Three Takeaways – Kraken come up empty in 3-0 loss at Oilers

The Seattle Kraken played a decent game against the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday but didn’t take advantage of their opportunities and—as we’ve seen so many times with this team in its five years of existence—made the opposing goalie, in this case Connor Ingram, look like a star.

It wasn’t so much that Ingram was standing on his head; it was just that the 27 shots Seattle took against him never looked all that dangerous. He simply had to be solid, not dazzling, to earn his second shutout of the season.

“We had some, not a lot, but we had some good enough chances to score,” coach Lane Lambert said. “It was a low-scoring game, and we did not convert on our opportunities.”

The Nashville Predators and Los Angeles Kings were both idle on Tuesday, so Seattle remained two points out of the last wild-card spot. But two more teams—the San Jose Sharks and Winnipeg Jets—have crowded their way into the field with two straight wins each. The Sharks are level with the Kraken at 75 points but have played one fewer game, putting them above Seattle in the standings.

Ostensibly, that looks like a *lot* of teams for the Kraken to jump to sneak into the playoffs. With just nine games left, the playoff picture will get murkier for the Kraken every time they lose from here on out.

Here are Three Takeaways from a 3-0 Kraken loss to the Oilers.

Takeaway 1: Bad first period dooms Seattle

Typically, if you can hold the high-flying Edmonton Oilers to two goals on 23 shots in a game (Connor McDavid did get on the scoresheet with an empty-netter that made it 3-0 at 17:34 of the third), then you’ve given yourself a chance to win.

Seattle did just that, showing a solid defensive structure and getting another strong game from Philipp Grubauer, who stopped 21 of 23 shots.

But more than half the shots Grubauer faced came in the first period, when the Oilers tilted the ice for much of the frame. A bad break and a costly mistake ended up in Seattle’s net, and those two goals were all the Oilers would need against the Kraken’s ineffective offense.

Edmonton’s first goal came off a point “shot” by Jake Walman that looked like it was sailing well wide of the net, but it hit Max Jones in the shoulder and pinballed in to make it 1-0 at 5:28 of the first.

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#SeaKraken fall behind early. Bad break. Jake Walman's shot looked like it was going wide, but it hit Max Jones up around the shoulder and pinballed in.

1-0 Oil. pic.twitter.com/lql2kCmWhz

— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) April 1, 2026

Then Adam Larsson and Vince Dunn were playing catch at the offensive blue line, and when Larsson tried to return it to Dunn, he clearly didn’t see that Kasperi Kapanen had crept high in the zone, anticipating the pass. Larsson got baited into it, Kapanen stole it and took off on a partial breakaway, and put a perfect shot between Grubauer’s blocker and right pad, just inside the far post. That made it 2-0 at 12:43 of the first.

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Uh oh. #SeaKraken don't want to get into a track meet with the Oilers, but if they're going to be in this game, they may have to do that.

Bad D-to-D pass by Adam Larsson leads to a partial breakaway by Kasperi Kapanen.

2-0 EDM pic.twitter.com/EY4j2myLND

— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) April 1, 2026

“Clearly, it wasn’t the start we wanted in terms of, they dump the puck in, it’s going eight feet wide, and it goes in off their back. That’s kind of the way it’s going right now,” Lambert said. “It certainly wasn’t anything necessarily structural, but a fortunate break for them. And we make a mistake at the offensive blue line when we’ve got complete control of the puck, that ends up in the back of the net.”

The Kraken should have been able to overcome those two goals, but the lack of finishing ability on this roster once again reared its ugly head.

Takeaway 2: Better second and third

The Kraken looked much better in the second and third periods, to the point that one could argue they were the better team in those frames. But as mentioned earlier, Ingram simply wasn’t tested the way the Kraken needed to test him. They had solid shot volume the rest of the way—firing 13 pucks at Ingram in the second and eight in the third—but it’s hard to recall many moments where Seattle truly had the middling goalie scrambling.

“A little bit more desperation in our game [in the second period],” Matty Beniers said. “Getting more pucks to the bottom, we had success there. We didn’t do it enough in the first, and we started getting to that, started getting more shots on net, more chaos. And we had our opportunities, we just didn’t put any in.”

Takeaway 3: Jaden Schwartz returns

It was good to see Jaden Schwartz return to the lineup after being inadvertently kicked in the face by Nick Cousins in a 7-4 loss to the Ottawa Senators on March 7. That injury led to Schwartz being labeled “out indefinitely,” a timetable that can sometimes mean months or even years.

Considering how horrific that injury could have been, Schwartz’s return after about three weeks was a big sigh of relief.

Meanwhile, Shane Wright missed the game Tuesday after getting blasted with a high hit by Logan Stanley on Saturday in Buffalo. He did practice on Monday, so I’m guessing his absence will be relatively short-term.