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Three Takeaways – Low-energy Kraken take an ugly 7-4 loss to the Ottawa Senators

Darren Brown

Sure, the Seattle Kraken are in the midst of a playoff race, but you wouldn’t know it from watching their 7-4 beatdown at the hands of the Ottawa Senators on Saturday. Seattle came out flat and—with the exception of a few brief glimmers during the game—remained low on energy throughout the contest.

“We didn’t play very well,” coach Lane Lambert said. “I could try and pinpoint something we did really well, and it’d be very very difficult to do. So I think as a group, coaching staff right on down, we’ve got to be better. It starts with me, moves right on down the line. So there wasn’t any positives tonight.”

NO POSITIVES?! Well, that’s not good.

Here are Three Takeaways from a positive-free 7-4 Kraken loss to the Senators.

Takeaway 1: No relief for Daccord

Growing up as a goalie, I never liked getting pulled out of a game, but I also didn’t like getting lit up. It was embarrassing to get pulled, but in seasons when I was the only goalie on the team, it was even worse to have to stay in a game where I didn’t have my best and was getting torched.

After two great performances in his last two starts against Vancouver and Carolina, this was a tough night for Joey Daccord, no question. In the end, he posted 28 saves on 36 shots for a .806 save percentage—not the ugliest numbers ever, but not great. The seven goals against were the most he’s allowed all season because Lambert has never let him get above five in a game.

The circumstances of this one were strange, though. While Daccord surely would have wanted back the Dylan Cozens goal that made it 2-1 at 13:35 of the first (an unscreened shot that hit his arm and went in), Joey also made plenty of sharp-looking saves in the first two periods.

Meanwhile, Seattle did start to show some life after 40 minutes and had cut the deficit from 4-1 to 4-2 after ratcheting up the physicality. So it didn’t make much sense to pull Daccord after the second, and once things started snowballing in the third, it became an awkward time to turn to Philipp Grubauer.

I asked Lambert if he thought about making a change to protect Daccord’s confidence.

“That’s a good question,” Lambert said. “I think there’s some that he would want back. Certainly, we left him hanging out to dry on a number of occasions. There were mistakes and breakdowns and stuff that we really haven’t seen for a while.

“And in terms of taking him out, I really thought after we went in after the second period, I wanted to give us a good chance to win the hockey game. I felt like some of the saves that he was making, even though we maybe question a couple of goals, I thought he made some good saves to keep it at four. So there was no thought for me of taking him out, and then after it got too late, it’s not fair to Grubauer to put him in there. And certainly, we don’t want to risk injury to him, bringing him off the bench when he’s been sitting there. So it’s just one of those things, one of those nights.”

Takeaway 2: Not enough energy

While Lambert found “no positives,” I did like the game of Jacob Melanson, as I often tend to do. Not only did he score off a 3-on-2 rush to give Seattle a fleeting 1-0 lead that was erased 34 seconds later, he also recognized things starting to get more physical in the second and went to work trying to ignite the team when the Kraken fell behind 4-1.

Indeed, several heavy hits started flying on both sides of the puck, and once that began, the first chance Melanson saw to go after somebody bigger than him, he took it. Melanson slammed into Tyler Kleven behind the Ottawa net, then did everything he could to goad the 6-foot-5, 225-pound defenseman into dropping the gloves.

Kleven wouldn’t engage, so Melanson kept after him in front of the net, creating chaos in front of Linus Ullmark. Meanwhile, Cale Fleury pinched in and dropped Nick Cousins, and Ben Meyers hit Shane Pinto, who coughed up the puck to Eeli Tolvanen. Tolvanen blasted a slap shot through Melanson’s screen and scored to bring Seattle back within two goals.

“I think that’s how we have to play,” Tolvanen said. “It’s playoff time. We have to start playing like [Melanson] does, go to the net, be physical. That’s why we got the turnover, that’s why I got the puck because he’s playing physical.”

Added Lambert: “I think we had energy in the second period when we started to get a little bit physical. That was really the moment, I guess, there was a little pocket in there where we had what I consider to be energy that’s necessary and required. And other than that, there wasn’t a whole lot of energy.”

Brandon Montour also called the fourth line Seattle’s best line and heaped praise on Melanson for the way he plays. That’s both a great compliment for the fourth line and a bit of a stray for the other three lines, which plainly have not been good enough since the Olympic break.

Indeed, outside of that brief burst of nastiness in the second period, there simply wasn’t enough juice in this one.

While the team and its coach didn’t use it as an excuse, there is an illness going around the room right now that kept Freddy Gaudreau and Ryan Lindgren out of the lineup Saturday. Adam Larsson also skipped morning skate but still played. You have to wonder if that slowed a few guys down, because they definitely looked like something was dragging them.

Seattle needs to start finding its best 60-minute effort on a regular basis, or it will drop out of the playoff bubble within a game or two.

Takeaway 3: Scary moment for Jaden Schwartz

While the Kraken struggled to find energy, things got even tougher when they lost a veteran forward after Jaden Schwartz suffered a scary facial injury. During that stretch of physical play, Tolvanen blasted Nick Cousins into the boards right in front of the Kraken bench. As Cousins was going down, his skate came up and caught Schwartz in the face.

Schwartz lay on the ice bleeding for a moment, though replay appeared to show that the blade of Cousins’ skate didn’t actually make contact with Schwartz’s face. It looked like the damage came from the heel of the skate striking him around the nose. Regardless, Schwartz left the game and did not return.

Lambert said Schwartz was being evaluated but didn’t have much of an update after the game. “It could have been worse, I guess, but he’s not— he’s again, like I say, he’s getting evaluated. I think it sapped the energy out of the building a little bit. It got pretty quiet.”

At the other end of the ice, Montour also knocked star defenseman Jake Sanderson out of the game with an apparent shoulder injury. Montour crushed Sanderson into the corner boards and then fell on top of him in the second period. That could be a massive loss for the Sens, who are also pushing for a playoff spot.

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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