The Seattle Kraken continued to confound Tuesday by defeating an impressive Winnipeg Jets team 4-3 in their barn, despite being on the second of back-to-backs with travel, and despite being without top defenseman Vince Dunn (injured by Martin Prospisil’s dirty hit on Monday) and Alex Wennberg (held out the last two games due to “trade-related reasons”).
“Really, we just played good hockey,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “I mean, we’ve been playing really good hockey over the last few weeks. We came into this road trip disappointed coming off of a loss to Edmonton [on Saturday], but the reality is we played really well that night and just carried that through into the road trip.”
The latest win brought Seattle to 7-2-1 in its last 10, including these two wins in Calgary and Winnipeg on consecutive nights.
Meanwhile, the Nashville Predators finally showed some signs of cracking by losing in overtime to the Montreal Canadiens, breaking their eight-game win streak and allowing the Kraken to finally gain one standings point of ground.
From the other direction, the Vegas Golden Knights have entered the wild card chat by struggling tremendously and are now level in points with the Predators and Los Angeles Kings. So, Seattle sits six points behind three different clubs, all of which are currently inside the playoff bubble. The two wins rocketed the Kraken’s playoff chances from 10 percent all the way up to 31 percent, according to MoneyPuck.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a big 4-3 Kraken win over the Jets.
Takeaway #1: Joey is back!
In his first game since getting torched for four goals on 13 shots and pulled in a Feb. 24 loss to the Minnesota Wild, Joey Daccord returned to the net Tuesday and had a solid, winning effort between the pipes. With 30 stops on the night, Daccord earned a victory over all-world netminder, Connor Hellebuyck, who faltered for just 20 saves on 24 shots at the other end.
Even though the Jets have apparently been dealing with a nasty flu bug, they came out… flying (Jets puns are impossible to avoid sometimes)… in the first period, while the Kraken were struggling to find their tentacles after an emotional game the night prior. Daccord made several saves on Grade-A chances, 14 total stops in the opening frame, and Hellebuyck let a stinker through his five hole to give Seattle a 1-0 lead.
Later, with the game on the line in the closing seconds and Winnipeg feverishly (flu-related pun intended this time) pushing for an equalizer, Daccord scrambled to secure the victory. After getting his stick ripped out of his hands by Mark Scheifele, Daccord sprawled to his right and chested away what looked like a sure goal for Neal Pionk with just five ticks left to tock.
The only thing better than that game-saving stop was the fist pump Daccord threw after the horn sounded.
Philipp Grubauer has had a run of outstanding play since returning from injury on Feb. 22 and had seized the net back from Daccord. But now that Joey delivered this performance against Winnipeg, the goaltending decisions moving forward could become a bit more difficult in the best way.
If the Kraken really are going to stay in this race, despite potentially trading away a key player or two, they will need huge performances down the stretch from both goalies.
Takeaway #2: Burky gets off the schneid
Andre Burakovsky picked a great time to break out of his insane goal-scoring slump, rifling a wrist shot from the right circle over Hellebuyck for the game-winner at 17:21 of the third period. On a power play, Ryker Evans—playing his first game since Feb. 13—fired a shot that got blocked and stung former Kraken Mason Appleton.
With Appleton hobbling around, and the Jets effectively down to three and a half penalty killers, Evans got the puck back and slid it to Burakovsky, who dusted it off and ripped it.
The goal was Burakovsky’s first since Jan. 4 and just his second in 29 games played this season.
“It felt very good,” Burakovsky said. “It’s been a battle with all the injuries and all the missed time, and I think I’ve been playing some really good hockey lately, creating a lot and skating a lot… It was nice to finally see one go in. I almost forgot what it feels like.”
Burakovsky, who had just missed two more games with a lower-body injury before returning to the lineup Monday, had been back to playing his confident style for a while, dangling around defenders and often looking fast and dangerous. We knew it was only a matter of time before he broke through.
“It’s nice to see him get that one,” Hakstol said. “I know that’ll make him feel good, but I can tell you inside of our dressing room, nobody really cares whose name is on the scoresheet right now.”
Takeaway #3: Another solid, team effort
For the second night in a row, the Kraken got four goals from four different players, with only Jared McCann overlapping with goals on both nights, both with short-handed breakaways. So, in 2022-23 style, the Kraken got tallies from seven different skaters over the brief road trip.
They’ve had several guys—Yanni Gourde, Tomas Tatar, Adam Larsson, Justin Schultz, and Burakovsky—break goal-scoring droughts lately, and they’re suddenly bringing that “anyone can score” approach that became so reliable last season.
*Author’s note: Tatar’s game-tying tip on Matty Beniers’ shot that was five feet off the net was so sick.
“You make plays at the right time and get some contributions from everybody in every part of your lineup,” Hakstol said. “And we were able to do that both nights on this trip.”
This is exactly how this team will need to compete moving forward, assuming Wennberg does get moved before Friday’s trade deadline.
Can you imagine if this team sells off an asset or two and still rallies to make the playoffs? Man, that’d be neat.
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.
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