It wasn’t always easy or perfect, but Joey Daccord was awesome yet again, and the Seattle Kraken got a 4-1 win over the Ottawa Senators, their sixth straight win and 10th game in a row with points (8-0-2).
It was another round of Seattle getting the saves it needed and snagging a few opportunistic goals to earn a victory, and—believe it or not—this one got the Kraken (at least temporarily) back into a playoff spot. It’s bonkers to think about where this team was just a few short weeks ago, and now here Seattle is, with a positive 16-14-9 record and a position in the postseason.
“We’re playing great,” Daccord said. “We’re sticking to our game plan, we’re executing it well, and it’s nice to see the results go our way.”
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 4-1 Kraken win over the Ottawa Senators.
Takeaway #1: Joey Daccord is on another planet
A lot has been written about Joey Daccord of late, but it’s hard not to focus on him when he continues to make save after save that we don’t expect him to make.
He had another right-to-left stuff job on Tim Stutzle Thursday, which mimicked the save he made on Jack Eichel to preserve his shutout late in the Winter Classic.
Daccord also set a franchise-record shutout streak of 158:35 (we had the time wrong in our tweet below), spanning from Travis Konecny’s first-period goal in the Flyers game on Dec. 29 until Parker Kelly just barely squeezed a tipped point shot through Daccord’s wickets on Thursday.
“It would have been nicer if I got another shutout,” Daccord quipped. “No, the win’s great, and I’m happy to just keep this train rolling.”
You could tell Vince Dunn desperately wanted to keep that one out of the net for his goalie, but he just came up a hair short of reaching it before it limped over the line.
Daccord is brimming with confidence right now, so much so that he pulled off something we’ve never seen a goalie do before in a game. After Adam Larsson and Jared McCann took back-to-back penalties in the first period, Seattle had nearly four minutes of penalty kill time, including 17 seconds of 5-on-3 time.
Not only did Joey make a couple outstanding reads and saves on the extended stretch of PK, he cleared a puck himself by sending a high… BACKHAND… flip the entire length of the ice.
Do you know how hard it is to even lift the puck off the ice on your backhand when you’re wearing a goalie catch glove? It’s quite difficult, given the lack of dexterity that comes with the bulky trapper, so seeing him send it as far as he did in the air was mind-blowing.
“As I was making that play, I was like, ‘I really hope this gets out, because if not, I’m going to be in trouble,’” Daccord said. “I’ve worked on my stick handling and puck skills a lot over the years, and backhand is definitely way harder than forehand, so happy I got enough wood on it to get it out.”
Added coach Dave Hakstol, “That was a heck of a play. There are certain plays that have some risk to them. That’s just great skill and the right play at the right time. That was a big clear at that time.”
We are hereby predicting Joey Daccord will become the first goalie in history to score a backhand goalie goal at some point (we don’t know for sure that it hasn’t happened before, but it seems highly unlikely, because… again… catch gloves make stick handling hard).
Takeaway #2: Burky gets one
It’s been a hard road for Andre Burakovsky since he tore his groin in a Feb. 7 loss to the New York Islanders last season. That injury ultimately ended his season and cost him the entire Stanley Cup Playoffs.
He had surgery and rehabbed in the offseason, returned in time for the start of the new season, and lasted just six games before getting thrown shoulder-first into the end boards by Jacob Trouba and missing a month and a half. He returned for (almost) one game on Dec. 7, when Kevin Bahl hit him into the same boards and put him back on the shelf for most of December.
Burakovsky returned Dec. 29 against the Flyers and has been spending time on the fourth line with Kailer Yamamoto and Tye Kartye. The winger scored his first goal of the season Thursday, at 19:03 of the second period, and it was an important goal that effectively put the game out of reach for Ottawa.
Tim Stutzle fell down and lost the puck in the offensive zone, handing it over to Yamamoto and creating a 2-on-1 the other way. Yamamoto made a nice pass, and Burakovsky showed his finishing ability to make it 3-0.
“It feels good to have some luck on your side,” Burakovsky said. “I mean, I’ve been having a lot of bad breaks for me this year and last year, so it was good to see it go in, for sure.”
Added Hakstol, “You go back over the last 12 months, it’s been a long road. There’s been a lot of challenges for him there, but he’s been able to handle it, and great to have him back in the lineup, and again, to see him have some success tonight.”
Good for Burky. Now, it’s time for Jaden Schwartz to get back in, and suddenly, this Kraken roster is going to look quite deep again.
Takeaway #3: A playoff spot?!
A hockey season can be a wild ride. Fans that stuck with the Kraken through the first half of this season—and especially the eight-game losing streak—are getting rewarded now and can enjoy a brief moment of basking in the playoff picture before Seattle almost surely falls back out of its current wild card spot while idle over the weekend.
Still, a lot of fans and media (ourselves included) were starting to abandon hope during that losing streak, so to see this team pull itself together in such a swift way has been stunning to watch.
The Kraken will take Friday off, practice Saturday, and then head out on a two-week odyssey through Buffalo, Washington, Columbus, Pittsburgh, New York Rangers, and Edmonton (that last top is a weird one, geographically).
Let’s see if they can keep this thing moving.
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.
This team looks so different than the one that went through the 8 game skid. Yes, great goaltending helps, but the boys look… energized in a way that they absolutely did not during that slide. Solid forechecking, good defense, and opportunistic goal-scoring like Burakovsky and Tatar’s goals. This team is fun to watch again!
What does success look like for this upcoming road trip? Six points?
If success is making the playoffs, they’re going to need more than half the available points. That only gets them to 84. I’d say more like 8 points.
Sure, but I am looking for a more nuanced answer that factors in the specific opponents (e.g. their current strength, relative home ice advantage, etc.). Also, a regulation win against a division opponent like Edmonton is worth more than one against an Eastern Conference team.
Ok… so looking at the next six games, how do you land on six as success? Honestly, if the Kraken pick up six against this collection of teams, I’m guessing they’re staring down some of the worst odds in the draft lottery. The back-to-back in NYC is a scheduled loss… but otherwise? And given that Edmonton is the only game in the Conference, and it’s a “stop-over” game… I’m not giving it anything extra. They need eight points. But I’d like to know hiw six could be considered success.