They lost the game 3-1, but the Seattle Kraken were downright watchable against the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday. Being “watchable” doesn’t sound like much, but it is a significant improvement over how Seattle performed in its three prior outings, all of which they lost on home ice by a combined score of 12-4. Still, this one brought the same result and extended the team’s losing streak to six games (5-0-1).
Unlike in the three previous contests, there were some things to like about this game, from Philipp Grubauer’s 34-save showing that put him back over a .900 save percentage for the season, to Jaden Schwartz returning to the lineup and contributing with a tying goal.
“We battled really hard all night, fought back to tie the game up, and stayed with it on the power play in order to do that,” coach Dave Hakstol said.
It’s never fun to lose to the Vegas Golden Knights, though, and damaging their playoff hopes would have been nice.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 3-1 Kraken loss to the Golden Knights.
Takeaway #1: The power of the Schwartz
Schwartz returned after a four-game injury hiatus and had a solid outing. He tipped in a Ryker Evans shot from the point for a power-play goal that tied the game 1-1 at 13:29 of the third, so that was his biggest play, but he did seem to have some nice jump in this game in general.
“I mean, obviously, you want to come back and help the team out as much as you can,” Schwartz said. “I thought overall it was a back-and-forth game. Both goalies played good, and it could have gone either way. It would have been nice to take that into overtime.”
From our vantage point, it seemed to be a relatively quick ramp up to game action this time for Schwartz, who we only saw skate with the team in practice on Wednesday. Usually, when a player is returning from injury, he eases back in with a couple of sessions with the team and often doesn’t fully participate the first and/or second time out. But Schwartz was fully involved at Wednesday’s practice, taking regular line rushes and full contact, and then got into the game Thursday.
By contrast, Vince Dunn seemed to be working his way back more slowly, first skating on his own, then participating in a couple of practices with the main group. But he left midway through Sunday’s practice after a half-effort on a drill, and he hasn’t skated with the team since. Hakstol confirmed to reporters at morning skate Thursday that he was not on the trip. We wonder if there was a setback in Dunn’s recovery.
Back to Schwartz, he is one of those players that doesn’t always stand out in an individual game. But when he comes back from an absence, you do notice him because of his tenacious forechecking and willingness to go right to the front of the net.
It was good to have him back in there. Now, if only the Kraken can get Dunn back…
Takeaway #2: Close call on the winning goal
This was one of those “bend but don’t break” games for the Kraken, and it looked for a few minutes like they were on their way to a rope-a-dope victory. They withstood body blow after body blow, thanks in large part to Grubauer standing tall, but Brett Howden drove hard to the net with a minute left in the game, and Keegan Kolesar cleaned up the rebound.
Hakstol tried an offside challenge, and replay showed that it was about as close to being offside as it could possibly be. But there wasn’t an angle that showed 100-percent certainty that it was offside, so the play stood.
“That was my judgment call on it,” Hakstol said. “It’s extremely close. I believe it is offside. Obviously, it’s a really close, tight play at the line, and I feel the responsibility [to make the call] because of how hard our guys fought.”
With the way Howden ran into Grubauer in the crease, we thought there could have also been a challenge for goalie interference on this one, thought whether that would have succeeded is anyone’s guess.
Takeaway #3: The Golden Knights get ’em again
With the Kraken firmly out of the playoff picture, our expectations when watching these games have changed. Winning just isn’t as big of a deal anymore, and realistically, losing more often than not will be beneficial to the club in the long run.
Even so, when Schwartz tied the game with 6:31 left—a goal you could see coming from a mile away with the way Seattle was sticking in the game—we became ignorantly hopeful the Kraken were going to pull out a rare victory in Vegas.
Instead, the Golden Knights landed yet another demoralizing blow to Seattle, which is now 2-9-1 all time against Vegas. And this one came on the heels of the 5-4 overtime loss that effectively ended the Seattle’s season on March 12. The Kraken got the win in the Winter Classic, but man, these guys just own Seattle and continuously find ways to inflict pain
How did we manage to let ourselves get disappointed by a game that means nothing to the Kraken? Ugh. Alas, in a season full of skids, the current one is the second longest of the season.
