The Losing Streak Cynthia is in the books!! Seattle put together a strong third period and earned its first regulation win in a month. The last regulation win came Nov. 20 against Chicago.
Eeli Tolvanen and Chandler Stephenson each recorded two-point nights, with a goal and an assist. Stephenson extended his career-best point streak to eight games, with five goals and four assists during the run. The Kraken are 2-6 in that span, but this win offered a needed step forward.
Here are three takeaways.
Takeaway #1: Kraken on their heels in the first
Coming into the game, the Kraken were 1-9-1 in their previous 11 games. Facing a division rival and sitting seven points behind the Sharks and the final wild-card spot, urgency was expected. Instead, Seattle allowed four Grade A chances in the first five minutes.
Seattle did push back and outshot San Jose 17-12 in the period, but the overall play remained shaky. One bright spot was the penalty kill, which handled two minor penalties with ease. That momentum did not carry over, as the Sharks converted on their next powerplay in the second period on a goal from Adam Gaudette.
According to MoneyPuck, San Jose posted 1.61 expected goals in the first period compared to Seattle’s 0.80. It was a poor start, but the Kraken escaped the period tied 0-0.
Takeaway #2: Joey Daccord is a beast
The only reason the game remained scoreless through the first period was Daccord. He turned aside high-danger chances and consistently kept Seattle in the game. Daccord finished the night with 3.41 goals saved above expected.
One of his superpowers is puck handling. On Seattle’s lone powerplay, San Jose cleared the zone and headed off for a line change. Daccord recovered the puck and fired it to Freddy Gaudreau at the far blue line, creating a scoring chance that Yaroslav Askarov was able to stop.
Daccord closed the night with 35 saves, a .946 save percentage, and the win. Without his performance, this outcome would not have been possible. The defense struggled in the first two periods, but confidence in the goaltender allowed the Kraken to stay committed to the game plan.
Takeaway #3: Third-period response
After practice, captain Jordan Eberle said, “I look at [the 9 losses], I think we are tied or leading in the third period in like six of them.”
That trend nearly continued. Seattle entered the third tied 1-1, but the Sharks took the lead just 36 seconds in. Collin Graf picked off a Vince Dunn pass, put the puck on net, and watched his shot hit the post, then Daccord, before crossing the line.
Kraken fans braced for another third-period collapse. Instead, Seattle responded with two goals in a span of 2:32 to take a 3-2 lead. Neither goal was flashy. Both came from defensemen simply getting pucks through traffic.
Ryker Evans tied the game by holding the blue line and snapping a wrist shot on net. Ryan Lindgren followed with his first goal as a Kraken and the eventual game-winner, taking a pass from Stephenson and firing a wrist shot from the top of the circle.
Seattle tightened defensively over the final 15 minutes and slowed the game down. Stephenson added an empty-net goal to seal the 4-2 win and finally end Losing Streak Darren, I mean Cynthia.
Next up
This was not Seattle’s sharpest game during the current stretch, but it was effective. The Kraken kept the game close, leaned on strong goaltending, and capitalized in the third period. Improvements are still needed on the penalty kill and in defensive coverage to reduce pressure on Daccord.
The Kraken are off Sunday before continuing their California road trip. They face Anaheim on Monday and Los Angeles on Tuesday.
Blaiz Grubic
Blaiz Grubic is a contributor at Sound Of Hockey. A passionate hockey fan and player for over 30 years, Blaiz grew up in the Pacific Northwest and is an alumni of Washington State University (Go Cougs!). When he’s not playing, watching, or writing about hockey, he enjoys quality time with his wife and daughter or getting out on a golf course for a quick round. Follow @blaizg on BlueSky or X.
Yes!!!
Losing Streak Darren is over… and against the almighty Sharks no less.
Go Kraken!!!
Great way to ring in the post Marchment era. Go Kraken!
Eight game points streak for Stevenson. He is getting a lot of praise for his overall team play from Alison and the crew on the KHN. His critics will still nick pick to find reasons to hate no matter what he does mainly because of his controversial contract. They seem to be unable to just set that aside in order to get him any credit when credit is due and just move on. SMH…
Nick pick.
That’s Jolly Old St Nick Pick to you sir.
Ha-Ha Yeah I was the nitwit that wrote something without rechecking and sent it at 4 am being half a sleep from bed.
I certainly deserve the joking laughter.
On a positive note…
Go Kraken!!!9
Stephenson has clearly been the best offensive player on the team in December. Too bad it will be forgotten because of the losing streaks. I am just happy that Lambert gave him what appeared to me to be significant offensive zone time in this game, and he appeared to give Matty quite a few defensive zone draws as well. Can any stat heads confirm or refute that impression? I also noticed Stephenson in positive ways on the d-zone forecheck, particularly on the penalty kill. He made some heads-up clears.
Speaking of which, have special teams looked better since the system change, or what? Since they ditched the triangle and went with the box the PK has actually been not too shabby. The power play has improved as well, but that may be due more to guys just winning one-on-ones, eg. Jordan Eberle and Shane Wright in this game.
