They did it for Monty.
On an emotional day and night in which Brandon Montour returned from a four-game hiatus that was due to the tragic passing of his older brother, Cameron, the Seattle Kraken pulled out an impressive 3-2 win over the always-dangerous Edmonton Oilers.
“He’s a brother. I mean, anytime someone goes through something like that, it’s extremely hard,” Jordan Eberle said, his voice cracking slightly. “Just for him to be out here tonight and battling with us, it just shows his compassion and the level that he has… You just try to be there as much as you can for him.”
Meanwhile, the first game back after a long road trip is traditionally viewed as a difficult one for the home team, but Seattle was ready for the challenge. Although Edmonton pushed hard and spent long stretches in the offensive zone during the third period, the Kraken bent but didn’t break, sticking to their structure and snagging a few opportunistic goals.
In the end, Joey Daccord delivered an outstanding performance, Eberle scored two crucial goals, and the fourth line chipped in with some magic.
Here are Three Takeaways from a 3-2 Kraken win over the Edmonton Oilers.
Takeaway #1: An emotional day
Montour took the ice with the Kraken at Saturday’s morning skate for the first time since the team had announced he would be leaving the recent road trip to deal with a personal matter.
While the team practiced, word came that Montour planned to address the media about his absence. Following the skate, he stood at his stall and—unprompted—spoke through tears about the devastating loss of his brother after a long and painful battle with ALS.
“So, my older brother’s been dealing with ALS for three, four years now, and it was a rough week,” Montour managed to say. “I’m very proud and very happy to be his brother. He’s somebody that I’ve looked up to since, obviously, Day 1. [He was] a great son, brother, best friend, father. He’s got two baby girls.
“He battled hard. It puts everything in perspective with the highs that I’ve had in the last couple years with winning and hockey and having babies and creating my own family. [All that time], he was at home battling. Right until Monday when it happened, he was smiling, and he was ready.”
An extremely emotional Brandon Montour discusses losing his older brother Cameron this past week after a long fight with ALS. #SeaKraken pic.twitter.com/Gau614Xm96
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 25, 2025
It was one of those “bigger than sports” moments—a reminder that the professional athletes we admire are humans who sometimes face unimaginable challenges away from the rink. In the case of Montour, who is so affable and carries such a big personality, it’s hard to imagine the grief he’s managed through privately for years.
One thing we often hear from athletes who’ve endured emotional trauma is that returning to competition provides an outlet—a way to take their minds off what’s happened.
“It’s important to have him back, not only as a player, but certainly as a leader,” head coach Lane Lambert said Saturday morning. “And it’s important for him to get back into the groove of the game and maybe take his mind off a little bit of the outside part of it. But certainly, we feel for him, we’ve supported, and we’ll continue to support.”
Just as you wouldn’t have known Montour was carrying such a burden behind the scenes, you wouldn’t have known from watching him play Saturday that he’d just experienced one of the hardest weeks of his life. He looked like his old self—flying around, jumping up in the play, driving offense, and finishing with three shots on goal and a plus-one rating in 23:39 of ice time.
“In my mind, [Montour] didn’t miss a beat,” Lambert said. “Full credit to him for what he’s doing and how he played, and obviously, we’re all with him and feeling for him.”
Takeaway #2: Goals off rushes
Lane Lambert has placed plenty of emphasis this season on creating net-front traffic, and Seattle has found success scoring those gritty goals in tight. But that wasn’t how the Kraken scored their three goals Saturday against a leaky Stuart Skinner.
Instead, all three goals came off the rush—two from 2-on-1’s and one from a breakaway.
In a way, this game represented a “new way to win” for the 2025-26 Kraken, who turned defense into offense (another Lambert hallmark) on all three tallies.
Eberle opened the scoring early after Berkly Catton poked the puck past an over-aggressive Evan Bouchard, springing his linemates. Beniers slowed at the blue line and sauced a perfect pass. Eberle caught it and ripped it past Skinner, who looked oddly off balance.
O CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN! 🫡 🚨
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 26, 2025
2-on-1 after Vince Dunn dumped Connor McDavid on his tuchus.
