In a season that has rendered feelings of indifference at times for fans, the Seattle Kraken’s 3-2 loss to the Calgary Flames on Sunday invoked some big emotions. Anger, confusion, excitement, hope, and disappointment—they were all there, wrapped up in a loss that, had it gone the other way, could have reinvigorated the last semblance of belief that the team could re-enter the playoff conversation.
Instead, Seattle went the other direction, dropping to a whopping 10 points behind the Flames for the last wild-card spot in the Western Conference.
Here are Three Takeaways from a crushing 3-2 Kraken loss to the Flames.
Takeaway #1: Everything went against Seattle in the first period
After digesting that chaotic and lengthy first period, I’m left with one lingering feeling: disdain toward the non-goalie-interference ruling on Yegor Sharangovich’s goal that made it 2-0. But that decision also put Seattle down 5-on-3 for two full minutes, leading to Jonathan Huberdeau’s goal—the eventual game-winner.
So, now that I’m thinking about it again as I’m writing this, I’m getting mad about all of it all over again, as I imagine a lot of Kraken fans are still feeling on Monday morning.
Let’s walk through the sequence of events. Jaden Schwartz scored a power-play goal at 11:03 of the first period that should have made it 1-0, but Calgary challenged for goalie interference. On the review, Schwartz’s skates were in the blue paint when the contact occurred between him and Dan Vladar’s stick, and Vladar did seem to be impeded on the play. So, I understood the no-goal decision, although Schwartz sounded perplexed by it after the game.
“You never know with these calls, right?” Schwartz said. “I don’t know if it’s people from Toronto, or… Both of the refs told me that it was probably a goal, but it was out of their hands, and people from Toronto called it, so not sure what they’re watching. I think it was a bad call. He put his stick in my skates, and I was then— I went out of the crease. Just a tough break.”
Jaden Schwartz appeared to score a power-play goal, but the #Flames successfully challenged for goalie interference.
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) February 3, 2025
Schwartz’s skate got tangled with Vladar’s stick in the blue paint.
Still 0-0. pic.twitter.com/Veu7ZodoqH
So that was perceived major injustice No. 1 in the game.
Morgan Frost scored his first goal as a Flame three minutes later at 14:03. I had no major complaints about that one, other than poor defending, as Frost dangled between Oliver Bjorkstrand, Vince Dunn, and Adam Larsson, and rifled it over Joey Daccord’s shoulder. It was basically a 1-on-4 rush, as Sharangovich drifted out to the side on the play, so a tighter gap by Dunn and Larsson should have quashed that opportunity.
Now Morgan Frost DOES score his first with the #Flames, and it’s a beauty.
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) February 3, 2025
1-0. pic.twitter.com/GaJlZwmKOC
Injustice No. 2 is where the proverbial s*** hit the fan.
Mikael Backlund sprung Sharangovich for a mini breakaway, which caused Jamie Oleksiak to slash Sharangovich and jar the puck off his stick. At first glance, it appeared that Sharangovich losing the puck simply fooled Joey Daccord, and the off-speed pitch trickled through him to make it 2-0 at 16:43. But Dan Bylsma submitted a goalie interference challenge of his own, and replay showed that Sharangovich did make contact with Daccord, causing his stick to pop up off the ice and allow the puck to slide under him.
Uh oh.
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) February 3, 2025
2-0, as Sharangovich loses the puck because of a slash by Oleksiak.
For some reason, the penalty is also standing up, which makes no sense, because it happened before the goal. Bizarre call. #SeaKraken pic.twitter.com/mZLNmsCCJj
But, because we can’t have nice things, the officials announced no goalie interference, good goal. Since Oleksiak had slashed Sharangovich, and Jared McCann was already in the penalty box for jumping Brayden Pachal (who flattened Andre Burakovsky and then turtled in a very Martin Pospisil fashion), McCann’s penalty ended with the goal, but Oleksiak’s started. PLUS, the Kraken got penalized for a failed challenge, which I still say is a ridiculous rule, but that’s a conversation for another day.
The official ruling indicated that it was incidental contact between Sharangovich and Daccord, and that they were both lunging for a loose puck. Maybe you could say it’s incidental, but if you do, then you also have to say that Schwartz’s contact with Vladar on his negated goal was incidental.
“I think from going up 1-0 to down 3-0 with goalie interference calls, the power play, the 5-on-3 that ensued… I think a lot of events in that period were not how we wanted them to go,” Bylsma said.
The coach also said the refs explained that Sharangovich’s goal stood because it was a “continuation play,” whatever that means.
