getting lucky — he looks a lot more fundamentally sound and less scrambly than in the past. That Eichel shot in the 3rd would have been a goal earlier in his career, but he moved over without overshooting and got in perfect position to make the glove save. Darren must’ve been so frickin happy that TNT basically had its own goalie gear corner with him after the game!
One womp womp thing I noticed though…Burakovsky took a hit along the boards in the third, and for the shifts after that, I believe Tatar was in his place with Tanev and McCann. Hopefully he’s not hurt, again.