Whoa. That was two very bad days of no-good, rotten hockey from the Seattle Kraken. For months, we viewed this latest four-game stretch of the schedule as a chance for them to make hay against two bad teams and perhaps snag a playoff position—just in time for a gauntlet of tough opponents that runs through most of December.
At Sound Of Hockey, we figured that with the Kraken playing two of the NHL’s worst teams for four consecutive games, they needed to rack up at least six standings points to feel like they had taken care of business. Realistically, they should have earned all eight. Seattle managed just two points out of the four games.
Two. Lousy. Points.
The Kraken capped it off by getting swept by the Sharks, who hung 12 goals on Seattle—the most San Jose has scored in any two-game stretch since 2021.
I’m an optimist to a fault, but even I am struggling to find optimism about this team right now. The vibes are bad.
Here are Three Takeaways from a miserable weekend of hockey, in which the Kraken lost 8-5 at San Jose on Friday and 4-2 at home to those same Sharks on Saturday.
Takeaway #1: The goaltending has taken a nosedive
One bright spot for much of this season has been Seattle’s goaltending, led by Joey Daccord, who has been stellar most nights. Kudos to John Barr, who sounded the alarm on the latest Sound Of Hockey Podcast, saying he was worried the Kraken were leaning on Daccord too heavily and that overuse could lead to cracks in his play.
Indeed, Joey’s last two outings—against Anaheim on Wednesday and San Jose on Saturday—were statistically his two worst of the season, with save percentages of .848 and .826, respectively.
But what choice does coach Dan Bylsma have other than to keep leaning on Daccord? He tried giving Daccord a rest during the first game of the back-to-backs, and Philipp Grubauer had perhaps his worst outing ever as a Kraken, allowing seven goals on 26 shots for a dismal .731 save percentage.
My regular readers and listeners know I empathize with goaltenders because I am one. I’ve probably felt something similar to what Grubi felt on Friday: one of those dreaded nights where it seems like you can’t stop anything. This was evident in Ethan Cardwell’s first career goal—San Jose’s seventh of the game—where Grubauer flat-out whiffed on an easy glove save.
Oof. 7-5 Sharks.
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) November 29, 2024
Ethan Cardwell’s first NHL goal.
Oof. #SeaKraken pic.twitter.com/0RUqKVH6cW
I recognize that the “full-time backup” role is new to Grubauer, but if he’s not going to demand the starter role, he needs to learn how to be reliable as the second-stringer. At this point, the only way he ever gets back to being a full-time starter is by playing outstanding hockey as the backup. If the Kraken can’t even rely on him to take one game of a back-to-back against arguably the worst team in the league… Well, I just don’t know.
After that performance, Grubauer is now 1-7-0 on the season, with a .862 save percentage and a 3.62 goals-against average—both the worst of his 13-year NHL career.
I don’t want to make it seem like Seattle’s issues revolve solely around goaltending, because that’s definitely not the case. While the Kraken generated plenty of shots on Saturday, they were outplayed by a confident Sharks team for the first half of the game. By the time they woke up, they were staring at an insurmountable 4-0 deficit.
Still, there’s something to be said for how confident a team looks when its goalies are playing well. When the goalies are sharp, the skaters play looser and freer than they did this week. As Jared McCann said after Saturday’s game, “We turn the puck over, and it just always seems to go in the back of our net.”
Takeaway #2: Vince Dunn in, Chandler Stephenson out
When it became clear on Saturday that Vince Dunn—who had missed 19 games with a “mid-body” injury—was set to return, I regained a smidgeon of hope that this team might begin to find its form soon. After all, as Blaiz Grubic pointed out on this very website last week, Seattle has historically been a much better team with Dunn in the lineup than without him.
I’m still somewhat hopeful (more on that in Takeaway #3) that this will prove true and that the ship can be righted soon. After all, we’ve only seen Dunn and Brandon Montour together in the lineup for five total games, including Saturday.
Dunn looked solid in his first game since Oct. 17, logging a whopping 26:15 of ice time—the most he’s played in a game this season. He also spent time on the power play with Montour, an intriguing look with two defensemen, although that really didn’t seem to work. Dunn and Montour also shared a few shifts at 5-on-5 when Seattle was trying to rally.
“I thought I felt pretty good,” Dunn said. “Honestly, my legs were good, my execution was pretty good. I think, obviously, missing six weeks is a long time. It goes by pretty slowly, but I thought it was ok for the most part.”