As the game wore on, you could tell the Kraken were getting more and more agitated with the officials. Oliver Bjorkstrand got his stick ripped out of his hands but didn’t get a call and barked at the refs on his way to the bench. Brandon Montour got hauled down and went out of his way to scream at them two separate times during one shift. Even Kaapo Kakko remarked that he was upset he hadn’t gotten a penalty call on Jake Bean, who blatantly tripped him at center ice seconds before Kakko ended up scoring to get the Kraken on the board.
It was a tough night for the officials, and it cost Seattle dearly.
Takeaway #2: Kraken tried to recover
The Kraken had an impressive push in the second period and got robbed on several occasions by Vladar, who always looks like Dominik Hasek when he faces Seattle (which probably says more about the Kraken than it does about Dan Vladar, but I digress).
They made a real game out of it, though, with Kakko breaking through at 14:31 of the second period to put them back within arm’s reach heading to the third. And they did finally get a break from the officials that led to Brandon Tanev’s goal at 5:41 of the third period.
After being screamed at all night, the linesman had an itchy trigger finger and whistled a bizarre icing call on which the puck barely crossed the goal line when McCann touched it. Shane Wright won the ensuing face-off, McCann shot from the top of the circle, and the puck deflected off Tanev and in.
TURBO TIME! 🚨 #SeaKraken finally get some good fortune with a heinous icing call in their favor. Then off a face-off win by Shane Wright, Tanev gets a good bounce.
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) February 3, 2025
3-2 #Flames pic.twitter.com/V7CoOLr9U8
Seattle battled all the way to the final horn, and on a feverish rush with time ticking down, forced Vladar to make one more big stop on McCann to close out the game.
Had that gone in, it likely would have been ruled no goal for a kicking motion. The fans would have loved that.
Takeaway #3: Another crushing loss
There have been a lot of stinging losses for the Kraken this season, and that one may just take the cake. If there was still a path toward getting back into the conversation, it revolved around winning the two matchups with Calgary this week and snagging one of the two tougher matchups against Detroit and Toronto. With Step 1 of that plan a failure, this Kraken loss to the Flames confirmed what we already knew—that Seattle will be selling at the NHL Trade Deadline and playing months of meaningless hockey down the stretch.
You cannot expect a fair decision if a Canadian team is involved. Canadian teams doing good improve their economy. It is even worse if the team is
Toronto.
I’ve never been angrier at CPA than I was at the first intermission. You can very clearly see on the replay that he whacks Daccord’s stick which makes it go sideways, and then the puck slides right under. Continuation play or not, I have no idea how that can be legal because of the implication — you can just whack the goalie, push him out of the crease or interfere with him to any extent as long as you’ve convinced the ref that you’re trying to hit the puck. Between that, the mystery icing you mentioned, and a couple of other seemingly random and confusing whistles, the reffing was the worst I’ve seen this season. It’d be one thing if the Kraken just laid an egg and got thoroughly outplayed, but they got majorly screwed out of this one. Ugh!!
I was literally sick to my stomach during the first intermission.
I think Coach might have not made the best call. If you do risk vs. reward – it’s too high.
I also believe sometimes it’s harder when you’re at the rink – you don’t have the advantage of seeing it replayed 1 million times by the broadcast and analysts. Such an unfortunate outcome. They did battle back but weren’t able to make a dent until it was too late. Another consideration when you look at potentially being down 3 in the 1st.
I have no voice today because I was booing so hard last night. I’ve never been more pissed off at a sequence than that period. Disgraceful. Not to mention it sealed the last nail in the casket that was this season. Time to sell my my remaining 20 tickets for 1/5 face if I’m lucky I guess. Not great!
Hey, if you are selling cheap tickets, I will be among the potential buyers. The thought of the end of hockey season bums me out, so I will be happy to enjoy the experience while it lasts. At least we will have Sounders FC.
Boy, did that ever feel like Super Bowl XL. The Seattle team was noticeably the better of the two, but at every key juncture where massive point swings could occur the officials leapt in with highly questionable calls. Then, after the massive early point swings, the zebras throw one bad call Seattle’s way so that every true believer in the sanctity of the game and opposing team homer can say, “See? The bad calls went both ways.” Especially irksome was the double-minor to McCann when the other guy who had his gloves off and was throwing punches only got a single minor. Then there were all the non-calls that we can always expect Calgary to benefit from. Disgraceful.
I have never seen the arena that angry before. Even Coach Lowry seemed a bit put out by it in his intermission interview. It’s one thing to have bad calls turn a game, but Seattle sports fans have seen enough hosings in big games to have an elevated level of indigence when they happen. I just hope that the players know that it was the refs we were booing and not them. They played their guts out and earned the win. If anything, that game made me like the players more for having endured Seattle sports’ most frustrating rite of passage.
