If you were looking for an inspiring performance from the Seattle Kraken on Monday to reinvigorate your belief that they could make the playoffs, well… you didn’t get that. The Kraken laid an egg for the first 40ish minutes of this game against the New Jersey Devils, ultimately lost 3-1, and dropped themselves farther out of the race.
The first period looked messy, and the second period was even worse. It seemed like the team sort of found its game in the third period, but not until the point when overcoming a three-goal deficit would have been bordering on miraculous. And after a stinker in Philadelphia on Saturday, Seattle’s first game back from the break, you can’t blame this one on rust.
“No, we’re not resting on that crutch tonight,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “Game 2 [since the All-Star break and bye week]. That’s on utter readiness, compete, [being] ready to go… For the first 35 minutes of this hockey game, we weren’t at a level that’s acceptable, and that takes us out of the game.”
It’s not looking good, folks. Here are our Three Takeaways from a 3-1 Kraken loss to the Devils.
Takeaway #1: Costly mistakes from young players
It was a tough night for a couple of Seattle’s younger players. Matty Beniers and Ryker Evans each played starring roles on New Jersey goals, and even Hakstol—always reluctant to call out his players directly—made it clear Beniers had blown it on Jack Hughes’s second-period marker that ended up as the game winner.
After Seattle had broken up a rush, Beniers found himself with the puck on his stick and a clear lane ahead of him to either hit the gas and skate it out of the zone or make an outlet pass into the neutral zone. Instead, he came to an almost dead stop, allowing Erik Haula to catch up to him and strip him of the puck.
The Devils quickly transitioned back to offense, and Hughes eventually made an elite play to bank the puck in off Joey Daccord’s mask 48 seconds into the period.
“The turnover came off of his tape, and ultimately… that’s his responsibility,” Hakstol said. “But there’s five guys on the ice that have to be in the right spots in order to move that puck and get it going and look organized.”
Ok, so Hakstol sort of spread around the blame, but that miscue is on Matty. It’s just a lack of awareness for where the opponents are on the ice and the wrong decision to not immediately get his feet moving.
Evans followed that up four minutes later by getting burned up the wall by Timo Meier. Beaten on the play and trying to recover, Evans did well to avoid taking a penalty and actually got a piece of Meier’s shot to slow it down. That may have fooled Daccord, though, because he kicked the rebound on the off-speed pitch right into the slot for Dawson Mercer.
We should also point out that Evans didn’t get much help on the play, and Jamie Oleksiak missed an opportunity to lift Mercer’s stick. Still, it’s a bad read and a slightly too aggressive angle that created the rush.
Mistakes like these will happen for young players, and Evans and Beniers were certainly not alone in committing errors on this night. They have to keep playing, though, and learn from those moments.
Takeaway #2: Another poor offensive showing
Against Philadelphia, the Kraken had a sloppy start to the first period but were playing with decent pace. As the game went on, they got worse at creating offensive opportunities and only took two shots at Cal Petersen in the third period.
Monday’s game had a different script. The first 40 minutes were downright painful to watch, before the Kraken finally woke up in the third when it was extremely unlikely they would get back in the game.
“Really our compete, our execution just took us out of this hockey game for the first 35 minutes,” Hakstol said. “That’s really what led to most of our issues.”
Pepper in a couple ill-timed penalties, including a too-many-men call when two Kraken players jumped over the boards at once, and you have yourself another ugly loss.
“We came apart a little bit in the second period, and that’s something that can happen when things aren’t going well and things don’t look good,” Hakstol said. “You have to find a way to work out of it together, and that’s what the third period looked like to a certain degree, not to our level. But that was the positive of it.”
For the second game since the break, Seattle just wasn’t generating much of anything. Through those first two periods, there was such little push that goalie Nico Daws—a 23-year-old with a 3.12 goals-against average and .896 save percentage in 34 career games—looked completely untested.
Takeaway #3: They look like sellers
We’ve held out optimism that this team would find its game again after the break and get itself right back in the playoff bubble with a win streak. But after these two games against the Flyers and the Devils, the outlook is bleaker than ever.
It’s hard not to wonder at what point general manager Ron Francis starts pulling the trigger on selling off his expiring contracts. In theory, he may get better value for veterans like Alex Wennberg and Justin Schultz if he moves them now, when there’s an extra month of service time left in the season that they can provide to their future teams (Schultz may be more important to the Kraken now, though, if Brian Dumoulin’s lower-body injury causes him to miss significant time).
As of the writing of this story, the Kraken had dropped to six points out of the last wild card spot, with three teams to jump over in order to get back into the picture. How far do they need to sink for Francis to make moves?
“I think, regardless of where the standings are, I think we just have to focus on our game,” Oleksiak said. “It’s a test for us, in terms of adversity and character, how we respond to it. And I think it’s a good opportunity for us [to play again Tuesday against the New York Islanders]. So we’ve just got to focus on one game at a time and take it from there.”
There’s still a chance they can turn this thing around, but man, that was not a strong performance. If the Kraken players want to send the message to Francis and his staff that they intend to make the playoffs and should be kept together, they better do it in one of the next two games on this road trip. The longer they wait to deliver that information, the more likely it is that players get traded away. Once that happens, the towel will have been thrown in on the season.
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.