Dunn’s return is a positive step, but it feels like just a drop in the bucket for a team that has looked broken in its last three games.
While one key player returned to the lineup, another exited Saturday, as Chandler Stephenson missed the contest due to illness. He was replaced by Mitchell Stephens, who looked solid in his Kraken debut and helped create some energy with the fourth line.
The Stephenson illness concerns me slightly, given last season’s experience when a bug swept through the team during an East Coast road trip and largely derailed the season. The team heads out on a similar East Coast road trip Sunday, so hopefully the guys are getting plenty of Vitamin C.
Takeaway #3: Vibes are bad
As I mentioned earlier, I’m usually an optimist. But this is a rough, rough moment for the Kraken. They needed points this last week because now they’re headed on a historically tough road trip. And when they return from facing Carolina and the three New York/New Jersey teams, they’ll face the Panthers, Bruins, and Lightning at home. If the Kraken don’t find themselves quickly, they could effectively put themselves out of the playoff race in a few weeks.
I asked Bylsma how he plans to rebuild his team’s confidence during this difficult stretch. He said:
“I think you look at the schedule a lot of different ways. But when you look at the schedule, and you say, ‘This is a team we may believe we can have, or should have success against,’ it changes your mindset a little bit. I think I welcome the difficult opponents because that will help us change our mindset a little bit and understand how we need to play to have success in the game.”
So, there’s that.
Thankfully, the Kraken have a full practice scheduled for Monday in Carolina before kicking off their four-game swing against the Hurricanes on Tuesday.
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.
Here is what I previously posted several days ago:
“Chuck Holmes on November 26, 2024 at 8:37 am
After seeing Celebrini, Smith and Eklund, plus now Askarov play yesterday, I would not assume the Sharks games are a walkover. And the Ducks are going to come to town pissed about the Carlsson hit, so that is going to be tough sledding as well. And remember PG has to play at least one if not two of the games. Yikes!”
I make that as 3 correct predictions out of 3
For my next prediction, I expect Francis, to keep the increasingly tenuous hold on his job, makes trades. Because these are made out of desperation, he loses the trades.
There are over 200 possible combinations to make a group of 3 from a pool of 12 and I thought we were going to see all of them with the forward lines…but it was interesting to see some different looks.
Playing on different lines for much of the game, I liked the energy that Kartye, Gourde and Tanev were each able to bring to their own lines. Gourde gave McCann some good chances, Tanev and Wright were well-matched for speed and Kartye got in 4 shots and 6 more hits despite the beating he took this week.
Though the glimpse was brief, of all the forwards that have come up from Coachella this year, Stephens was the first one who didn’t look completely overmatched. If Stephenson’s able to bounce back from his illness (and it doesn’t spread), this seems like the best opportunity to scratch Beniers for a game or two.
I agree that Berniers needs to watch from a distance for a couple of games. Maybe that will help him. He has been put in a position from the start that hasn’t allowed him to grow into the center he should be. Having to play on the 1st line and mainly defend the league’s finest every game has turned him into more of a defensemen than the top center he could be. He should be on a second or third line with more opportunities to attack, set up plays and shoot. His shot is wicked and needs to be used.
Looking at the highlights of the Sharks’ goals, maybe one was on Joey.
1. Burakovsky gave it away and then it goes in off Borgen.
2. This is the one, not sure if he could see through Evans.
3. Tolvanen did not cover the D sliding zone into the zone.
4. 3 on 1 after Borgen missed his pinch.
Gourde should be aware of where his skates are (blue is bad). It must drive Bylsma crazy to see these highly paid vets make repeated mental errors.
4 losses out of 5 to the Cal. teams. And now the schedule gets rough. Nine playoff caliber teams sit above the Kraken and the Blues and Yetis look possible, too. The Sharks and Ducks are starting to round into better form, with much better talent than the Kraken.
No chance this team makes the playoffs, even with Dunn back. The Ron Francis experiment has failed, to no one’s surprise, and heads should roll. Tod Leiweke has been conspicuous by his absence. Time to step up Tod, and right the sinking ship.
RF has to go, bring in a GM that knows how to build a roster.
On the bright side… now I can start paying closer attention to the next draft. I still think the future is bright, but the right now sucks.
