Site icon Sound Of Hockey

Three Takeaways – Kraken drop fifth straight in painful 4-3 loss to Red Wings

Darren Brown

After getting pounded into oblivion in Edmonton on Thursday, the Kraken played a far more respectable contest on Saturday but still came away with zero standings points, losing 4-3 at home to the Detroit Red Wings in painful fashion.

Seattle led 3-2 with a minute left in the second period, but a miscue in the offensive zone between Ryker Evans and Matty Beniers (Evans made a bad pinch, and Beniers didn’t immediately drop back to cover for him) led to a 2-on-1. James van Riemsdyk scored and sent the game to the third period tied 3-3, a goal you just knew would end up haunting the Kraken.

Patrick Kane sent the MANY Red Wings fans in attendance home happy with a vintage Kane game-winning goal at 17:31 of the third period, another crushing blow to the psyche of the Kraken, who have now lost five straight (0-4-1).

“I thought it was a good game. I thought our guys competed,” Kraken coach Lane Lambert said. “We played hard, and it was a game, I guess you could say, that could have went either way. We had plenty of chances, we threw plenty of pucks at the net. We’ve been doing that a lot better lately. I was real happy with our compete level tonight.”

Here are Three Takeaways from a 4-3 Kraken loss to the Red Wings.

Takeaway #1: Patrick Kane game-winner

There’s something about a late Patrick Kane game-winner that makes long-time hockey fans shudder. While Kane has remained a productive player even as he’s gotten into his later playing years, he’s no longer the “Showtime” version of Kane that once struck absolute fear into every opponent.

But then—as he has done so many times in his career—he shows that critical little flash at exactly the right moment and drives a stake into your heart, reminding you that he still has some of that Showtime razzle dazzle that has made him one of the best American-born players of all time.

Off a rush in which the Kraken had numbers back (but one of the two defenders was Jared McCann skating backward because Vince Dunn had jumped up in the offensive zone), Kane slowed down slightly to create a gap between himself and Adam Larsson. Alex DeBrincat made easy work of McCann and put it onto Kane’s stick at the top of the slot. Kane floated a wrist shot under Larsson’s stick and over Joey Daccord’s glove for his 83rd career game-winning goal, tied for third-most among U.S.-born players.

“I coughed it up in the [defensive] zone right before that,” Kane said with a laugh. “But we did a good job defensively, and ‘Cat’ got the puck and skated it up the ice, kind of drew a couple guys to him. [Andrew Copp was] driving the net. That’s a huge part of the play… I tried to find a pocket, got the puck, and at that point you’re just trying to shoot it through the defenseman and get it on net.”

4-3. 2:29 left. Stake in the hearts of Kraken fans. Showtime. Puke.

Takeaway #2: Again, the PK

I’m getting sick of talking about the PK (and special teams in general), but it was a factor again in this game and has now given up a goal on seven of the team’s last eight tries. It’s ranked 32nd in the NHL at an abysmal 64.8 percent, five percentage points behind the 31st-ranked Ottawa Senators.

In this game, the Kraken took only one penalty, at 5:20 of the first period, when Berkly Catton reached one too many times with his stick on Elmer Soderblom. After getting away with the first couple attempts, the referee finally put his arm up when Catton went back to the well.

During the ensuing power play, Moritz Seider loudly clanked a shot off the post about five seconds into the advantage, an ominous bell for what was to come. Detroit had several other chances to score, including a bizarre rush where three Red Wings got behind the Kraken defenders, forcing Daccord to slide across and make a big save on Lucas Raymond.

“There’s a variation of things contributing to it,” Lambert said of the team’s PK struggles. “It starts face-off-wise, we’re not winning enough face-offs, so we pretty much start every penalty kill on our heels, as opposed to getting the pucks down [into the other end]. It starts there, but we certainly haven’t done a very good job, and we know this. And something’s got to be done about it, and there’s only one way to go.”

Ironically, Seattle almost survived this PK and, on paper, actually won the face-off 24 seconds before Emmitt Finnie one-timed Nate Danielson’s pass into an open net. Off the draw, Freddy Gaudreau pulled the puck back, but Josh Mahura was a hair too late getting to it. Detroit regained possession and reset.

But between that moment and when the goal was scored, the Kraken had time to settle into their formation and still got pulled apart and scored on in an easy-looking manner. That’s why I think the formation stinks.

I wrote about it briefly in the last Three Takeaways as well, but I’ve never liked the “wedge plus one” PK. It’s supposed to be an aggressive way to kill penalties, but it’s too complicated. Players have to time rotations perfectly, and if the opposing defenseman can pull the “plus one” far enough out and still make a pass, then everything stretches, and seams become wide open.

Let’s look at this goal more carefully. Four seconds before the goal, Seattle is in formation. Ryker Evans, Mahura, and Eeli Tolvanen form the three-man wedge, while Gaudreau is the “plus one,” tasked with chasing the defenseman and disrupting passes high in the zone. Eventually, Gaudreau and Tolvanen will rotate depending on where the puck goes and how far Gaudreau is pulled, but that doesn’t need to happen here.

All Axel Sandin-Pellikka (No. 44) has to do is walk the blue line a few steps and draw Gaudreau toward him. The moment he does that, Detroit effectively turns the advantage into a 4-on-3, an even more dangerous situation than a 5-on-4. Here, Sandin-Pellikka has just moved from one side of the digital WaFd Bank ad to the other, but look how much more ice opens up between Gaudreau and Tolvanen.

Sandin-Pellikka gets the puck to Danielson on the left side, and Danielson now has the option to shoot or thread a pass through a wide-open seam.

He chooses the wide-open seam, and Finnie rips it home.

Here’s the full sequence from face-off to goal.

https://soundofhockey.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Screen-Recording-2025-12-07-at-9.19.17-AM.mov

Looks pretty easy, doesn’t it?

This, my friends, is why I’m not a fan of the wedge plus one. Opponents have clearly figured out how to exploit Seattle’s version of it. It’s time to change things up.

Takeaway #3: Joey is struggling right now

I’m running long here, but briefly: Daccord has not had his best stuff of late. He was incredible in that 1-0 shootout loss to the New York Islanders that started this five-game losing streak on Nov. 23, but since then, his save percentages have been .857, .840, .643, and .840.

Against Detroit, he made some great saves, including a 10-beller against DeBrincat in the second, but I also thought he was fighting the puck early on. When he’s making saves, it doesn’t seem to be hitting him exactly where he expects it to, and even on that power-play goal above, he’s a hair slow in reacting to the pass from Danielson, even though Danielson never shows that he’s going to shoot.

While he was ok in this game, we haven’t recently seen the dominant version of Daccord that helped get Seattle into a playoff spot over the season’s first two months.

I didn’t ask Lambert his reasoning for going back to Daccord after he was pulled in Edmonton, but my assumption is that he wanted to give him a chance to bounce back. Now, I’m convinced Daccord really needs a night or two off.

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.

Read more from Darren
Exit mobile version