Philipp Grubauer has stated his case that he does not want to be the backup goalie for the Seattle Kraken anymore and earned an impressive 33-save shutout in a 2-0 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Thursday.
Seattle didn’t have much jump to start the game and allowed Grubauer to get peppered with 18 shots in the opening frame. But the team kept most of Pittsburgh’s offerings to the perimeter, and the German Gentleman stood tall to help the Kraken get to the intermission with a 1-0 lead.
“When you have that type of goaltending, it builds confidence because it erases mistakes,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “Mistakes happen all the time in this game, and when a goaltender takes one of those off the board, all of a sudden, it’s a little easier to focus on the positive things.”
At the other end of the ice, Seattle got a fortunate goal off a goofy bounce by Oliver Bjorkstrand and a tenacious power-play goal by Alex Wennberg. That was more than what Grubauer needed to help his team take the two points.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a big 2-0 Kraken win over the Penguins.
Takeaway #1: Grubauer is rolling
With the way Grubauer is playing right now, Hakstol almost has no choice but to continue leaning on him in the goal crease, even though Joey Daccord deserves a chance to get back in after a rough outing against the Minnesota Wild last Saturday.
Grubauer improved to 4-0-0 with a whopping .947 save percentage in five appearances (including his relief appearance in that Wild game, when the decision went against Joey’s record) since returning from the injury he suffered on Dec. 9.
Sometimes it’s nice for a goalie to face some outside shots to start the game and build some confidence, and that’s exactly what happened Thursday. But still, 18 in a period is a little much, and the Kraken needed their netminder to play very big in that opening frame.
Grubauer was tracking the puck as well as we’ve ever seen from him. There was a slap shot in the second period that got tipped and slowed down halfway to the net, and Grubauer simply kicked it away as if it was the easiest shot he had ever faced. Those types of deflected shots can and should fool any goalie, so when he handled that with ease, we knew he was really cooking.
We thought Grubauer’s best save of the night was the first one in the below clip on Sidney Crosby during a power play.
There were a couple tough factors on this play, with the first one being the read on the pass. Grubauer likely did not have a clean view of Kris Letang at the point, which is why it’s so common for goalies to be late getting across on plays like this. Yet he recognized the pass and got a good push from right to left, sliding blade-first into the far post. The second challenge was the screen created by Jamie Oleksiak trying to block the shot. The puck went right between Oleksiak’s skates, yet—again—Grubauer tracked it into his pads, which were firmly clamped down across the ice, leaving nowhere for that puck to go. It was a textbook handling of this play.
The shutout was Grubauer’s first since April 7, 2022.
“It’s been a while for myself, but obviously it’s more important to get those points than to get the shutout,” Grubauer said. “It’s huge for the team too, because everybody played their part.”
Takeaway #2: That’s how you close out a game
How many times have you seen this team—in its three-year existence—take a lead into the third period and then sit back for 20 minutes and either give up the tying goal or have a mad scramble to the finish?
That did not happen Thursday. The Kraken kept the pedal down and tilted the ice for much of the third, while avoiding taking risks that led to odd-man rushes. Instead, they allowed just five shots against Grubauer in the frame and fired 12 on Tristan Jarry.
“The group was really committed to the simple, basic things in the third period,” Hakstol said. “And I think we had an understanding coming out of the first that we really weren’t at our best. We lost a lot of the races in the first period, and we were a half-step slow in some areas. So we had to work through that and get better throughout the game, and we did that. In the second period, we were a little bit better. The third period was… it was a real good period for us.”
The Kraken were playing like they would not be denied of an insurance goal, and Wennberg’s power-play goal at 15:02 of the third was a great example of that. He took the puck hard to the net and got stopped, but then Kailer Yamamoto was right there to poke at it, and Wennberg kept swatting at the loose puck in the crease until it finally caromed off Jarry’s glove and popped up under the bar.
There was no sitting back in this third period and no mad scramble, because Seattle played one of the most structurally sound periods of hockey it has played and cruised through what we thought would be a highly stressful third period.
