Hey, it’s the preseason. We can’t get too wound up about a 6-1 drubbing at the hands of an uninspiring Calgary Flames roster when we’re just four days into training camp. But we can dissect the Seattle Kraken’s first foray into game action and see what interesting nuggets we can dig up.
There were some nice flashes, including Nathan Villeneuve sending a one-time rocket past Dustin Wolf to get Seattle on the board. However, Matthew Coronato (who could be a stud player that Seattle will have to deal with for a long time) and the Flames took advantage of the Kraken’s many mistakes and cruised to an easy win.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 6-1 Kraken loss to open the preseason.
Takeaway #1: Many mistakes
Preseason is such a strange animal. You’re mixing NHL players with AHL players and even major junior players, several of whom are stepping onto NHL ice for the first time. In the case of Sunday night’s game, you’re doing it after just four days of practice and zero game competition.
Still, head coach Dan Bylsma was not particularly pleased with what he saw. “I think there was a concerted effort to do some of the things we’re talking about,” a very hoarse Bylsma said. “It just wasn’t on the same page. We weren’t at all connected, we weren’t doing it together, and the play was a lot like my voice as a result.”
It was one of those games where every mistake seemed to end up in the back of the Kraken’s net, something we’ve seen many times over the team’s first three seasons. On the first goal, right off a defensive-zone face-off, Berkly Catton lost his guy, Clark Bishop, who went straight to the crease and scored.
On the second goal, Josh Mahura got hit, lost the puck, regained it, and then sent a pass to David Goyette at the half-wall. However, the pass handcuffed the young forward, leading to a turnover at the blue line. A slapshot off the end wall caromed out in front, got batted around, and was eventually cleaned up by Coronato.
On the fourth goal, the Kraken got bottled up for a bit and seemed to have things mostly guarded. But then, suddenly, there was a glorious passing lane right through the middle of the ice. Coronato found it with a tasty backhand sauce pass right into Jeremie Poirier’s wheelhouse.
Meanwhile, Philipp Grubauer looked like he was swimming around in his crease in the first period (he seemed more comfortable in the second period), but he also got hung out to dry a couple of times.
The good news about these mistakes is that they offer learning opportunities for the young players who are just getting a taste of life in the NHL. And thankfully, these mistakes came in a game that meant nothing, other than perhaps delivering a small blow to the ego.
“The correction doesn’t come today,” Bylsma said. “If they’re coming off the ice every time and hearing my voice saying, ‘you made a mistake,’ or ‘you messed up here or there,’ it’s just putting them in the wrong mindset. Did Berkly Catton make a mistake on the face-off, lose his guy? He did. But he didn’t hear it from me after that. We put him back out there and just kept playing.”
Takeaway #2: Some nice flashes too
When we saw the lineups, we hoped the two full lines of NHL players that the Kraken dressed would carry the play. Indeed, there were some good stretches of play from the Jared McCann/Matty Beniers/Oliver Bjorkstrand line and the Tye Kartye/Shane Wright/Jordan Eberle line. We thought Wright had a solid game, a positive sign for a young player we expect the Kraken to lean on this season.
There were also good moments from some of the younger players. While Catton had the early face-off miscue, he also had a couple of nice rushes that led to scoring chances, including a partial breakaway in the third period. That play should have at least resulted in a penalty on Adam Klapka, and perhaps even a penalty shot. Instead, the Flames went the other way, and Klapka ended up scoring his second goal of the game to make it 5-1.
The highlight of the game for the home team was definitely Villeneuve’s one-time blast off Bjorkstrand’s cross-slot pass.
Villeneuve is an intriguing player. He brings a ton of grit, which was on display in this game, and now we’ve seen that he also has a scoring touch.
“Obviously, I like to play the physical part of the game, but I mean, a lot of people don’t see my offensive side,” Villeneuve said. “They only see my Matthew Tkachuk-type style of play. And obviously, I love scoring goals, but my main part is just to play my role.”
Aside from the goal, Villeneuve could be seen jawing at the Flames bench after nearly goading Dryden Hunt into a fight. He seemed intent on making his presence known throughout the game.
“We’re down a couple goals there,” Villeneuve said. “The goal [that I scored] kind of changed the momentum a little bit, but I thought I might be able to mix it up physically, maybe throw in a fight and try to get the momentum going more for our side.”
Takeaway #3: A feisty preseason opener
Speaking of physicality, there was an actual fight in this game after Tucker Robertson caught William Stromgren with a knee-on-knee hit and was immediately challenged by Artem Grushnikov.
But aside from that altercation, there were constant scuffles throughout.
