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Three Takeaways – Horrible start dooms Kraken in 4-2 loss to Oilers, Adam Larsson injured

Darren Brown

“The Seattle Kraken won 2-1 against the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday” … is what I would be writing if we could erase the first six minutes of the game (and also pretend Leon Draisaitl’s empty-net goal didn’t happen, though it wouldn’t have in this revisionist version of events).

Alas, we at Sound Of Hockey cannot rewrite portions of a hockey game. As such, the real result was a 4-2 Kraken loss.

“It’s taxing on you mentally [to frequently be down in games],” coach Dan Bylsma said. “The games go different ways, you get bounces, you don’t get bounces… In this game, a minute into the game, you’re down one and down two in the first period. It’s mentally challenging for the guys to continually mount a comeback in games.”

Here are Three Takeaways after a 4-2 Seattle Kraken loss to the Edmonton Oilers.

Takeaway #1: What an abysmal start

Seattle opened this game with one of its worst six-minute stretches of hockey this season. It was puzzling to see the Kraken come out so flat because there’s simply no explanation for how they could lack energy in a game like this, even though we’ve seen that countless times over the past three and a half seasons.

Desperate for points, facing one of the best teams in the NHL—featuring two of the world’s top players—and playing in front of a packed house at home on a Saturday night, they should have been fired up. Instead, they came out flat, completely mismanaging the puck. They handed out turnovers like candy, missed checks, and Philipp Grubauer was left to fend for himself against three Grade A rush chances, two of which found the back of the net.

“Not good enough,” Bylsma said. “Early on, a little too much standing around, watching their good players, and not putting enough bodies on guys.”

“I mean, we’ve got to get better starts,” Jaden Schwartz said after scoring in the third period to bring the Kraken within one. “It’s tough coming back all the time in this league. It’s good to be able to do it, and we put ourselves in position to tie it up again. But we’ve just got to—especially with them playing last night—be sharper off the start, be on our toes, be aggressive, instead of kind of watching them and being on our heels.”

Schwartz nailed it with that phrase, “watching them.” It really felt like the Kraken were spectators, allowing the Oilers’ many offensive weapons to dictate the game.

On the first goal 57 seconds in, the Kraken had numbers with Matty Beniers, Vince Dunn, and Adam Larsson all back. Beniers tied up Viktor Arvidsson, but Larsson gave Leon Draisaitl too much room, and Dunn missed a check on Podkolzin on the wall, leaving him wide open to score and extend Draisaitl’s point streak to 14 games.

Four minutes later, Jeff Skinner doubled the lead on another coverage lapse by the top pair. Tye Kartye missed his check on Derek Ryan at the red line and hit linemate Ben Meyers instead, giving Ryan space to carry the puck into the Kraken zone. Again, Larsson gave Kasperi Kapanen too much room, and Dunn reacted too slowly to Skinner streaking through the middle. Skinner then went 1-on-1 with Grubauer and buried it.

Boom. 2-0. Another massive uphill climb.

This team never quits, and I genuinely thought a tying goal was coming in the third period. But the Kraken need to figure out how to play with leads rather than constantly chasing games.

Takeaway #2: Philipp Grubauer gave them a chance

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about goaltending in Three Takeaways, but Grubauer deserves a mention for his performance Saturday.

The Kraken skaters gave him little support in the opening minutes, and the deficit could have been worse if he hadn’t made a huge save on Connor McDavid’s breakaway. Despite the tough start, Grubauer made 28 saves on 31 shots in a game where Seattle was outshot nearly 2-to-1.

“He kept us in the game, for sure,” Bylsma said. “The McDavid breakaway save, and he was strong in other avenues. There was traffic in front, and he made some strong saves in there. He gave us a chance to come back in this game, for sure.”

He also did a full split to rob Draisaitl on a 2-on-1 in the third period.

According to Natural Stat Trick, the Oilers had 81 percent of the shot quality in this game. They should have scored more than they did, but Grubauer gave the Kraken a fighting chance.

Takeaway #3: Adam Larsson injured

The night started poorly for the Dunn/Larsson pairing and only worsened, as Adam Larsson left at the end of the second period with an upper-body injury. His last shift ended with 3:32 remaining in the frame.

On replay, his final shift looked fine, though he did get his stick caught under Connor Brown’s arm at the very end of the shift (see tweet below). Could that have tweaked his arm or shoulder?

After that little pull on the stick by Brown, Larsson exited the frame. Watching live, I didn’t notice him leave the bench immediately, but I did catch that the Kraken were short a player by the end of the second.

Bylsma said after the game, “We’ll have to see how it reacts at this point in time.”

The Kraken can’t afford to lose Larsson, their ironman and top-pair defenseman, for an extended period. Here’s hoping his injury responds well over the next couple of days.

Worth noting, Yanni Gourde was also a late scratch from this game with an injury.

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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