Anyone who goes into a game against the Sharks this year thinking it’s a guaranteed win, WILL lose that game. If you have been watching them all season, their starting to mesh, and it’s starting to look dangerous. The two kid superstars are starting to come alive, Celebrini isn’t just out there putting up points, he’s taking control of games everytime he’s on the ice and you can feel his presence out there. Time to put some respect on the “lowly” Sharks.
Darren, we were there and disagree that Dunn “looked solid.” It was understandable, but he looked very tentative with the puck to us, certainly by his standards. He looked not ready for the full pace of play. Maybe that’s why he was paired with Montour on PP1 instead of being put in charge of PP2? Anyway, that didn’t work. The PP was still utter garbage on fire. It’s definitely time to sell, sell, sell. The problem is if they need a rebuild, which they do, Francis won’t get the chance to do it. Classic conflict of interest. He’ll probably just move Tanev for a 3rd round pick and roll it back for next year. Hopefully he doesn’t handcuff the team with more bad deals (like the rumored Gourde extension) on his way out the door.
A few notes:
1) Joey was not his usual exemplary self, but in his two “stinkers” this week, he was combined -1 GSAX. Grubauer was close to -5 in 1 game on Friday. I don’t get why he can’t just be sent down to the AHL. He has the second worst Sv% in the league. He has the second worst LDSv% in the league. He has bottom 10 advanced metrics. The bar to replace him has never been lower.
2) The defense was non-existent for a good part of this game. Evans and Okeksiak both played pretty poorly. Also, I don’t know which game Dunn was watching, but he looked rusty to me. I’m happy to have him back, but the puck seemed to bounce a lot when he touched it, and his patented smoothness wasn’t there.
3) a positive!! Schwartz, Gourde, and Kartye played with their pants on fire. Their extra effort was noticeable. I liked Winterton’s game too. Just play all the kids. Sprong and his self proclaimed 30 goal potential can sit in the press box.
4) Chuck mentioned this above, but RF being on the hot seat is dangerous for this club. He already got essentially forced by ownership to make 2 big FA signings despite them being way more than 2 signings away from playoff competitive. I wonder if now he’ll make some Ill advised trades to bolster the club in the short term. I hope he doesn’t. They need to sell and play the kids.
Feels like when we look back at this part of the season it’ll be like the first year where we lost to the Arizona Coyotes at a time we thought things could be turned around and also the third year where we took that 8 game losing streak from November deep into December. A turning point, but not a positive one. 🙁 Hope I am wrong.
My current feelings about the Kraken can be summarized by this line from Succession: “I love you, but you are not serious people.”
Sharks had their way with Sea. A better team would have been able to adjust for the 2nd game while the memory was fresh. The goaltending was weak but that was also a consequence of cappy play out front. Kudos to the sharks. Why can’t the Kraken figure out how to take advantage of teams in a similar fashion?
PS. No professional team is an easy win. Big mistake for all of us, even readers of such sports writing
Hi Darren,
I love your commentary and read faithfully but I respectfully disagree on what ails this team. The Kraken aren’t skilled enough to play finesse hockey. They could be successful if they were a physical team and finished checks in both ends of the ice. If you “play the man”, the puck will take care of itself. No players in the league fear going into the corners with our boys! In fact, their chances of winning the 1 on 1 battles are high! Open ice checks? Never!! Jamie Olyeksiak is one of biggest players in the league. Unfortunately, he’s the softest and one of the slowest. His usual play is to pulls up and “snow spray”the opponent in lieu of crushing the guy into the boards. So sad… This team needs to start playing a little old school hockey and throwing their weight around the ice and make some noise, turn some heads and send a messsge! I’m so frustrated… I really think our team has potential.
Which is why Gourde line is successful.
And also why it was nice in this game to see that they can still do their thing when they’re playing as part of other lines.
I’d love to see Seattle follow Vancouver’s example and bring one of their hard hitters up to the top line, similar to what the Canucks have done with Kiefer Sherwood. Take some of the defensive burden off of the players that are being paid to score goals.
Bring up some of the heavy hitting Coachella favorites like Hayden. This is the style of play they are used to and what we need right now.
This is the team RF built, not skilled or physical. Just what is he attempting to do exactly. Seems like he’s lost and doesn’t know what direction to go. RF we don’t have a bunch of skilled forwards, adding players like sprong isn’t the way to win more games.