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Three Takeaways – Kraken hold on for huge 3-2 win over Golden Knights

Darren Brown
Joey Daccord Jamie Oleksiak

Never a doubt! Not to sound hyperbolic, but of the 26 wins the Seattle Kraken have now racked up this season, defeating the Vegas Golden Knights 3-2 in their building on Saturday may have been the biggest one yet.

Seattle jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first period, let it slip away in the second, but recovered in the third and then held on for dear life to secure a victory that pulled them within three points of the first-place Golden Knights and opened a small two-point cushion on Anaheim and Los Angeles, their next two opponents.

Eeli Tolvanen, Jared McCann, and Kaapo Kakko had the goals, and Chandler Stephenson recorded two assists against his former team.

Here are Three Takeaways from a huge 3-2 Kraken win over the Golden Knights.

Takeaway 1: Joey Daccord was the difference

This team has gone as its goaltending has gone. When the goalies have been outstanding, the Kraken have won. When they’ve been just OK, they haven’t. Lately, both Joey Daccord and Philipp Grubauer have been outstanding, and the Kraken have—unsurprisingly—won five of their last six.

After a stretch of alternating goalies from game to game, coach Lane Lambert recently gave Grubauer two straight starts against the Islanders and Ducks. It had been a while since Daccord played consecutive games, but Lambert gave Joey the nod again Saturday after a solid outing Thursday against Toronto, and Daccord rewarded him.

Daccord stopped 27 of 29 shots, plainly outplaying his counterpart at the other end, Akira Schmid, who allowed three goals on 23 shots and continued a mediocre season.

Joey was especially big in the third period. A few minutes after Kakko restored Seattle’s 3-2 lead, Adam Larsson joined the rush as the trailer, took a feed from McCann, and rifled a shot wide of Schmid. Larsson missed badly enough that the puck rimmed around to Jack Eichel on the half wall, springing Vegas the other way. Having taken himself out of the play, Larsson couldn’t recover in time, and Eichel easily sent Ivan Barbashev in alone on a breakaway.

Barbashev—who had already scored once in the game—cruised down Las Vegas Boulevard and ripped a shot that Daccord snared to keep Seattle in front.

Then, with time winding down, Daccord was exceptional in the final two minutes, battling through traffic and tracking shots off weird, broken plays and bouncing pucks.

When the horn sounded, Daccord celebrated accordingly.

Takeaway 2: Bend, don’t break

Any time a team coughs up a two-goal lead—especially in the fashion Seattle did in the second period—it’s not a great feeling heading into the third.

The Kraken had opened the scoring after Stephenson set up Ryan Winterton, who created a rebound for Tolvanen at 6:50 of the first. McCann followed that up with a one-time missile off a Vince Dunn feed on the power play to make it 2-0 at 13:04.

That was McCann’s 10th goal of the month (tying Matty Beniers, who set a franchise record for goals in a month last game), 200th of his career, and fourth in three games.

It was an excellent first period, punctuated by Jacob Melanson nearly putting Jonas Rondbjerg through the curved glass by the Kraken bench with one of his franchise-record 12 hits on the night.

“We’ve talked about our starts, and it’s the third game in a row, I think, we scored first. The stats don’t lie,” Lambert said. “The guys have done a good job of making sure that they’re ready to go. It’s not that they weren’t [doing that] before, but I think there’s just a little extra focus that we had to have.”

The Kraken Hockey Network noted that Seattle is now 19-6-3 when scoring first this season and 20-0-0 when building a two-goal lead, underscoring just how critical those starts have been.

After the strong opening frame, the second period felt different. Vegas came out visibly intent on shifting momentum. Eichel found Barbashev with an elite pass to cut the deficit to 2-1 at 8:52, and Mitch Marner tied it with 11 seconds left after Seattle gave the Golden Knights’ lethal power play two straight opportunities.

Historically, giving up a tying goal that late in the second can be a backbreaker. But to Seattle’s credit, the group reset during the intermission, got Kakko’s goal off a fortunate bounce three minutes into the third, and then committed to protecting the lead the rest of the way.

“The message was, ‘It doesn’t matter how we got here. If we win a period, we win a game on the road in this building,’” Lambert said. “Whether you’re up 2-0, down 2-0, it doesn’t matter. The score is 2-2 right now, go win a period, and they did.”

Takeaway 3: Another huge win

The streakiness of this Kraken team has been wild this season. They lost 10 of 11 between November and December, then won eight of nine and went on a 10-game point streak from late December into early January. After another skid—losing six of seven—they’ve once again rebounded, winning five of six.

After the win over the Islanders, it felt like if Seattle could string together a run before the Olympic break, it could climb right back toward the top of the Pacific Division.

Lo and behold, aside from two brutal periods against Anaheim on Jan. 23, the Kraken have been playing some of their best hockey of the season and are now just three points from first place. Contributions are coming from throughout the lineup, and the goaltending has been excellent.

Now, Seattle gets a rare two-day break before facing those same Ducks in Anaheim on Tuesday and then closing out pre-Olympic play the following night in Los Angeles.

Talk about big games.

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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