Takeaway #3: Just keep swimming
It has to be a tad frustrating for this group to look at the standings right now and see that—even as they’ve picked up points in six of their last seven and are 5-1-1 in that span—they STILL trail both the Nashville Predators and Los Angeles Kings by a whopping seven points.
Glass half full, the Preds are on a seven-game heater right now that won’t last forever, and the Kraken are doing well to keep pace with them. The Kings have slowly inched back within reach, and the Kraken did step over the Wild with their win last night. They are also now level in points with both the St. Louis Blues and Calgary Flames (who also have won four in a row).
We’ve been saying all along that the toughest thing about Seattle’s position in the standings is the number of teams they have to jump over to get back into a wild card spot. They’re right on the cusp of putting themselves ahead of all the other chasers, though, so they should keep their eyes on the prize and keep winning a game at a time.
The gap to a wild card spot really hasn’t closed, but we’re back to believing Seattle can still do this.
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.
Let’s be honest. The Kraken earned their struggle by blowing games earlier in the current campaign. This is the only way they will learn to be determined enough to play 60 minutes every game. Most teams can’t do that. We’ll just have to be patient enough to see what they”re made of.
Good for Grubauer! He was truly awesome in that game. Still, it’s concerning to me that the Kraken seem to be crawling out of the gate lately. I don’t think that’ll work out so well against the Oilers…
This is a tough spot to be in. In all likelihood, we’re looking at a 1st round pick in the 12-16 range with no playoffs. Alison mentioned it on the pod, but the Kraken know that they’re still building towards legit cup contention and are not there yet (I assume she was speaking about Francis et al, not the players). With that in mind, we should still be selling. I think Wennberg will fetch a late 1st, and they’ll hopefully trade Schultz so that Ryker can actually play and continue developing, since he is hopefully part of the future Cup Core. I like Eberle as a mentor, and if he’s serious about staying, then we can hold on to him (plus his no trade is a more restrictive 16 teams — he can basically just name all the playoff teams in the market, and our hands would be tied).
Go 🦑!
Wouldn’t Eberle already have submitted the 16 team list when they signed the contract?
Lists are typically submitted annually at the beginning of the season.
I missed this game, what were the lineups, it looked like karts and Yamamoto both played… who sat, do we have an injury?
Trade Gru ASAP, he’s never had more value.
Burakovsky is out day-to-day. Insert Futurama “shocked!” gif here.
It seemed to me to be one of Grubauer’s best games I’ve seen.
He played very well in his return against the Islanders, but the team made that one pretty easy on him. He also got bailed out by Borgen when he got himself too far out to left in that game. Getting caught out beyond the pipes has happened in each of his games… except last night. As Darren mentioned, he seemed to be tracking exceptionally well and time after time was parked in the right position to stop the puck. He stuck to the crease the whole game, and I don’t recall seeing him even once flailing on his stomach with the puck still in play.
To me – and I don’t know anything about anything – since his return he seems much more disciplined in his execution. He appears more upright, better positioned and thus less likely to throw out both pads and end up on his face. He also seems to me to be staying home much more in the blue paint. I do wonder how much “work” went into his game during the down time. Even though he was injured, he was “back on the ice” for quite a while before he got into a game. I hope he keeps it up.
One other note, the Penguins fans were great.
Go Kraken!!!
Yes Gru had a good game and it was nice to see him get the SO however, he had a lot of help and I mean a lot of help. 22 block shots !! He was much better on controlling the save and not kicking out rebounds. Daccord is and should remain our #1 goalie. It seems Gru knows this and either it has taken pressure off him or he fighting to get his job back. If it took Daccord taking his job away to play this way then shame on Gru.
I wonder if this was next season and Gru was on his modified NTC (10 teams) if Francis would indeed be selling high on Gru, knowing that Kokko was coming.
When will the Wennberg trade happen? And Schultz? Those two are a minimum and SoH suggested others, like Yamamoto and Tatar. Guess everyone is playing chicken until March 8.