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Three Takeaways – Jared McCann has four-point night, Kraken beat Capitals 5-1

Darren Brown

Jared McCann

What a night for the Seattle Kraken’s first line, which produced nearly all the offense in a 5-1 drubbing of a reeling Washington Capitals team.

Seattle got off on a better foot than it has in recent games, going through the first period tied 0-0, then rode Jared McCann’s impressive night to a convincing victory.

“They had an outstanding game,” coach Lane Lambert said of Seattle’s first line. “And it’s very important to have those guys do that. And we look forward to more of that.”

McCann finished with two goals and two assists, Matty Beniers and Jordan Eberle each had a goal and an assist, and Philipp Grubauer was solid again (when he had to be), stopping 19 shots.

Here are Three Takeaways from a 5-1 Kraken win over the Capitals.

Takeaway 1: Better start

After going 10 straight games giving up a goal in the first 10 minutes, it was refreshing to see Seattle get through the opening frame with a 0-0 tie. There were a couple of hairy moments in that first period, including a Jacob Chychrun shot that slid behind Grubauer but missed wide of the far post, and another chance in which Vince Dunn stepped in front of an open net to save a sure goal.

Aside from those two scares, Seattle controlled almost the entire period and came away with a 13-4 shots-on-goal advantage and a clean slate heading to the second.

“We’ve addressed [our starts]. We’ve talked about it many times,” Eberle said. “I mean, obviously we know the stats on giving up the first goal. I mean, just a collective mindset of being ready, and that just means, maybe getting it in deep and trying to establish a forecheck. You’re not going to score the first goal every game, that’s the reality of this league. It’s a good league, other teams are good, but you can try and— especially at home, put your will and establish your game early. So good start tonight and [we’ve got to] keep it going.”

Seattle then got on the board with a power-play goal early in the second period, and things got on the rails quickly.

Takeaway 2: Jared McCann gets robbed of the hat trick

It was McCann who opened the scoring, converting on the power play to make it 1-0 at 1:15 of the second period by one-timing Eberle’s pass from the top of the right circle against the grain and past Logan Thompson.

He followed that up with his second of the game at 10:09, cleaning up a Beniers rebound that landed right on his stick with a yawning cage in front of him.

“On the first one, Ebs found me through the slot there,” McCann said. “I just tried to get it on net as quick as possible, and kind of— I didn’t get all of it, but it was a good-placed shot, I guess. And the second one there, I just tried to battle my way to the net, and it kind of kicked off the pad there, right to me, backdoor.”

From there—once McCann officially landed on hat-trick watch—things started to get weird. First, with a chance at a natural hat trick, he rang a shot hard off the left post, which Eberle swept into the net to make it 3-0 at 17:54 of the second. There went the natty hatty.

Things got really weird early in the final period, when McCann appeared to score his third goal, making it 4-0 at 1:27. As he celebrated, hats rained down onto the ice. Only after every fan who wanted to throw a hat had done so did the officials make it clear that they were considering wiping the goal off the board.

“The linesman called the high-sticking penalty, and when a linesman sees a high stick, he can’t blow it down right away,” coach Lane Lambert said. “So the play went on for quite a while, obviously, and then they reviewed it, and that was the rule, and that’s the way it goes. So, we couldn’t change it. We just had to buckle down and get through it.”

Replay showed that Matty Beniers had clipped Justin Sourdif nearly a full minute before McCann summoned the barrage of hats from the crowd. The linesman properly reported the penalty at the next stoppage, which just so happened be McCann’s goal.

“I’ve never seen— I didn’t even know that was an option,” Eberle said, dumbfounded. “I’ve never seen that. I mean, obviously, massive momentum swing when you get the fourth and put them away, and they take it away, give you a four-minute penalty.”

Added McCann: “I just feel bad for people who threw their hats on the ice, to be honest.”

The officials ultimately got it right, but it was a bizarre circumstance. Alex Ovechkin capitalized on the four-minute power play with career goal No. 919, briefly giving the Capitals a pulse.

Credit to the Kraken for sticking with it, though, killing off the remainder of that penalty and then adding goals from Beniers and Ryker Evans down the stretch to put the game away.

Takeaway 3: Melanson’s first NHL fight

The legend of Jacob Melanson continued to grow Tuesday. He delivered seven more hits and is now averaging just under five hits per game in his brief NHL career. He also drove hard to the net and was the target of a Ryker Evans pass that caromed in off Tom Wilson.

But he brought the crowd to its feet one last time late in the game after Brandon Duhaime wrestled him to the ice in the corner and then laid on him. When the two finally got up, Melanson gave Duhaime a shot, and they jostled all the way up the ice. Once Duhaime cross-checked Melanson up high, the gloves finally came off.

It was one of those fights you could see coming from a mile away. What I loved about it is that Melanson is clearly trying to play a physical game at all times without putting his team at a disadvantage. He got some licks in on Duhaime but tried several times to skate away. When he finally accepted the fight, Duhaime ended up with the extra penalty.

How can you not love this kid?

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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