Who knew a boring, low-event game could be so exciting? That’s the beauty of hockey, though. Even in a game where neither team surpassed 23 shots on goal, the tension in the building was palpable as the game went down to the wire. In the end, it was the Seattle Kraken celebrating victoriously after Jordan Eberle came through in the clutch, firing home the game-winner to blow the roof off Climate Pledge Arena.
Heck, even goalie Joey Daccord was over-the-moon excited—so much so that when he tried to jump on the pile, he missed and went tumbling to the ice in a hilarious heap.
“I got the zoomies,” Daccord joked after the game.
I can’t stop watching this. It gets better and better with every angle I see.
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 20, 2024
😂 😂 😂 #SeaKraken pic.twitter.com/ere4Qbpwk6
Here are our Three Takeaways from a thrilling 2-1 Kraken overtime win over the previously undefeated Calgary Flames.
Takeaway #1: Jordan Eberle is on fire
Things have been going well for Eberle since he was named captain of the team. Eberle’s OT game-winner was his third as a Kraken, the most in team history. It was also his fifth tally of the season, putting him in fourth place in the entire NHL for goals.
“I’m getting opportunities, and they’re going in,” Eberle said, deadpan. “I know, obviously, how it works. You’re going to have hot streaks, and you’ll have slow streaks. But it’s been good to see the puck go in early. It always gives you some confidence.”
The goal itself was a thing of beauty. The Kraken had won the center-ice face-off to start the overtime period and maintained control for the better part of a minute. Rasmus Andersson made a good defensive play to pinch off Brandon Montour behind the net and take the puck away.
It looked like the Flames were heading on the offensive, but Eberle tracked back and picked Nazem Kadri’s pocket. At that point, the Flames were in complete disarray, with all three players headed north and scrambling to get back on defense. Brandon Montour got a great look but was stopped by Dan Vladar, recovered his own rebound, and then had the presence of mind not to force it back into Vladar. Instead, he found Eberle streaking down the slot, and Eberle sniped it home.
“Great play [by Montour],” Eberle said. “He just kind of fed it, put it on a tee for me, and I didn’t really have to do too much.”
Coach Dan Bylsma was gushing about his captain after the game. “I don’t even know how old he is right now, but he just looks like a young Jordan Eberle,” Bylsma said (Eberle is 34, by the way). “He’s skating well, he’s competing well, he’s got a sneaky skill to his game, a sneaky compete to his game… With him being named captain six games ago, I think it’s awesome to see him also lead the way on the scoresheet.”
Eberle did not get off to this kind of start last season. As we later learned, he broke his hand in a fight with Colorado’s Logan O’Connor in the fourth game of the season and played through it, so that surely hampered him. But do you know when Eberle scored his fifth goal of the season in 2023-24?
JANUARY 13TH!
It took Eberle 38 games to score five goals last season. This season, it took him just six.
Takeaway #2: Another new way to win
The Flames got off to a great start this season, and with the way they were rolling, this was always going to be a tough matchup for Seattle. Calgary prides itself on rolling four effective lines, using similar tactics to what the Kraken deploy in terms of personnel.
The recipe was there for a tight-checking, close game, and that’s exactly what we got.
“It’s a bit of a slog of a game, and you have to be determined to stay with it and not give them anything,” Bylsma said. “Continue to be determined to get back the other way. That’s what this game presented, and that’s what Calgary presents.”
I wrote about this after the win Thursday over Philadelphia, but the Kraken keep finding new ways to win, quite different from last season when they seemed to constantly find new ways to lose.
“That’s what we’re trying to develop,” Bylsma said. “Games come in a lot of different ways. This game was by far the lowest-event game that we’ve played at this point in time.”
Takeaway #3: Kraken convert on critical 5-on-3
After Joey Daccord fumbled a puck on Calgary’s power play late in the first period, and it wound up in the back of Seattle’s net a couple of touches later, the Kraken needed to find a way to level the score. They kept getting power play chances in the second, and when Jonathan Huberdeau slashed Matty Beniers to give the Kraken 47 seconds of 5-on-3 time, it was easy to sense that a turning point was coming in the game, one way or another.
The Kraken called timeout, and assistant coach Jess Campbell drew up a play on her whiteboard. It took a while for the Kraken to break through, but with the first of the two penalties ticking down, Chandler Stephenson and Jared McCann executed a give-and-go across the tops of the circles. As Jaden Schwartz set a screen in front of Vladar, Stephenson leaned into a one-timer and ripped it past the Calgary netminder.
THE CHAN CHAN MAN! 🚨
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 20, 2024
On the 5-on-3, McCann tees it up, and Schwartz provides the screen for Stephenson’s first goal as a #SeaKraken.
1-1 pic.twitter.com/lxZaIe3cnD
“That was kind of what we wanted to open up, Ebs to be able to find Canner or myself,” Stephenson said. “That’s what I think you want to try to do on a 5-on-3—shoot the puck. It seems like any team that shoots it, it usually goes in, rather than teams that try to make the perfect play.”
One has to imagine that if Seattle failed to score on that 5-on-3, the game might have gone the other way.
“5-on-3’s always feel like a pivotal point,” Bylsma said. “What’s the success rate historically on a 5-on-3? It’s not 100 percent. It’s not close to 100 percent, but it feels like you should score. And I think when you don’t, it’s a big drawback. But we got the 5-on-3, we were able to find a goal there, and it’s Chandler’s first one. I think he’s done a lot of good things the last couple games for our team, but getting him on the scoresheet is, I think, really important for our group.”
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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