Those of you that attended the game last night should get a total ticket refund from the league!
What a horrible game mostly due to officiating. It’s would be easier to get 1st overall at this point than making the playoffs. Sell now, keep playing hard in games and don’t give up but it’s time to sell.
What are you selling and what do you think you are getting? Are you trying to be San Jose? We aren’t getting first round picks for any of our players, so we won’t even be San Jose. Not having Eberle and Gourde in the lineup is probably what has been hurting us. If you want to emulate a team, look at Dallas. They have a good mix of vets and young guys, compete hard and are exciting to watch every game, and they will probably contend for years. That said, I have no issues getting rid of Burakovsky. He’s just terrible any way you dice it. Sell him…if you can.
This roster hasn’t been built well, we’re not going to be better without looking hard at our top six. I don’t believe we can just keep kicking the can down the road hoping for magical results. Yes we probably have to get worse to get better, it’s a very difficult situation to improve a team when you’re at the cap needing better players… yes the caps going up but for everyone and competition for the top players will be fierce without extra cap space that we don’t have. We desperately need to clear up some space maybe get a good pick as we do it to be able to come back stronger in two to three years. Let’s be realistic, all those 32+ year old players are not part of our long term plans, we need some older vets to help the youth but on short term contracts or it doesn’t work.
Why do we have to desperately clear cap space? We’re going to have plenty of cap space, and you don’t need a lot of cap space when you gradually bring up younger players within your system. Basically we need to re-sign Kakko and Evans, and they aren’t going to command elite level compensation. Not yet, anyway. Shane has two years left on his ELC, and jury is still out on what he kind of contract he will have earned at that time. Hopefully a higher one, for our sake.
There is no guarantee a high pick is going to make your team better. There are plenty of examples of high picks not helping teams get better. It’s a dice roll. It could just as easily be someone already in our system who can improve your team, like Clark Caswell or Nathan Villeneuve. No one knows. It’s 100% speculation. Team building way more complicated than drafting an 18 year old.
Here’s an example of what I’m saying.
Dallas is considered a good hockey team. Most people would agree.
Dallas would tell you Mason Marchment is an important team contributor. Mason Marchment was undrafted, he is 29, and his cap hit is $4.5M.
Dallas would probably tell you Jamie Benn (35), Matt Duchene (34) and Evgenii Dadonov (35) are key to the success of their team.
They would probably tell you they are excited about their young players, Wyatt Johnston (drafted #23), Logan Stankoven (drafted #47), Mavrik Bourque (drafted #30) and 6’7″ 231 lb Swiss D-man Lian Bichsel (drafted #18).
Of course, they would probably add how excited they are about Miro Heiskanen, drafted 3rd overall in 2017. He’s the only player on their roster under 33 years old drafted in the top 5. Unforunately, he’s injured.
They would probably say a few good things about their head coach and his staff.
I’ve always thought Dallas was the comparison… draft and develop.
I’m confused about the rule regarding goals scored when there’s a delayed penalty. I always thought that if there was an infraction and then a goal was scored before the play was whistled down, that the penalty was erased. When did that change? If Oleksiak doesn’t go to the penalty box, Calgary likely doesn’t score that third goal, even with the unsuccessful challenge.
I was also wondering about that… but I forgot Calgary was on the PP… so the goal effectively ends the ongoing PP and then the minor by Oleksiak is a new penalty.
Thank you. I had forgotten about that scuffle a few minutes before that resulted in an extra minor to McCann. I saw it when I looked up the game log.
Tough game to watch. Officiating was absolutely awful. It all started with the OBVIOUS Prospisil boarding AND interference hit on Burky (pick one) in the first period, and Monty gets an interference for just trying to push Prospisil off of Burky. That sort of set the tone for the game. Prospisil shouldn’t even be playing in the league with his history of dirty hits and deliberately injuring other players.
On a positive note, that Kappo goal was awesome. Great pass by Schwartz (a guy Nino would probably like to “sell”) and phenomenal one-timer on the rush. Go Kraken!
I like Schwartz but at this point I’d almost say that nobody is untouchable aside from our talented young players and even then it depends on the offer.
Schwartz is 32 still playing very well on a team friendly contract with 2 years left, that said I don’t think he’s a player who we should consider resigning at age 34 to another contract unless it’s a one or two year contract and that’s unlikely. My guess is that he’d probably be looking for a 4 year deal to pad his retirement…. If he could fetch us a 1st round pick or an equivalent young player I’d move him but not for anything less.
Seattle G…. Everything Has a Price.