“We’ve got to stick together and climb out of this together and try get some momentum going our way,” Schwartz said.
Indeed. The Kraken now head into a string of four very winnable games against Arizona, Montreal, and Anaheim twice. How about they rack up a few W’s for the psyche of the fanbase?
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.
Just relieved they avoided the loser point. Even though they looked “better”, I thought Seattle was lucky to even be in that game at the end.
Go Kraken!!!
I admire your level of emotional investment in this team, Darren. I watched it, for some reason (curiosity about individual performances, mostly) but could not muster any s***s to give about the outcome. I was even a little annoyed by the late tying goal, because yet another loser point would be the worst of both worlds. And I think “watchable” is generous. Grubauer was great, McCann played hard all game like always, but everyone else got dominated.
Once you take goaltending out of the equation, this team is actually worse than the year one team. They assembled a collection of decent veteran players, who got killed by historically bad goaltending. The veterans ‐‐ Eberle, Gourde, Tanev, Schwartz — have declined in their 30s, which is what happens. Tanev in particular is absolutely killing the team and collecting 3.5 mil to do it. And they have not been able to replace them with young stars yet — and it’s really not clear when that will ever happen. Beniers has shown himself to be a 3rd liner at best who went on a shooting bender last year. He’s the worst skater on the team and does not have the playmaking ability to be a top of the line player. He tries so many times to make a play to the middle of the ice, but coughs up the puck every time. Tolvanen was a nice find but he’s not a top line player. Kartye is a 4th liner, maybe fringe NHLer. Evans looked good earlier in the season, but Hakstol has apparently murdered his confidence. He’s been brutal since being dragged back out of the press box. That first Vegas goal last night — woof.
I didn’t realize it until Steve Levy pointed it out last night — the Kraken are THE ONLY NHL team with not a single multi goal comeback win this season. That checks out.
Ha! That thing about the “only team without a multi-goal comeback” was a bitter pill, indeed. I do agree Tolvanen is not a top-liner, but I think the ceiling for Kartye and Beniers is higher than you’re giving them credit for. Beniers needs to get bigger and stronger, but he has the talent to be a top-10 center in the league. He needs to keep developing, though. I also think Kartye has the foundation to be an impactful player. He’s earned trust from an NHL coaching staff at a young age. I just think the question on him is if the scoring touch he showed at the AHL level ever translates. We shall see…
The good news is they do have a bunch of prospects flying under the radar that could one day be players, but those guys won’t be able to really drive the bus for… maybe four or five years.
Any chance you guys can get “friend of the pod” Chris Peters on soon? Seems like a good time to hear from him.
What frustrates me is that they’ve (seemingly) completely abandoned their style from last year. Sure they lost their 4th line entirely but the way they used to forecheck with almost reckless abandon has completely evaporated. Now teams attack with speed and without much in the way of resistance. Additionally their offensive zone exits have been just that…..offensive. They often stand still while waiting for forward to complete their exit loops and the backwards passing drives me absolutely insane. I coached Midget A and AA hockey for years and my mantra was always, move forward on offense and take away space on defense. The Kraken seem to have forgotten how to do both.
I completely agree, very boring stagnant system that we have been playing most games this season. Seems very easy to coach against because it’s the same looks we run over and over again. That goes for our PP and our breakout.
At this point of the season it’s tough to look critically at how folks are performing since the season is all but done and only a few players are fighting to stay on next year’s roster. Matty is having a typical sophomore slump and should bounce back. Eli isn’t a 1st liner and no one said he would be but I think we were lucky to have snatched him up and can see him as a steady piece for the next few years. Last year’s playoff run came early for this fledgling team and expecting this year’s team to make the playoffs would have been foolish given the roster make up. As long as I see continued progress with developing our prospects along with improvements via trade/free agency we will be great. Just as long as we don’t become another middling team that is in a continuous state of treading water. Just good enough to make the playoffs but not strong enough to win and not crappy enough to get good draft picks.
A few L’s would do more for my psyche. The teams between the 11th and 8th picks are in a virtual tie. Some draft evaluators have about 8-9 high level players with a dip off around there.