Sure, there was a lot of luck involved in the win, but the Sharks got their fair share of lucky bounces as well. Joey was like wall, and the slap shot goals were timely. They were due, though. It was more a regression to the statistical mean than it was the pure favor of the hockey gods.
Yes, I will do that. I’ll take a break for Christmas. 😁
I super happy about the win but oh man did we get completely dominated in our d-zone. Without Joey the Sharks could have easily scored 5+ goals. Also, what’s up with Dunn? Dude is coughing up the puck at the worst of times lately. He’s clearly up in his head these days so here’s to hoping that a few wins can clean up his game.
Typical Kraken win this season. One empty net goal. 3 more or less bizarre/lucky goals that certainly weren’t the result of some great hockey or anything. At least the losing streak is over.
Give credit where credit is due. Evans’ goal hit exactly the high-glove corner after taking careful aim–a goal-scorer’s goal. Lindgren’s goal was the direct result of a well-timed moving screen by Eeli Tolvanen who scored his own goal off a really good neutral zone play by him.
If you want to talk about fluky goals, San Jose’s goals were far greasier.
Regarding the Lindgren goal, the camera angle on the San Jose broadcast tells a different story than the angle shown on the Seattle broadcast. On the Seattle broadcast, it looks like Lindgren’s shot goes through Tolvanen’s moving screen which causes Askerov to lose sight of it, but the San Jose broadcast shows that, instead, the shot just barely clips the heel of the forechecking defender’s skate causing the puck to tumble in the air and take a slightly elevated angle which is the real reason that Askerov loses track of it. Maybe Tolvanen skating into view added to his confusion afterward, but the goal was indeed caused by a fluky bounce.
LOL. On behalf of The City of Seattle, I would like to apologize for this disappointing win. All hockey games should be won by the team that plays the best, all the time.
Okay, I am not the only one noticing Dunn looking completely out of sorts. He made some good plays, of course, but those d-zone turnovers stand out. I do not know why that is happening. It does not look like he is being lazy. Maybe you are right and he is just in his own head.
I agree there seems to be some big gaffs this year with Dunn turning the puck over at the worst time.
Being an puck moving defenseman, turnovers are part of his game. He leads the Kraken this year in turnovers. This is nothing new though and leads the Kraken all-time with 261 giveaways.
You gotta take the good with the bad.
With all due respect to Dunn and his team leading 46 giveaways this season, Marchment’s 4.76 is, by a fair margin, tops on the team per 60. I already don’t miss him.
Yep. We have a term in my family.
“Dunn and Dunner.”
This is the game I thought they would have had over the Flames.
We’ll take it.
Stephenson Has been playing so much better this season than last, yes he has those shifts where you’re wondering what he’s doing but overall I don’t hate his contract this season. I’m still not happy with it long term but if he keeps up this play he’s tradable when we need his ice time for younger players.
We would not have won this game without great goaltending and unfortunately that’s the story all season. It’s nice to see a win but what we have doing is not sustainable during the wins and the losses are really what this team is.
I’d like to add, it was very nice watching a game without Marchment.
I’m going to go back to a former post I made a while back questioning why they were playing him so much and wondering if it was just to try and boost his value for trade purposes. Was it worth the ice time he was given and the PP time to have possibly bumped his value from a third to a second if it even did that?
Another thing I’ve been thinking about, why did the Blue Jackets even want Marchment. Without knowing a ton about their team it seems like they are just a poor to middling organization that adding Marchment isn’t going to help them in any meaningful way whatsoever. Maybe they feel he’s worth adding for deadline trading purposes and they are thinking very short term?
Our board work needs to improve. At times we were good but other times shows why we had a bad losing streak.. Do we name losing streaks like we do for Tropical storms? Is the next going to be DUNN. It seems he is a turnover master as of late. We can’t use injuries as an excuse. I like 51’s play as of late, paired with kakko, goes to the front of the net and most others do not. Why? Board work. Our small size issues show up there.
Meyers and Kartye have both been doing pretty well at the boards – particularly when they are out there together and can tag team. It’s difficult to notice when they’re hardly getting any minutes, though. Nyman has shown some good potential on the wall and getting comfortable throwing his weight around – he’s inconsistent, but he seems to be getting the message that he needs to do more than shoot in order to stay in the lineup.
He’s a poor skater and isn’t being used properly. He has potential to be a fantastic scorer even with his poor skating ability but his roll that LL is trying to shoe him into doesn’t play to his offensive ability and highlights his poor skating. I’m obviously talking about Nyman.
I agree that I wish they could find more ways to showcase his shot, but I think there’s only so many ways you can hide poor skating.
At this point he’s probably more comparable to Laine (below average skating) than Ovechkin (explosive, but defensive effort has been a question through his career) in that regards. Any coach that prioritizes defense is going to limit his minutes. Problem is, with this roster, defense has to be the emphasis if they want to be competitive. To my eye that’s why Nyman seemed to do better under Bylsma, but the team as a whole had long stretches where they didn’t seem competitive at all.
Unfortunately LL’s responsibility is to win games, not necessarily develop players. If the org wants the youth to develop than JB needs to force issue by adjusting the roster to make that the case.