Kraken Notebook – Explaining the Bjorkstrand healthy scratch, Vince Dunn injury update

The Seattle Kraken are back at home after an atrocious and concerning road trip in which they went 1-4-0, with the four losses coming consecutively to close out the journey. The players returned to Kraken Community Iceplex on Thursday for practice, staying upbeat, with the dressing room mood remaining quite positive.

A few items of note have popped up over the past few days, so I thought some sort of book for those items of note… a “Notebook” if you will… felt appropriate. 

About that Oliver Bjorkstrand healthy scratch…

Head coach Dan Bylsma made headlines and raised eyebrows by scratching Oliver Bjorkstrand from the lineup Tuesday in Colorado. The Kraken’s lone representative at the All-Star Game last season played all 82 games for Seattle last season and missed just one game the year before for the birth of his son. He has scored 20 goals in each of the last two seasons and has five points (3-2=5) in 13 games this season. So, although he hasn’t been racking up huge numbers, he has contributed intermittently.

I hypothesized on the latest Sound Of Hockey Podcast that perhaps the scratch was more about getting a message through to the team that nobody is immune to being pulled from a game if they don’t perform and that Bjorkstrand was being used more as an example. But after talking to Bylsma about it on Thursday, it sounds like he has been underwhelmed by Bjorkstrand’s play for some time now.

“I’ve had a number of conversations with Oliver over the past six games, and so I think he was quite clear on the expectations and his play,” Bylsma said. “And I think we’re going to have a great response from Oliver because of it.”

It’s also a gutsy move by Bylsma, and a lever that we never saw the previous regime pull. Dave Hakstol would often use the healthy scratch shakeup as a way to try to get the team producing, but he never sat core veteran players; it was always members of the frequently rotating fourth line that would get the pressbox treatment. Now we’ve seen that Bylsma is not afraid to do something like this if he thinks a player is not doing what he needs him to do.

So how did the rest of the team receive that message?

“From the team standpoint, I think if we go with the status quo, then I don’t think we’re going to move to where we think we can get, what we think we can be,” Bylsma said. “And so, I think there was a team message there as well in Oliver not playing in that game.”

The sense I got from the dressing room was that the players understood the move and were not upset about it, but they also will back each other up. They know that they need to execute better to start winning games and avoid having more of these kinds of messages delivered.

You can bank on Bjorkstrand returning to the lineup Friday when Seattle welcomes the high-flying Vegas Golden Knights to Climate Pledge Arena. He was back on a line with Eeli Tolvanen and Shane Wright at practice, and as of the writing of this story, the Kraken are carrying no extras to insert into the lineup after they reassigned John Hayden, Ryan Winterton, and Cale Fleury to Coachella Valley on Wednesday.

See more

#SeaKraken lines at practice:

McCann / Beniers / Eberle
Schwartz / Stephenson / Burakovsky
Bjorkstrand / Wright / Tolvanen
Kartye / Gourde / Tanev

Evans / Larsson
Oleksiak / Montour
Borgen / Mahura pic.twitter.com/y92VA7csfw

— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) November 7, 2024

Philipp Grubauer’s “unfortunate accident”

Goaltender Philipp Grubauer was mysteriously absent from the skate, with EBUG Michael Henrichsen stepping in. Bylsma said Grubauer had suffered an “unfortunate accident at home,” but it didn’t sound like anything too serious and indicated Grubauer would be back on the ice in the next few days.

Grubauer will not be available to back up on Friday, though, so the Kraken recalled Ales Stezka on an emergency basis.

Vince Dunn progressing

I do not think it is a coincidence that the Kraken’s struggles began when Vince Dunn’s injury forced him right back out of the lineup after he played just four games. This team took a nosedive last season when it traded Alex Wennberg to the New York Rangers at the Trade Deadline, and then Dunn had a season-ending injury soon after. With that in mind, I’m beginning to think this team simply can’t survive without Dunn.

With Vince Dunn’s long-term injury status starting on Oct. 17, he’s technically eligible to return on Nov. 12, when the Columbus Blue Jackets come to town. However, with how the Kraken have handled injuries in the past, I would have expected to see Dunn on the ice by now if he was planning to play in that game. He was not there Thursday, but Bylsma indicated that the aforementioned timeline is still within the realm of possibility.

“He’s not on the ice yet,” Bylsma said. “He’s in a rehab workout phase off the ice, and he’ll be progressing to the ice in a few days… I’ll say in the four-to-seven-day range.”

The Nov. 12 game is only five days away, but even so, Bylsma said Dunn’s return for that game is “not unlikely,” but also hedged that it could take a few more days beyond that Columbus game before we see him in game action.