It was better but still not good enough for the Kraken, who continued their battle with illnesses and injuries Tuesday. One day after lacking any kind of jump in Pittsburgh, Seattle came apart late in the second period, which led to its second loss in as many days, this one to the New York Rangers, 5-2.
The Kraken exited the first period trailing 2-1, then tilted the ice for the first 10 minutes of the second before the wheels came off the wagon.
Now, after their 13-game point streak ended Monday, the Kraken have suddenly lost two in a row, and things won’t get easier Thursday in Edmonton.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 5-2 Kraken loss to the Rangers at Madison Square Garden.
Takeaway #1: Costly “bump-up” goal
The Kraken were a tad flat in the first period, but they were hanging in with the fresher Rangers for the most part. They conceded an unsurprising power-play goal to Vincent Trocheck after taking two consecutive penalties, but even so, we thought they might get things going in the right direction when Jordan Eberle tied it 1-1 on a beautiful tic-tac-toe passing play at 10:41.
Instead, Erik Gustafsson used a moving screen to beat Chris Driedger from distance just 28 seconds later, and that sapped things for Seattle for the rest of the opening frame.
“We call those bump-up shifts after a goal,” Eberle said. “To try and continue with the momentum of a game, those always— on either side, if you score after they score, the momentum shifts pretty quickly. So, we need to be focused on those individual shifts, those lapses in the game. There’s always going to be momentum shifts, but you want to have it and keep it.”
Goals on the so-called “bump-up shift” were a big thing in the prior two seasons for the Kraken, but they’ve calmed down this season. When they happen in the wrong way, though, they still really crush the team’s momentum.
“It’s something we kind of pride ourselves on, having a great bump-up shift the next shift as well, right?” McCann said. “[We want to come] out with a high-energy line. And unfortunately they were able to get one there, but you know what? Sometimes it happens, and we’ve just got to regroup, refocus, and move forward.”
Takeaway #2: Second period spiral
Even after the slightly sluggish first period, the Kraken looked like they were going to tie the game again in the early stages of the second. They were buzzing, especially in the first few minutes of the frame, and hemmed New York into its zone for multiple shifts.
Seattle had some great looks in those first 10 minutes of the period, but Igor Shesterkin stood tall long enough for his mates to get another one by Driedger, who didn’t have a great night in his second start of the season.
The best chance came from Seattle’s fourth line, when Tye Kartye and Kailer Yamamoto had a clear-cut 2-on-1. Yamamoto elected to shoot, but Shesterkin rejected it with his blocker and got enough pace on the rebound to skip it over Kartye’s stick.
“We had great opportunities,” Hakstol said. “We didn’t execute on the 2-on-1; Shesterkin made the save on Yamo, and [on another] 3-on-1, we just didn’t execute. So really that’s the difference in the hockey game.”
Midway through the period, the Rangers got a good bounce when Blake Wheeler got a piece of a Jonny Brodzinski shot, and it then caromed off Driedger and in. Five minutes later, Kaapo Kakko scored off a 2-on-1, his first goal since he returned from a long-term injury Sunday.
That made it 4-1 heading to the third, and you knew the sick, tired, and hurt Kraken were not overcoming that deficit at MSG.
Takeaway #3: Going through it
While the Kraken are notoriously secretive when it comes to the health of their players, they have not been hiding the fact that the team is dealing with a lot right now. Adam Larsson was back in the lineup Tuesday after leaving Monday’s game with whatever bug is going through the team, but Seattle remained without Vince Dunn, Matty Beniers, and Andre Burakovsky Tuesday.
Hakstol again said all three of those players are day-to-day, but Beniers was placed on injured reserve Monday, and John Hayden was recalled from Coachella Valley.
Aside from those guys, we’re gathering that lots of players are under the weather. Hakstol mentioned Ryker Evans as one of the individuals playing at less than 100 percent, and Evans filled in for Dunn on the top defense pairing and ate up 25:04 of ice time. So, even the “healthy” guys Hakstol is leaning on right now to play extra minutes in the absences of others… Well, some of them are sick too.
“We’ve still got a lot of guys that are fighting through things,” Hakstol said. “That doesn’t just clear up in a day, unfortunately, and some of the effects on guys that had to play big minutes last night were– that wears on you a little bit tonight.”
As Eberle said, the timing of the illness—coupled with another recent rash of injuries—is tough for a team that just came off a massive streak and is now fighting to stay above water.
“The biggest thing is you see this ground that we’ve made up the last month, it can slip away pretty quickly if you start losing games,” Eberle said. “So I think the next game, obviously, is a must-win for us. We’ve got to find a way to… well, get healthy first off, but find some jump [and] some energy.”
This has been a strange road trip so far, with the Kraken winning the first three but then running face-first into a big wall of adversity. Now, to avoid fumbling all the good feelings built up at the start of the trip, Seattle will have to somehow beat an Edmonton Oilers team that has won 11 in a row.
The odds will be stacked very high against the Kraken in that one, but a 4-2-0 trip sounds a heckuva lot better than 3-3-0. It’s officially gut-check time.