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Three Takeaways – Kraken rally again, but come up short in shootout loss to Canucks

Darren Brown

The Komeback Kraken almost did it again to the Vancouver Canucks on Friday, this time rallying from two goals down to send the game to overtime before falling in a shootout for a 4-3 final. The loss came two games after Seattle overcame a three-goal deficit in Vancouver on Saturday and won in OT, something that has only happened two other times in NHL history.

Vince Dunn was one of two big heroes that night (Jaden Schwartz was the other), and he also scored the tying goal Thursday with 53 seconds left in regulation.

“The game is 60 minutes long, and you’ve got to play the whole thing,” Kraken coach Dan Bylsma said. “Sometimes the game goes awry, sometimes you don’t get the bounces, sometimes you don’t get the calls, whatever. That happened for us, and we had to come back again in the third period.”

Here are Three Takeaways from a 4-3 Kraken shootout loss to the Vancouver Canucks.

Takeaway #1: Is Matty Beniers finally going?

I’ve maintained cautious optimism after the previous couple of games that Matty Beniers had truly gotten off the schneid. He scored in Vancouver on Saturday with a nothing shot that Thatcher Demko flubbed, then scored again against Utah on Tuesday after he missed the net on a breakaway and got a good bounce when he threw it back toward Karel Vejmelka from below the goal line.

This time, he scored a more legitimate-looking power-play goal that cut Seattle’s deficit to 3-2 and set the game up for Dunn’s late heroics.

“I think Matty’s got a huge desire, a huge— I don’t want to call it a burden, but he carries it,” Bylsma said. “He wants to score goals, he wants his line to score goals, and when he’s not, it can wear on him. And just the puck going in in Vancouver [on Saturday], that shot on the rush play, gave him a boost of confidence… He’s playing with a lot more confidence because the puck has gone in the net.”

Hockey is a funny sport like that. Beniers went 19 games without a goal, a drought that lasted more than a month. He had all the chances in the world to score and couldn’t buy a goal. Then, he gets a lucky break, and suddenly the floodgates open.

But will they stay open for him?

Takeaway #2: A costly turnover

Much has been made of Jaden Schwartz’s performances of late, given that he racked up five points between the game in Vancouver and the game against Utah. He had some fantastic opportunities again on Thursday and got robbed multiple times.

He had a turnover in the neutral zone Thursday, though, that proved to be a turning point in the game and put the Canucks in the driver’s seat. I’m not picking on Schwartz with this because he’s been Seattle’s best player of late, but I think it’s a good example of why taking care of the puck around the blue lines is so critically important.

The Kraken had just dodged a bullet thanks to Philipp Grubauer getting a piece of Conor Garland’s shot on a 2-on-1 rush. Schwartz got the puck near Seattle’s hash marks and carried it out of harm’s way, slowing things down through the neutral zone.

Facing two defenders at the blue line, Schwartz hesitated a second too long and got the puck poked off his stick. It went right to Phil Di Giuseppe, who found Garland again at the blue line, and Garland was off to the races.

I’ve always thought the blue lines are the most dangerous areas on the ice to turn the puck over. When you lose it either at the O-zone or D-zone blue line, your teammates have either shifted into attack mode and are focused on getting up ice, or they think they’re safe to make a line change and start heading to the bench. The transition back to defense often takes a hair too long, and now you’ve given up an odd-man rush or a breakaway.

In this case, it was a Garland breakaway, a shifty move, and a deft finish to give the Canucks their first lead of the game.

Takeaway #3: A good standings point

The win would have been much nicer, but Seattle continues to show impressive resiliency, even as the odds of making the playoffs have grown long. Facing yet another two-goal deficit, the Kraken did not quit and found another equalizer in dramatic fashion.

It does sting that they didn’t get the winner this time, because they had the puck for most of the overtime period and had some fantastic looks at Kevin Lankinen. Jared McCann had a wraparound that Lankinen stopped and a tip on a Chandler Stephenson shot-pass that went just wide, and Oliver Bjorkstrand had a partial breakaway that Lankinen got his blocker on.

“I thought we possessed it well [in overtime],” Beniers said. “We got some good looks, and [Lankinen] made some big saves.”

Considering how this game seemed to be heading after Tyler Myers made it 3-1 early in the third period, the loser point is well earned by the Kraken.

…But a win would have been better.

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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