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Three Takeaways – Kraken fall apart in second, lose 4-2 to Predators

Darren Brown

That was a killer loss. The Kraken came out hot in the first period and appeared ready to roll to victory over the Nashville Predators. But things fell apart in the second, and a 2-0 lead quickly evaporated and turned into a 3-2 deficit.

While Seattle peppered Juuse Saros with 45 shots in the game, they couldn’t find the equalizer after falling behind and took another damaging ‘L’ as they continue to cling to the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference by the thinnest of margins.

“I thought we came out well, and then… our team hasn’t been in this position [fighting for a playoff spot] for a couple of calendar years,” coach Lane Lambert said. “And we’re showing it a little bit right now. We have to sustain for 60 minutes.”

Here are Three Takeaways after a crushing 4-2 Kraken loss to the Predators.

Takeaway 1: Second period collapse

The Kraken were riding high entering the second period after Kaapo Kakko had scored off a Shane Wright “pass off the pads” play to make it 1-0 at 2:14 and Matty Beniers had sniped from the right circle at 9:46 to make it 2-0.

But things unraveled quickly in the second.

It started with a long shift by Vince Dunn and Adam Larsson. Larsson looked like he was about to change, hustling to try to dump the puck into Nashville’s zone and coming to a stop right in front of the Kraken bench. But the puck was out of his reach, so he couldn’t get it deep, and Nashville began transitioning the other way.

Instead of signaling to the next man up to jump on, Larsson noticed Tyson Jost had gotten behind him, so he stayed out and sprinted back to the defensive zone. In doing so, he drifted into a bit of no-man’s land. Meanwhile, Fedor Svechkov faked Vince Dunn out and cut to the middle, finding Jost with plenty of time and space to pick a spot under the bar.

“Yeah. I mean, they came at us in the second,” Larsson said. “We got stuck out there a couple times.”

Moments later, after a Wright goal had been negated because Ryker Evans was tripped and slid into Juuse Saros before the puck arrived, Matthew Wood sliced through the fourth line and set up former Seattle Thunderbird Reid Schaefer for an easy tap-in to tie the game 2-2 at 10:19.

The backbreaker came four minutes later when 21-year-old defenseman Ryan Ufko turned into Cale Makar, walking Ryan Winterton and Ben Meyers before deking back to his right and tucking the puck behind Joey Daccord for one of the prettiest first career goals you’ll ever see.

That was it. Three defensive lapses in a 10-minute stretch, and the Kraken gave away what should have been two standings points.

“I thought we started to lose battles in the second period, and we spent time in our zone,” Lambert said. “Of course, we had a couple of breakdowns, and they ended up scoring. So right now, it just seems like, in a sense—and it’s our responsibility—but in a sense, anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

Takeaway 2: Turning back to Daccord

It was slightly surprising to see Lambert turn right back to Daccord after he gave up seven goals against the Ottawa Senators on Saturday. I didn’t mind it. It felt like a vote of confidence from the coaching staff that Daccord could bounce back quickly.

Daccord played fine against Nashville and got hung out to dry by his team during the second period, though he was ultimately outdueled by Juuse Saros, who finished with a whopping 43 saves against a Kraken team that suddenly decided to become a high-shot-volume club.

“I thought Joey was pretty good tonight,” Lambert said. “I felt that he made a number of good saves [against Ottawa], even though he did give up seven goals. It probably could have been 10 or 11, the way we were playing, so we looked at that aspect of it, and that’s the way we went.”

Takeaway 3: Matty Beniers steps up

Aside from Beniers’ beautiful goal in the first period, he also did something nobody in the building expected early in the third.

After Justin Barron laid a bad hit on Jared McCann, Beniers was the closest player to Barron and went right after him. After the two pushed and shoved for a moment, Beniers’ gloves were off and his fists were flying wildly in what turned out to be the first fight of his career.

“Canner got hit bad, and we’ve been talking about standing up for teammates, and so I tried to,” Beniers said. “No fights yet [in my hockey career]. That was the first one.”

After seeing that, I’m not convinced Beniers will turn into an enforcer anytime soon, but the willingness to do that showed real leadership from the young assistant captain and should have sparked his team.

Said Larsson: “It’s unbelievable to see. He’s such a big part of this team, and that’s huge.”

And Lambert: “We’re trying to create a culture where guys care about each other, and there’s no question that Matty did that. I’m satisfied whenever somebody does that for a teammate.”

While Beniers sat in the penalty box, several teammates skated over to congratulate him before the door closed. You could tell it meant something to the Kraken, even if it wasn’t enough to push them over the hump in the end.

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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