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Kraken Notebook – A line shakeup and a spooky gathering

Darren Brown

The Seattle Kraken went right back to work Wednesday at Kraken Community Iceplex, roughly 14 hours after their 3-2 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday. But things looked quite different for Seattle at the skate, where coach Dan Bylsma had shuffled his forward lines and defense pairings. With this lineup jumble, Bylsma was seeking a bigger offensive punch for when the Kraken return to game action Thursday against the Winnipeg Jets, the NHL’s last remaining undefeated team.

“I think it’s still a search,” Bylsma said. “We don’t want to take away from how we played in the first period [Tuesday], but I think there are still things we can do better from both a team and individual standpoint.”

Here’s how the Kraken lines looked Wednesday:

Jared McCann // Matty Beniers // Jordan Eberle
Jaden Schwartz // Chandler Stephenson // Brandon Tanev
Eeli Tolvanen // Yanni Gourde // Oliver Bjorkstrand
Andre Burakovsky // Shane Wright // Tye Kartye

Meanwhile, the defense pairs were also tweaked, with Ryker Evans moving back up to play with Adam Larsson and Josh Mahura back down to skate with Will Borgen.

What I found interesting about the new Kraken forward lines is that they don’t clearly signal second, third, and fourth lines. McCann, Beniers, and Eberle are somewhat obviously the team’s top line, but you could argue that any of the other lines could be Seattle’s second or third.

Do Burakovsky and Wright belong on the fourth line? No, but that’s the makeup of this Kraken roster. Somebody has to play there, and Gourde, Tanev, and Kartye proved during the first seven games that even the fourth line can impact games and still play relatively big minutes.

“I don’t really decipher one through four,” Bylsma said. (Interestingly, this was something we heard Dave Hakstol say last year as well.) “If you’ve paid attention to that, you might question why I’m starting Gourde and Tanev and Karts for the start of the game. But they’ve been the line that—in the beginning of the game—was getting us good shifts, good offensive-zone shifts, playing with a lot of speed and pace. So I don’t really look at them as a fourth line.”

Although Gourde was technically still the fourth-line center on Tuesday, he played more than 17 minutes, while Tanev and Kartye had more typical fourth-line ice time at 12:51 and 9:59, respectively.

By the way, Bylsma has mentioned before that his line construction is based more on pairs of players rather than trios. He looks for two players that have good chemistry together, then rotates the third player. Based on the previous lineup and what Seattle appears to be deploying now, it’s safe to say that the “pairs” are McCann and Eberle, Schwartz and Stephenson, and Tolvanen and Bjorkstrand. None of the new “fourth” line of Burakovsky, Wright, and Kartye played together in the previous iteration of Kraken lines.

Line shuffling is nothing new

Line shuffling is a normal part of hockey. If a head coach doesn’t like an aspect of the team’s game, a new lineup at the next practice is never a surprise. Players are used to it as well.

“It’s typical throughout the season that you’re not going to stay with the same line every game,” Jaden Schwartz said. “We’ve had a couple tweaks so far already, and maybe we get a little bit more offense or different looks. Every situation is different, whether it’s matchups or trying to get a couple guys more looks on net or shake things up.”

The goal of this particular lineup change seems to be creating more offense and improving play across all Kraken lines. A set of tweaks like this can sometimes create an offensive spark, but as Schwartz notes, it doesn’t always go according to plan.

“It doesn’t always work out that way,” Schwartz said. “I mean, that’s your goal, right? But we have guys who can play in different spots—left wing, right wing, different situations. And some guys have played with each other more through the last few years, so they might have more chemistry.”

Getting the band(s) back together

Two of these Kraken lines look especially familiar, with Beniers rejoining McCann and Eberle, and Gourde reuniting with Tolvanen and Bjorkstrand. The Gourde line has seen periods of tremendous success together over the past couple of seasons.

“I think, two seasons ago, they were one of the best third lines in the game, if you want to label them one, two, three, four,” Bylsma said with a smirk, acknowledging he had labeled them as the third line moments after saying he didn’t think of lines that way. “I thought about playing the song for them today.”

To be clear, Bylsma was referencing the 1978 hit “Reunited” by Peaches and Herb.

Kraken players had a spooky gathering

Over the past couple of days, we’ve had some good laughs with the players discussing the team’s Halloween party, which Schwartz hosted at his house on Sunday night. Although there haven’t been too many publicly shared photos of the players’ costumes, we’ve heard that several had solid outfits, from Schwartz as Harry Potter and Tanev as Professor Snape to Josh Mahura as Alfalfa and the “young bucks” going as the Flint Tropics from Semi-Pro.

“It was good to get everyone together,” Schwartz said. “We did it a little early because it was our only time to really do it, but it was fun to see everyone dressed up and having fun together. You don’t get too many chances throughout the year to have a big team gathering, so it’s always fun when we can get one.”

Of course, the highlight of the week was when Burakovsky addressed the media on Monday with some lingering face and neck tattoos. “I tried to get it off, but it’s pretty sticky there,” Burakovsky said.

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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