“It’s the NHL, and it’s competitive,” Tye Kartye said. “Everyone wants to be here, and everyone on Calgary wants to be there… Nobody should have been surprised [by the physicality].”
Bylsma was also unsurprised by the feistiness of the preseason opener, but he wants his team to engage in the physical side of the game in a different way than what they showed Sunday.
“The thing that I didn’t like about it is it’s reactionary, and we don’t want to be reactionary,” Bylsma said. “We want to be ins— I can’t say that word. We want to be the aggressor, both in how we play and in physicality.”
The word Bylsma started to say before cutting himself off was “instigators.”
By the way, Bylsma is going to be an absolute treat to cover. Even on a night when his team got smoked and was reminded on home ice that there is a long way to go before the Kraken will be ready for the season, he brought honesty and bluntness, while still managing to mix in a little humor.
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.
I miss when the Kraken would post the full post-games… Thanks for going into detail about what was said
Here are three other takeaways:
1. The 7F role is totally still up from grabs. The Fleury/Mahura pairing allowed 4 goals and looked lost.
2. Catton makes young player errors but he is dynamic going forward, something really no other forward on the Kraken offers. I hope they don’t quickly reassign him to Spokane, but lets him play some regular season games to see if that offensive dynamism offsets the lack of defensive chops.
3. Grubauer hasn’t change at all, so season #4 of dogsh** goalkeeping from him coming up. That buyout cannot happen too soon.
Meant 7D, not 7F
How can you say in point 1 the D were responsible for 4 goals, and then later say it was all Grubauer’s fault? I’m not a Gru apologist, but a lot of these takes are pretty unfair on the dude.
Whether the D is helping him or not, you can tell Grubauer isn’t holding good form when he spends too much time sprawled on the ice or over-commits and gets out of the crease. He didn’t look good, but it was pre-season game 1 for everyone
They all, both D and G, have opportunities to stop the puck from getting to the net and then going in. None of the Fleury/Mahura pairing nor Grubauer got it done. It is concerning, as either Fleury or Mahura would be the 7D but neither made the case last night but certainly can give it another shot next game. Would like to see Ottavainen get a shot at it.
Grubauer is different, the guy was all over the map as usual, flailing and swimming. Watch the highlights and you will see this. This is nothing new to anyone here. The guy just needs to go, he will again be the downfall of this team even if the offense picks up from last season. How many games can Joey play effectively this year is the key.
I thought Wright looked good on both ends of the ice most of the game. Gru was Gru, he was over committing himself and looked like a Kraken out of water 😂. It looked a lot like the flames have been spending their training camp working on systems and that we haven’t, as a team we were not playing a very connected game. I don’t mind that it is early in training camp but something to watch going forward.
Woof what a rough way to welcome the fans back.
Gru was flailing around giving up juicy rebounds. He’s still bad. After three full seasons this should not be surprising.
Goyette had some cool rushes and plays in the 1st period, i was starting to get excited about him. but then he kinda disappeared.
The bottom 4 dmen were all attrocious. But also Ryker Evans really struggled, fumbled the puck a lot. I’m worried about him. He seemed to get worse and worse as the season went on last year and last night was not encouraging. Poor Larsson was the only competent defenseman out there.
Did Firkus even touch the puck? I forgot he played until I looked at the lineup afterward. And who is Tucker Robertson? He did touch the puck a bit but didn’t look like anything close to an NHL player in the process. His uniform number just made me miss Wennberg’s possession competence, which was definitely missing in that game.
These are definitely valuable games, even if it’s just a great way for someone like Catton to get a sense of what they need to work on to be in the NHL, even though the opposing team isn’t a full NHL roster. I was wondering what the “all our players should be 19-25 or they are too old” crowd was thinking, but they probably weren’t.
It made me consider these long, large contracts very young players have been getting. Let’s take Matty’s, for example (which I think is a fair contract, by the way). It may take him 3-4 years of NHL development to hopefully become a serious contributor. With Stephenson and Montour contracts, you can probably bank on 3-4 years of solid returns, but maybe you’re not sure on the later years. They are the same thing in reverse.
Darren – Do you think that the young players who were not full-time NHL last season but are expected to be this season (Wright, Evans) will end up playing all of the pre-season games, or will they alternate in and out like the veterans?
Overall a stinker of a game. As I said to someone on the light rail heading home – it’s hard to win with only one guy playing defense (Larsson).
One thing I saw that I liked was the fight on offense to get presence in front of the net. A nice change from all the perimeter play last year.
Also, quite obvious Kartye spent his summer working on skating skills – really nice edging, crossovers and quick turns versus last year’s straight-line pump and glide.