Matty Beniers hits Jordan Eberle, and Stuart Skinner moves politely out of the way.
1-0 #SeaKraken. pic.twitter.com/AzLsBTdr1Z
In the second period, the fourth line contributed after an outstanding defensive sequence led to another 2-on-1 for Tye Kartye and Ryan Winterton. Winterton made a phenomenal pass to Kartye, and Skinner did the Kraken another favor by getting himself caught down on the ice and ineffectively diving for the puck.
KARTYE PARTYE! 🚨
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 26, 2025
At the end of a long shift in the defensive zone, Ryan Winterton makes an outstanding pass to Tye Kartye.
Skinner inexplicably dives for it and misses.
2-0 #SeaKraken pic.twitter.com/GxEUWLDl7W
“I was calling for it, but that was an unreal pass from [Winterton]. Made it pretty easy for me,” Kartye said.
Eberle’s second of the night pushed Seattle’s lead to 3-1 at 12:11 of the third, when Bouchard (who also scored a power-play goal) again misplayed the puck at the offensive blue line. He whiffed trying to swat it deeper, sending it straight to Beniers, who sent Eberle on a breakaway. Eberle snapped it over Skinner’s shoulder for what proved to be the game-winning goal.
O CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN AGAIN! 🫡 🚨
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 26, 2025
Bouchard whiffs on a puck at the blue line, and Beniers sends Eberle on a breakaway. He goes BarrDown Studios™️ for his second of the game.
3-1 #SeaKraken pic.twitter.com/vTgMuJXE8k
Takeaway #3: Another outstanding night for Joey
When Daccord earned his 32-save shutout Thursday in Winnipeg, I wrote that he didn’t need to be spectacular because the Kraken defended so well in front of him. Seattle again defended well Saturday, but against the supremely talented Oilers, chances are inevitable.
Daccord was brilliant, yielding only a Bouchard power-play blast and a Darnell Nurse deflection goal.
“Joey’s been outstanding,” Eberle said. “I think there’s nights where he’s had to make some big saves, and tonight was no different. To get wins, you need good goaltending, and obviously, he’s been there.”
Daccord stopped 31 shots, many of them in the “10-bell” category, while Skinner at the other end occasionally looked like he was ducking out of the way. I can’t believe the Oilers didn’t upgrade their goalie situation this offseason.
Anyway, it was an excellent performance from Daccord and a massive win for the Kraken, who improved to 5-2-2 on the season.
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.
1. Nice win for Monty. Anyone know how many other First Nations’ players there are in the NHL now?
2. Good start to the season, as the Lambert philosophy seems to have been taken on board, which was one of the two metrics for a successful season I described before. The thing is though, he is doing what his predecessors have done and over-playing Joey. The wheels will fall off if this keeps up. He has to start using the other two goalies more regularly to keep it going.
3. The most refreshing thing if you look around the league is all the usual non-contenders who are in or near playoff contention. Montreal, Detroit, Pittsburgh(!), Philly, Buffalo, Ottawa, Utah, Anaheim, Chicago(!), Nashville, and the Kraken. Hope that can continue all season long and we get lots of new playoff teams.
4. That Tampa Bay 1R picks starting to look better by the day. Too bad it is top-10 protected. I know if it gets pushed to next season the Kraken also get a 3R pick but I assume it then becomes an unprotected 1R pick in 2027. I wonder if the Lightning finished like 8-10th from the bottom this season, would Tampa let it go or push it to next season? Maybe best they are 11th form bottom.
To answer your question re: First Nations NHL players, according to a database I found (link below), there are currently five indigenous/First Nations players in the NHL: Monty, Ethan Bear, Connor Dewar, Travis Hamonic, and Zach Whitecloud. There are also a handful of others with NHL experience currently plying their trade in the AHL. Among them, I discovered, is former Kraken player and expansion pick Kole Lind. Apparently he is of Métis descent, which makes him the first individual of indigenous descent to ever play for the Seattle Kraken.
