For the second night in a row, the Kraken looked sluggish out of the gate and found themselves in a 2-0 hole, this time against the Dallas Stars. They did battle back to tilt the ice more in their favor for good portions of the second and third periods, but they couldn’t any of their 25 shots past Dallas backup goalie Casey DeSmith.
The slow start, combined with a disjointed 13-second stretch, gave the Stars all the scoring they needed to slide past Seattle.
“We make two critical errors, really,” Kraken coach Dan Bylsma said. “The game is full of mistakes, but we make two critical errors, and they end up in the back of our net and got us fighting back for half the game.”
Here are our Three Takeaways from the Kraken’s 2-0 loss to the Stars.
Takeaway #1: 13 ugly seconds
In Seattle’s season-opening loss to the St. Louis Blues last Tuesday, the Kraken were the better team for most of the game. But a two-minute lapse in the second period was enough to give the Blues three goals and an eventual 3-2 victory. A goal against happens—handle it right, and it’s no big deal. But if you let it compound into two or three goals, it becomes a much bigger problem.
This game was a little different from the one last Tuesday. In that game, the three goals came sandwiched between good stretches of Kraken play. But in this one, the two first-period goals from Sam Steel and Wyatt Johnston came during a horrendous opening frame where Seattle was outshot 13-6 and didn’t look ready to face one of the best teams in the NHL. It felt like the dam was bound to break—it was just a matter of time before Dallas broke through.
The first goal came when Will Borgen and Josh Mahura—temporarily paired together with Vince Dunn out of the lineup—got crossed up in coverage. Mahura ended up on the right side, and Borgen found himself shading that way too. He realized the left side was open and started shifting back, but he couldn’t recover in time to take Sam Steel’s stick away at the far post. He tried to deflect the puck, but short king and former Kraken forward Colin Blackwell somehow threaded the needle between Mahura, Borgen, and Philipp Grubauer, and Steel got an easy tap-in.
Just 13 seconds later, the Stars struck again. Off the center-ice face-off, Jamie Benn carried the puck over the blue line, dropped it to Johnston, and drifted toward the net, tying up both Ryker Evans and Adam Larsson in the process. Chandler Stephenson was taking away the cross-slot pass, and Jaden Schwartz was a step too slow in tracking back on Johnston. The result was Johnston having all the time and space he needed to rip a shot off the far post and past Grubauer. More on that in Takeaway #2.
Takeaway #2: Grubauer took heat, but he had a good game
It doesn’t take much for the Grubauer haterz to come out. I understand he’s had ups and downs with the Kraken, and yes, in the context of the game, making a stop on Johnston would have been preferred, especially since it was an unscreened shot from the right dot.
Playing devil’s advocate (and from a goalie’s perspective), Johnston was moving fast, had all the time in the world to pick his spot, and fired a perfect shot. The more concerning issue was the defensive breakdown immediately after the team had just given up a goal. The coverage was, frankly, nonexistent.
If Grubauer “wanted that shot back,” as the saying goes, then he did a great job recovering and keeping Seattle in the game. With the Kraken pressing to create offense in the third, he came up huge with consecutive breakaway saves on Tyler Seguin and Mason Marchment.
In total, Grubauer stopped 22 of 24 shots for a .917 save percentage and 0.77 goals saved above expected, according to MoneyPuck. Meanwhile, his team couldn’t muster any offense at the other end. Despite the Johnston goal, I would call this a positive outing for the netminder.
“I thought Grubi played really well,” Bylsma said. “A couple of times in the first period, there were barrages around the net, and he stood strong. And in the third period, he made those two big breakaway saves that kept us in the game and gave us a chance.”
I’m curious to hear what the comment section thinks about Grubauer’s performance. What say you, folks? Any haterz?
Takeaway #3: Really liking the fourth line
With the promotion of Shane Wright to full-time NHL center and the acquisition of Chandler Stephenson, it seemed throughout the summer that Yanni Gourde was destined for a fourth-line center role. Indeed, he seems to be settling in nicely between Tye Kartye and Brandon Tanev.
Two seasons ago, when the Kraken racked up 100 points and came within one goal of the Western Conference Finals (falling to these same Dallas Stars in seven games), a huge part of their success was the fourth line pushing the pace every night. When the top three lines struggled to generate offense, the fourth line consistently stepped up and gave the team a spark.
In the last two games, I’ve seen signs that something similar could happen this season. Kartye scored a crucial goal Saturday to get the Kraken level with the Wild, and while the fourth line didn’t score against Dallas, one could argue it helped turn the tide in the second period. When they were on the ice, the trio dominated possession, registering 70 percent of attempted shots and 76 percent of the shot quality, according to Natural Stat Trick.
There’s been plenty of talk about Tanev being a trade target because of his relatively high salary for a fourth-liner and the team’s cap situation. But mayyyyyyyybe Seattle should hang on to him, at least until they start stringing together some wins.
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.