…And just like that, the Seattle Kraken have vaulted into third place in the Pacific Division. It’s wild to think that coming into Thursday’s game, the Kraken (24-19-9) and the Toronto Maple Leafs (24-20-9) had nearly identical records and the same number of standings points. Yet Seattle entered the night right on the cusp of re-entering the playoff picture—which they did, thanks to their win and some coinciding losses around the division—while the Maple Leafs have all but packed it in and appear ready to go into seller mode.
That’s how big the gap is right now between the Eastern and Western Conferences. Now sitting at 59 points, Seattle jumped over Los Angeles, San Jose, and Anaheim to move into the all-important third spot in the Pacific Division. Meanwhile, the Maple Leafs—at 57 points—slid to last place in the Atlantic, a whopping 10 points out of the final Wild Card position.
The jump up the standings came thanks to a solid 5-2 Kraken win over Toronto, a game in which Shane Wright scored twice, Brandon Montour and Jared McCann each had a goal and an assist, and Matty Beniers set a franchise record with his 10th goal in a single month. It also helps that Seattle has now won four of its last five games.
“We’re dialed into playing the right way,” coach Lane Lambert said. “It’s not always perfect, but when you try and play the right way, I’ve said it all year long, often times you end up on the right side of it, and you give yourself a good chance to win. And that’s what we’ve been doing lately, so credit to our guys.”
Here are Three Takeaways.
Takeaway 1: Shane Wright night
We saw last season that when Shane Wright starts putting the puck in the net, his game looks different. His confidence seems to balloon with production, perhaps because he starts believing in his shot and no longer hesitates to show off his quick release.
Wright’s two-goal night against Toronto snapped a 12-game goalless drought and gave him his eighth and ninth tallies of the season.
The first came off a simple play by Jaden Schwartz, who sent the puck toward the net from distance and created a juicy rebound off Anthony Stolarz’s pad. Wright jumped on it and chipped it home at 6:23 of the second period to restore a 2-1 lead after Nicholas Robertson had tied the game late in the first.
WRIGHT AS RAIN! ☔️ 🚨
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) January 30, 2026
Schwartz returns to the game and creates a rebound for Shane Wright, who goes BarrDown Studios™️.
2-1 #SeaKraken pic.twitter.com/d9BIyVBjZF
His second goal was even more critical—and it was a beauty. Wright was whistled for a questionable holding penalty at 4:57 of the third, and Morgan Rielly scored on the ensuing power play to cut Seattle’s lead from 3-1 to 3-2. (Thankfully, Montour had added an insurance goal earlier in the period off a fantastic rush by Freddy Gaudreau.)
If Wright felt any guilt over the soft call, he wasted no time making up for it. The Kraken were pressuring on the forecheck when Montour read Matias Maccelli’s breakout pass, disrupting the outlet and nudging the puck into open ice for Wright. Wright skated into it, rotated his body into shooting position at the top of the right circle, and snapped a perfect shot into the top-right corner.
WRIGHT AS RAIN x ✌️! ☔️ 🚨 🚨
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) January 30, 2026
It's going to take a LOT to get Shane Wright out of Seattle. His second of the night is a snipe. 🎯
4-2 #SeaKraken pic.twitter.com/drsgbWMr11
“He can shoot, and it was very evident [tonight],” Lambert said. “I liked his first goal when he went to the net. And that was a huge goal for us when he came off the wall there [in the third]. He’s had opportunities, he’s hit posts, he’s hit cross bars. He finally got rewarded tonight for that one.”
Added Wright: “The coaches always tell me to shoot a little more. I think I can always put a few more pucks on net. And, yeah, nice to [get a couple tonight].”
Now we’ll see if the two-goal night sparks something bigger. It took Wright a long time to really get rolling last season, but once he did, he became one of Seattle’s best players down the stretch.
Takeaway 2: First line still clicking
The top line delivered again Thursday, with Matty Beniers opening the scoring on Seattle’s first shot of the game and Jared McCann sealing it with an empty-netter late in the third.
On the opening goal, McCann found Beniers slicing through a leaky Toronto defense just a minute into the contest. Beniers glided down the slot unmolested and snapped a shot that hit Stolarz’s left pad before popping into the net.
MATTY MAGIC! 🚨
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) January 30, 2026
Beniers gives the #SeaKraken an early 1-0 lead and sets a new franchise record for goals in a month.