Indigenous Players Database: https://sihrhockey.org/2020/indigenous/players.cfm
I understand the trepidation with overplaying Daccord, but the Kraken have 2 games this coming week, plus I have very little faith that any goalie but Daccord wins that game last night. My guess is the coaching staff feels the same way. It’s a balance, but with the upcoming schedule being fairly light, I rather they get him into a groove and bank some points.
Joey has two starts in the last three days. Those are the only two starts he’s going to have over seven days. I think – I certainly hope – an NHL No.1 can handle that workload.
Also watching the Oilers just put Skinner back in net this year and hope that he’s good enough is not only insane, it makes me really appreciate Joey. Since the ‘23-24 season, Joey is THIRD in the NHL in GSAX at both even strength and overall behind only Hellebuyck and Stolarz. We have an elite goalie and we really need to appreciate it!
I wasn’t able to go to the game last night so I got the privilege of catching the third period Hockey Night In Canada broadcast… and they had a typical media take.
‘Seattle’s goaltending sure has improved over last season’… Joey is the same goalie he was last season and he’s the same goalie he’s been ever since taking over the net three weeks before he shut out Vegas in the Winter Classic.
If Daccord played in a Canadian market he’d be talked about nonstop as a Vezina candidate. Considering Joey has 46 more starts than Stolarz over that stretch, I think there’s still some “wait and see” for the guy in Toronto.
Speaking of usage… didn’t the Kraken try evening out the load at the beginning of last season? I don’t think we have to imagine here, we can just look at that start to know what “getting Joey some rest” means. I get the idea, but it seems to me a bit like dying from thirst with half a canteen of water left because you might need it later. The Kraken need wins right now.
Due to the Olympocs and more games in a shorter time frame, ub ny opiniion, makes having 2 backups a great decision. Grabbing point early is always a good thing.
“… I assume it then becomes an unprotected 1R pick in 2027.”
Stupid Ron Francis also got their 2027 first in that trade. It becomes an unprotected 2028 first and third.
A typical 1A goalie starts 2/3 games and Joeys usage is only modestly above that now. The kraken have 5 of the next 7 days off, that’s plenty of time for an elite athlete to recover, particularly on a home stand. The schedule crunch on road trips in mid-November and January in particular are where strategic back up use will be of importance but for now I see no problems with using Joey this way, at this point in the season. As the season progresses we will likely see those numbers return closer to 60% usage.
For comparison Hellebuyck has started 6 of 8 games for Winnipeg. In the NHL, probably more than any other sport, it’s extremely important to get off to a fast start.
I had thought that Montour was just having a baby or something. That is horrible. All the best, Monty. It is kind of tough to feel properly happy about the win after hearing that, but it was a great win and worthy of note.
Beniers, Eberle, and Catton were outstanding. Matty gave McDavid fits with his defensive zone checking and ultimately managed to keep him from making dangerous offensive plays for the most part. That is no mean feat. He even had a few really good offensive looks the other way. Eberle gets up for Oilers games, and he was canny enough to always be in the right place to exploit the flaws built into the Oilers’ scheme. He was so close to getting that hatty. And who knew that Catton could forecheck like that? Nineteen year-olds can’t do that. Didn’t he get the memo?
Kudos to the defensemen yet again and to Vince Dunn and Adam Larsson in particular. That pairing kept play almost exclusively to the outside of the slot and away from Daccord all night. Again, against the Oilers that is no mean feat. When the defense can do that, like Anthony Stolarz said, it’s like playing catch for Daccord, not to diminish Daccord’s awesome performance. And we all know that the last shot of the game would have been a goal if Dunn had not blocked it. I am sure that hurt like hell, but I hope the win that it earned him feels good enough to diminish the pain.
I saw this mentioned on another site – McDavid going without an official shot on the scoresheet happens approximately twice per season, so not a trivial feat to neutralize him. Dunn’s stiff-arm knockdown was sweet, too.
Another great overall team played game against again a high quality team.
Glad Hockey Night in Canada switched on after whatever happened with the KHN.
Go Kraken!!!
Go Kraken!!!
Connor Who?
