When Bobby McMann entered the Seattle Kraken lineup in the middle of March, he helped lead the team to victories on back-to-back days against Vancouver and Florida, while the team maintained the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference.
Since those games, the Kraken have lost nine of their last 10, falling to now 32-33-11, eight points out of a playoff spot with six games remaining in the regular season.
While McMann’s production on offense hasn’t dipped — eight goals and four assists in 13 games with Seattle — the production of the rest of the Kraken lineup has, and they’re paying the price heavily now.
The losing ways continued on Monday night in Winnipeg, with Seattle falling 6-2 to the Jets.
What’s funny about the win for the Jets is these two have essentially swapped places from 10 games ago. Before this stretch, the Kraken were five points clear of Winnipeg in the wild-card race. After tonight, they are now five points back of them.
Kraken head coach Lane Lambert described the team as “Playing for pride,” at this point, which pretty much means they’re ready to throw in the towel on this season.
Takeaway 1: Change for change sake
We’re officially in the “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” portion of this stretch for the Kraken. It really seems like they’re trying to do everything differently. Team leadership had been trying to be looser at practices and on the bench, including Jordan Eberle having more vocality to his leadership style of late.
Now the coaching staff is getting in on the action, as the team now seems to be more focused on trying as many different line combinations as possible, in hopes of finding some untapped chemistry, than it is winning games.
The Kraken switched the lines offensively, which was to be expected with Ryan Winterton back from personal leave and slotting back in on the fourth line. Some other reshuffling included Jared McCann and Kaapo Kakko playing with Berkly Catton on the third line, which did look good when they got their opportunities.
But the major change came on the back end, as for the first time since the inaugural 2021-22 season, Vince Dunn and Adam Larsson — in the same lineup together — were separated. Dunn was paired with Cale Fleury on the top pairing, while Larsson went with Ryker Evans.
Dunn was asked postgame by Piper Shaw of the Kraken Hockey Network what it was like when he found out he wouldn’t be with Larsson tonight.
“It’s definitely alarming when you walk into the rink today and you see that,” Dunn said. “Defintely very different.”
Takeaway 2: Philipp Grubauer injured
One player who has held up his end of the bargain for much of this season has been Philipp Grubauer.
Despite losing four of his last five games, he still had a .900 save percentage during that stretch and was still sprawling out to make miraculous saves. Unfortunately for him, great saves haven’t meant much with an offense as stricken as this one.
Against Winnipeg, he made three incredible point-blank saves on Jets leading scorer Mark Scheifele, keeping the score close at least while he was in the game, but he left halfway through the second period after a seemingly innocent, noncontact play. He froze a puck to get a whistle, and then skated straight to the bench.
Kraken PR later confirmed him out for the game with a lower-body injury. Lambert had no update on his status afterward.
Grubauer has dealt with his fair share of lower-body injuries before, and with the season pretty much dead in its tracks, it might be wise to shelve him for the rest of the season and have him start offseason recovery a little early.
Matt Murray is on the trip with the team, so he could be a backup in Saint Paul against the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday (or even play?) if need be.
Takeaway 3: On the bright side…
If you want good news from this one, Seattle still has the fifth-best odds of winning the draft lottery, according to Tankathon, at an 8.5 percent chance. The New York Rangers are tied with Seattle in the overall standings with 75 points, but because of Seattle having more regulation wins, the Rangers have 9.5 percent odds.
The Kraken could still technically wind up with the second-best odds, though that would require Chicago to win all of its games at the end of the season … which is asking a lot, I know.
Anyway, if the Kraken keep falling, then this number will continue to climb. Coincidentally, my insanity levels will climb as well.
Oh well, there’s still time to catch a game at Climate Pledge Arena. After Tuesday in Saint Paul, the Kraken will have one last three-game homestand, wearing the thirds against Vegas on Thursday.
Bonus Takeaway: Jordan Eberle eclipsed the 25-goal mark with a pretty wraparound effort in the first period, which gave the Kraken their only lead of the game. It’s the first time he’s scored 25 in a season since doing so with the New York Islanders in 2017-18. The longevity of his career continues to be impressive.