The top line keeps clicking. pic.twitter.com/yd115atKii
The goal gave Beniers his 10th of January, setting a new franchise record for most goals in a single month. The previous mark of nine, held by Jordan Eberle, dates back to November of the inaugural season. It’s worth noting that the Kraken have played 16 games this month, while Eberle’s nine-goal stretch came in just 13.
BUT…
Beniers is absolutely rolling right now. Lambert has been praising the work Beniers has put in to improve his offensive game, and he echoed those sentiments again Thursday.
“I just continue to talk about the fact of his evolvement since the beginning of the year, offensively,” Lambert said. “Again, Chris Taylor and Justin Rai have done a great job of working with him on offensive concepts, putting himself in position to— whether it be spacing or whatever. The goal he scored tonight, he found that late spacing, so to speak.
“He did a real good job of driving to the net, and McCann made a great play. So I think he’s being rewarded for his efforts, but also, there’s a lot of good philosophies that have come out of our coaching department, from that standpoint, and not from me.”
Meanwhile, McCann is right on Beniers’ heels with nine goals in the month. He followed his four-point night Tuesday with another two-point effort against Toronto and now has nine points in his last five games.
This top trio looks dangerous right now.
Takeaway 3: Schwartz recovers, but Catton leaves
There were two separate injuries to Kraken forwards in the first period. First, Jaden Schwartz went knee-on-knee with Nicolas Roy, appearing to hurt the same knee that kept him out for more than a month.
I fully expected the Kraken to announce Schwartz was done for the night—and perhaps longer—but instead, he returned to the Seattle bench a few minutes later and immediately resumed playing. He did limp back to the dressing room again late in the period, but he was back for the second and helped create Wright’s first goal.
Oh, boy. Jaden Schwartz goes knee-on-knee with Nic Roy and needs help down the tunnel.
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) January 30, 2026
That looked bad. #SeaKraken pic.twitter.com/zXvn3dr4Qm
“I can’t say enough about [Schwartz’s performance], actually,” Lambert said. “There was a point in time when we were down to 10 forwards. I think that Jaden showed us what veteran leadership and a guy who’s been around the game a long time can do. He knew what position and what situation we were in, and he came back.”
The reason Seattle was briefly down to 10 forwards was that while Schwartz was trying to shake off the injury, Berkly Catton was leveled at the Toronto blue line by Oliver Ekman-Larsson at 12:04 of the first. The 20-year-old forward stayed down for a moment before eventually gathering his belongings and exiting the game.
To be clear, I don’t think Ekman-Larsson intended to deliver a head shot. Catton leaned in and made contact face-first with Ekman-Larsson’s shoulder. That said, I still believe there needs to be an immediate response from the Kraken. Accidental or not, teams shouldn’t be able to lay a finger on No. 27.
There wasn’t much of a response beyond Jacob Melanson hitting Ekman-Larsson in the second period and exchanging a few words with him.
The players didn’t seem particularly heated about the hit after the game.
“I wanted to obviously make sure ‘Cats’ was good,” Montour said. “It wasn’t necessarily one that I’m probably going to jump in necessarily. I’ve got a few issues going on myself right now, so I can’t really do much there, but ‘Cats’ was all right. [Somebody] said it was somewhat clean, just a hard hit. You don’t like to see that. Obviously, I spoke to [Ekman-Larsson] a little bit, he thought it was clean.”
Montour added that he also checked in on Ekman-Larsson’s young family. So, keeping things nice and friendly, I guess.
When I asked Lambert if he would have liked to see a stronger physical response, he said: “It was pretty incidental. There was a couple of guys reaching for the puck, and Ekman-Larsson’s a little bit bigger than Berkly. I thought he got sort of stretched and exposed. But it was a—in my mind—it was a little bit of a hockey play. So, I liked our game overall.”
Now, is it a coincidence that after the Kraken didn’t retaliate, Brandon Carlo went head-hunting on Eeli Tolvanen in the third period?
—
Seattle has now closed out its long pre-Olympic homestand and will head on the road for three absolutely massive divisional games against Vegas, Anaheim, and Los Angeles. We won’t see the Kraken back at Climate Pledge Arena until Feb. 28.
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.
Go Kraken!!!
Go Kraken!!!
I sure hope Shane does shoot more but when you usually play 13 minutes a game, your concentration is on playing D So when Catton got gut, concussion maybe, He played more and is on a line of consistent players. Do not trade this guy. That was an easy win as Toronto’s goalie was poor tonight. Not quick at al.
Steve Dangle went all after the Leafs for not responding when Kakko knocked Carlo on top of Stolarz. Pointing out Stolarz got laid out earlier in the year against the Kraken (Marchment) and then went publicly laid into his teammates about letting teams run him.
