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Three Takeaways – Kraken continue marching toward high draft pick with 5-2 loss at Wild

Darren Brown

Berkly Catton 122825

That was about the best-case scenario for Kraken fans. Seattle played a pretty good game against a much better Minnesota Wild team on Tuesday, it was relatively fun to watch, and the Kraken continued to help themselves in the race for the bottom of the standings and the NHL Draft Lottery.

After the loss, the Kraken still have the fifth-worst record in the league, level in points with the New York Rangers, and have two more points than the Calgary Flames. If they continue this incredible tailspin—they’ve now lost five straight and 10 of their last 11 (1-8-2)—there is a very real possibility they’ll move into a top-three position in the Draft Lottery.

As for the game, the Kraken did look better in this one than they have in most of their previous games, but still made some bone-headed mistakes that led to too-easy goals against.

When Piper Shaw asked coach Lane Lambert what is causing the mistakes, whether it be fatigue or skill, Lambert paused briefly and then said, “I’m going to pass on that question.”

As the C+C Music Factory so eloquently sang in 1990, these are, “Things that make you go hmmmm…”

Here are Three Takeaways from a 5-2 Seattle Kraken loss to the Minnesota Wild.

Takeaway 1: A legitimately strong first period

Seattle actually looked quite good in the opening frame and came out of it with a 2-1 lead.

“It’s another loss. And it’s a 5-2 loss, and another empty-net goal against, and I sit here, and I say, ‘I thought we played a pretty good hockey game,’” Lambert said. “And it’s like, ‘Really? You do?’ It’s another loss, but I do actually think we played pretty good tonight. We out-chanced them, and we just can’t get out of our own way.”

It’s well known that the power play has been abysmal lately, and although it still didn’t get credit for Brandon Montour’s goal that made it 1-0 at 10:23 of the first, the PP units looked downright competent. The ice-breaking tally came just one second after Vladimir Tarasenko’s penalty expired.

The play started with Joey Daccord, who recognized that after the Wild had cleared it down the ice and initiated a change, a quick-up pass could put them right back on their heels. Indeed, he found Kaapo Kakko at the far blue line, who ran a little give-and-go play with Jaden Schwartz, then found Montour at the point. Montour ripped it through Jesper Wallstedt’s wickets.

Seattle did make a mistake (we’ll talk more about that in Takeaway 2) to create Matt Boldy’s response goal that tied it 1-1 just 1:34 later, but then the Kraken struck again with another brief flash of creativity. Adam Larsson pinched and got a piece of a clearing attempt to keep the play alive, then he and Chandler Stephenson crossed one another, and Larsson headed for the slot. Stephenson found Larsson for a one-timer, also through Wallstedt’s five-hole.

That goal gave Seattle a 2-1 lead at 13:10, which is where things remained after 20 minutes. But, as always seems to be the case with this team these days, it was pretty much all downhill from there.

Takeaway 2: More mistakes

On all the Wild goals, there’s a very obvious mistake made by the Kraken that leads to each one.

Goal 1: Jaden Schwartz tries to make a blind pass across the offensive blue line to Freddy Gaudreau and misses him by two feet, and Ryker Evans overcommits to the rush, creating a 2-on-1 that Matt Boldy scores on.

Goal 2: Berkly Catton tries to make a similar play at the offensive blue line, but hands it over to Marcus Foligno, who eventually walks right to the net and scores off a 3-on-2.

Goal 3: Vladimir Tarasenko is left completely alone at the side of the net.

Goal 4: Former Seattle Kraken Marcus Johansson is left completely alone at the side of the net.

Heck, even Goal 5, the empty-netter: Vince Dunn makes a terrible pass to Berkly Catton on a controlled breakout, and then Catton gets picked off at the red line by Joel Eriksson Ek when he lunges and tries to poke it past him.

“Same stuff,” Montour said. “Turnover at the blue line, odd-man rush, goal. A guy backdoor by himself, goal. Spin around in the slot to a guy backdoor by himself, goal. Empty net. I guess you could say another easy one for the opposing team. Mental mistakes that obviously have been hurting us for the last little bit.”

Oh, and another successful goalie interference challenge in the second period swung the game from 3-2 Kraken to 3-2 Wild in relatively quick succession, just like in the Utah game last week. Seattle now leads the league in goals overturned by goalie interference challenges.

The Kraken may never score three goals in a game again…

Takeaway 3: Losing now is good for business but bad for the soul

At this stage in another lost season, dropping games will do more good for the organization in the long run than wins will. But there are some players who care in that dressing room (no, I don’t think they all care at this point), and I have to wonder about the psyche of these players.

Take the younger guys, for example. You know they’re giving it their all, but mistakes keep happening that lead directly to goals, and the veterans aren’t exactly scoring the lights out to pick these guys up and cover up for those mishaps. What’s the long-term damage of that?

So, it’s good to keep losing and marching toward a potential top-three pick. And I especially liked this brand of loss, in which I was genuinely entertained for most of the evening and thought the guys put forth a solid effort, mistakes and continued lack of scoring be damned.

But it might also be nice to mix in one or two more wins this season, just to give the players who care a reason to smile.

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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