A big game and a big road trip ended Thursday with a big thud in Edmonton. The road-weary and still unwell Kraken are thankful to be back home after their longest journey of the season, but the second half of the trip left fans, players, and coaches alike feeling disappointed.
“As you get into these trips, obviously, [3-3-0] is not what we wanted,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “You get one of these last games, either in New York or tonight, and you walk away feeling like it’s a really successful, good road trip. But we weren’t able to do that, and that’s disappointing.”
Alas, after winning the first three games of the jaunt, Seattle got sick and hurt and went from a nine-game win streak to a three game losing streak.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 4-2 Kraken loss to the Oilers.
Takeaway #1: Good start, but then…
We were convinced after the first period that Seattle was going to run away with that game and that the Oilers’ 11-game win streak would come to an end.
Seattle jumped out to an early 2-0 lead, taking advantage of poor transitional defense from Edmonton and converting with pretty goals by Eeli Tolvanen and Jared McCann.
The McCann goal, especially, was a quick-strike banger created by tic-tac-toe passing from Yanni Gourde to Jordan Eberle to McCann, who finished with a perfect shot into the very top corner of the net for the second consecutive game. While the team has floundered the last few games, Seattle’s top goal scorer is heating up.
There were also a couple missed opportunities, which we will discuss in Takeaway #2, but once the second period got underway, the game went sideways.
“The first 20 was good,” Hakstol said. “The first 10 minutes of the second period is what would cost us. We weren’t as sharp as we needed to be and gave up too much in that time, so we had to push back after that. But we weren’t able to capitalize on what was a good start.”
By the 8:00 mark of the second, Warren Foegele had scored twice, Leon Draisaitl had banked one in off Joey Daccord on the power play, and suddenly the Kraken had gone from being in the driver’s seat to chasing the game.
“We gave them too much,” McCann said. “We’ve just got to realize that sometimes you’ve just got to play D, and especially against a team like that. So, it’s a learning experience for us.”
Hakstol called a timeout to settle things down, but Seattle was never able to tilt the ice back in its favor, and high-flying Edmonton rolled to its 12th consecutive win.
Takeaway #2: Missed chances
There were two key plays at the offensive end of the ice that stand out as killers for the Kraken’s momentum in this game. The first came at the end of the opening period, when Brandon Tanev had a breakaway opportunity, Seattle’s third such rush of the frame. With a chance to send Seattle to the room with a 3-0 lead, Tanev flubbed the shot and missed wide, which kept the game within reach for Edmonton.
Then in the second period, with Seattle trailing 3-2, Daccord showed off his incredible puck-handling abilities for the umpteenth time and hit Alex Wennberg in stride at the far blue line with a perfect stretch pass, catching the Oilers in a line change.
Wennberg glided in and scored, but a challenge showed Kailer Yamamoto—making a line change of his own and completely uninvolved in the play—had inadvertently drifted over the blue line ahead of the puck. Edmonton won the challenge and negated the tying goal.
It’s not in the spirit of the offside rule to negate a goal because a guy on the opposite side of the ice is not paying attention, but the rule is the rule, and Yamamoto made a bad mistake there. There’s no reason for him to cross the blue line to exit the ice; he just has to be more aware of his surroundings in that scenario.
Of course, there are no guarantees Seattle would have come away with a win had Tanev scored or Yamamoto stayed onside, but those were crushing mishaps in retrospect.
Takeaway #3: Tough way to end the trip
This game was always going to be an uphill battle for the Kraken, who we knew were still dealing with injuries and illnesses coming in to face the hottest team in the NHL. We also knew Seattle was closing out a dreadfully long two-week, six-game trip, with an odd stopover in Edmonton after spending 12 days on the East Coast, and the players were surely looking forward to getting home to their loved ones and their own beds.
But this was also a huge game against a divisional rival that the Kraken needed to win to come home feeling positively about the trip. Instead, they let an early two-goal lead evaporate in a matter of minutes, and they came home with an uninspiring 3-3-0 record.
Now, there are two pieces of good news for the Kraken. 1.) The team is getting marginally healthier. Andre Burakovsky returned and played 14:16, though he was -1 on the night and did not register a shot on goal. Our friend, Piper Shaw also reported that Vince Dunn skated separately from the team Thursday morning, so hopefully he too is on the mend. 2.) Seattle finally gets a day fully off and at home Friday to recuperate.
“We’ve got to get home,” Hakstol said. “We don’t have a lot of time, but we get a day off [Friday], and we’ll try to get some bodies healed up and feeling better. And then we have to get back at it at home.”
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.