We don’t have depth guys who step up. Sadly Dunn, Montour (recovering from hand surgery) and McCann seem to be the fieriest and most likely to step up but all are key players we don’t really want dropping the gloves. Melanson, Fleury, and Kartye would probably make a go of it but 2 of them are in the press box. The bigger guys on the team like Larsson, Oleksiak, and Kakko all don’t have the personality to instigate in that situation. We lack the team toughness of the Bruins, Tampa, Florida, etc and it does seem like something they need to get a bit of on the team.
We’ll see if they can beat an actual good team tomorrow and actually skate with the Ducks on Tuesday. (It is delightful that the Leafs don’t qualify as a “good team” anymore, by the way… but they don’t.) The Kraken need to start showing they can beat good teams since that is mostly what they are playing the rest of the season. One of the toughest remaining schedules in the league.
Honest question here Foist… do you want the Kraken to beat the Ducks or would you rather they lose?
Since when would that be any of your business? Foist can root for whover he wants to.
And as far as “skating” with the Ducks. The Kraken have already beaten them twice this season and were within a goal before pulling Grubauer last time… and that was in a game Lambert called out as the “worst 40 minutes we played all year”. I think we’ve already seen this team can actually skate with the Ducks.
It’s been nice seeing the first line click over this stretch in a way they haven’t since the 22-23 season. Hoping to see that continue, and hoping Shane is able to build on his performance from last night.
As an side note, whoever ESPN had working play by play last night kept pronouncing Freddy Gaudreau’s last name like you would Barclay Goodrow’s and it was driving me insane.
I think Carlo hit Tolvanen because his team was losing and he knew he was part of the reason they lost. That’s a pretty consistent aspect of the game across the league – teams use physicality to change momentum and get their team back into things – we have seen our players do that exact same thing. But that’s a less fun narrative than “the Kraken are soft”.
Chandler Stephenson gets a lot of crap from the analytics people but I thought he had a quietly good game – strong PK, good at the defensive blue line.
Stephenson has had a really good week or so. It looks to me like having Catton on his left wing has made a big difference for him. Catton is kind of the Mark Stone type of player (not saying he is at Stone’s level, just that his play style is similar) who is really creative and great at working the passing lanes, which, I think, is something that meshes well with Stephenson’s quick, cross-crease passing offensive game. The fact that they each have the speed to support the other in transition also helps. After a year and a half, Stephenson finally has a linemate with whom he has good chemistry.
The best retaliation last night was to keep putting the puck in the back of the Leafs net (and shutting down the neutral zone and frustrating their offensive flow).
They’d lost five in a row, Toronto media is roasting them on a daily (hourly?) basis, and they look like a team that’s pretty much quit. (Ironically, Leafs fans that said losing Marner was “addition by subtraction”… yeah, not so much.)
If this was a game vs. a Pacific division team… sure, retaliate. But the Leafs seemed liked they were trying to just invent some way to have a spark on their side. Don’t take the bait… especially since the Kraken PK is the team’s largest liability. Be physical but there was no reason to risk putting the team a man down last night.
Seeing the play with Catton happen in real time, it appeared to be an unfortunate collision versus an intentional hit.
Given that there was no arm raised to indicate a penalty, Schwartz’s status was already uncertain, in a 1-0 game between two highly inconsistent teams where neither team had really established control in the game, I think it was too risky to react strongly and risk drawing any big penalties and potentially be down even more players for major or misconduct penalties.
The more recent fights Seattle has been involved in have either included an initial penalty against the other team, an instigator penalty or a mutually agreed glove drop. With no penalty called on the initial play, any reaction could have put them at risk for an instigator or roughing on top of any fighting penalty, particularly sone Emmanuel Larsson didn’t appear to want to engage.
I heard an interesting statistic on the Hulu telecast last night. At the first intermission they said the Kraken have won 17 games when tied after one period, which leads the league (!)
Last night obviously made 18.
So Lane keeping things low event in the first period is working well.
Retaliating for Cat’s unfortunate collision would have been foolish. Ekman-Larsson didn’t try to hit Berkly – Cat ran into Ekman-Larsson with both guys reaching for the puck. Both guys were hurt after the collision, Cat much more so than the bigger Ekman-Larsson. Kraken were smart to keep playing their game and winning.
It reminded me wuite a bit of the Lindgren hit on Burakovsky where he was bent over, head down and that also didn’t result in a call or discipline.