Well, we’re back in season 2 where the national media minds have no idea what to make of Seattle, because having a little depth and 19 guys organized into a team is apparently really confusing. I watched the CBC broadcast last night, and in the pregame round table after exhausting the discussion about the Oilers, McDavid and Draisaitl, someone accidentally uttered the word “Seattle”, the camera panned to Friedman, and basically all he had to say was “Seattle doesn’t have a star.”
Maybe this is a good time to go out and get an elite star like Kaprizov, because despite The Wild being 3-5-1 and being in the basement of their division, he has 11 pts in 9 games!!!
Maybe someday we’ll get there. Go Kraken!
Shhhh… Don’t tell anyone!
Lambert is building something special with this group this year.
Eberle last night said he believes this team has another level it hasn’t reached yet.
Time for the doubters to hop on the Kraken bandwagon or they may miss one incredible ride!
The one worthwhile take I’ve heard out of the national media about the Kraken so far this season was, of all places, out of the Athletic.
On the Athletic Hockey Show podcast titled “Is Another ‘Tankathon’ Already On In Buffalo’ from a week and a half ago, Frank Corrado (former NHL player) gives a well considered take on the Seattle Kraken. What’s most impressive about it is he actually watched the Kraken play the Canadiens – a game they lost. He goes into all of it… the change in structure, the players they’ve brought in, the difference between this team and last year, the goaltending and just how good Joey is.
Seriously, this guy, who actually has some idea of what he’s talking about as opposed to some guy on his couch (me), watched one game and was able to actually do a breakdown on just maybe what the Kraken are… as opposed to a bunch of media narratives parroting what they’ve heard from other folks who also haven’t watched the Kraken and wouldn’t know what to look for anyway.
If you have access, it’s worth a listen just after the 30 minute mark of the show.
Absolutely agree, I listened to that too. I love Frank (and Mcindoe, though he is very ignorant of most things outside of Canada and the big US markets) so that’s the one podcast of theirs I listen to every week. He did mention that having a healthy Eberle, Dunn, and McCann (ehem) would make a big difference. Hopefully Jared returns soon…
I think the postgame discussion on CBC was more nuanced than just “Seattle doesn’t have a star player”. They complimented how Seattle was playing as a team, and mentioned that was how they beat Colorado in the playoffs. Then they transitioned via a mention of Dunn and Schwartz and the cup-winning Blues team they were on and that it didn’t really have a headline player but they won as a team, which shows that it’s possible to do, but more difficult.
Totally agree. He’s a top 5-10 goalie in the league if not higher but gets none of the recognition. I don’t really need him to get the recognition, but I think Seattle fans really ought to appreciate it. You can have a really awesome team but without a good goalie, you have no chance. Or, you can be a scrappy decent team that could’ve been a bubble team with a good goalie, but instead you had an awful goalie with a historically bad season and the team ended up with the #4 pick. I’m talking about the inaugural Kraken season, of course.
I don’t want to encourage betting but I’d be tempted to put a few dollars on Daccord. Not sure you could find a better bet based on the odds. If the kraken do make the playoff it’s sure to be considered.
As of late October 2025, Seattle Kraken goaltender Joey Daccord has been given longshot odds to win the Vezina Trophy for the 2025-26 NHL season. While his exact ranking varies by sportsbook, he is generally listed with odds of around +5500 to +6000.
$20 could make you $1200….
I’m not a fan of the proliferation of gambling as a norm. I do, however, appreciate the information wagering markets convey about expectations.
The Kraken have been underdogs, according to MoneyPuck, in every game this season with the exception of opening night where they were slight favorites over the Ducks.
Something else I just noticed…right after the Kartye goal, you can see Ryan Nugent-Hopkins yell with frustration in the direction of the goalie. Maybe he was angry at himself cause he made an idiotic and lazy play along the boards before Winterton just skated right by him, but it looked like it was directed at Skinner (or maybe Henrique?). Skinner didn’t look awesome on that play, but RNH had no right to be mad at anyone but himself. Bad vibes in EDM, it seems.
The celebration for that goal is one of the most joyous I’ve seen.