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Three Takeaways – Kraken take hard 3-1 loss on bad-bounce Draisaitl goal at Oilers

Darren Brown

Bummer. The Seattle Kraken, who are now 1-9-0 all time at the Edmonton Oilers, had every chance to win Saturday despite minimal puck possession in the first period, an issue exacerbated by taking three penalties and allowing the Oilers’ lethal power play to tilt the ice.

Seattle pushed back in the second, though, got a power-play goal from Bobby McMann to tie the game, and came within 2:27 of at least earning a point. But a bad bounce that landed on the stick of Leon Draisaitl and subsequently in the back of Seattle’s net ultimately did the Kraken in.

“I think we deserved a better result when you see [goals] like that,” McMann said. “You sometimes realize that’s the game of hockey, and you want to put yourself in a position where maybe something like that doesn’t matter as much because you maybe have a goal up or something like that. So there’s always ways to counteract that, but yeah, those ones are always tough to see when a game’s so close, and you’ve been playing so well down the stretch towards the end of a game.”

Here are Three Takeaways from a hard-fought 3-1 Kraken loss at the Edmonton Oilers.

Takeaway 1: First-period penalty trouble

On Thursday in Calgary, the Kraken played a very disciplined game and used their speed to force the Flames into dumb penalties. The penalty-related tables turned dramatically in the first period Saturday, though, with the Oilers’ terrifying power play getting three chances in the opening frame.

The penalty kill came up big, backed by a couple of 10-bell saves from Philipp Grubauer, including this right-pad dazzler after Seattle let Vasily Podkolzin walk down Main Street and Leon Draisaitl threaded a pass through to him.

“First of all, we got some good kills, and we got some great saves by Grubi,” coach Lane Lambert said. “There wasn’t any rhythm in the first period. Some guys only played maybe two minutes. So once they started to get the rhythm going and the flow going a little bit, I thought we settled in quite nicely.”

Three successful kills in the opening period meant the Kraken were firmly on their heels for much of that frame, but in the closing minutes before the first horn, you could see them starting to find their game.

Indeed, they tilted things the other way for a good stretch of the second period, got the lone call of the frame in their favor, and took advantage with McMann’s snipe under the bar.

“We just needed to stay out of the penalty box,” Lambert said. “It wasn’t like we were doing anything terrible, terrible. We were sitting back maybe a little bit, but we just couldn’t get anything going because we had a steady stream to the penalty box.”

Takeaway 2: They held off the big guns, until…

For the vast majority of the game, every time it looked like Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl—who skated together on a line—was about to connect on a pass, a Kraken stick would magically appear in the lane and break it up.

I was prepared to go down to the dressing room after the game and ask about how the Kraken had so successfully held the big guns at bay… until…

Edmonton was pushing late and had extended zone time. Ryan Shea tried to rim the puck deep from the blue line, but it hit McDavid on the shin pad and ricocheted straight to Draisaitl on the doorstep. Although Grubauer got across in time, he wasn’t able to properly square up to Draisaitl, who chipped it over his shoulder and into the far corner.

“In the first two games here, I liked our structure for the most part,” Lambert said. “Really unfortunate the winning goal tonight was the bounce that it was. So we just have to keep building on it, but I liked our structure, and I think our sticks were pretty good.”

McDavid followed that up with an empty-net goal, so after 57 minutes and 33 seconds of holding that duo completely off the scoresheet, Draisaitl ended up with the game-winner, and McDavid got two cheap points.

What can you do?

Takeaway 3: Lots to build on

If the Kraken can bounce back and take care of business against the Flames—who they smoked 6-1 on Thursday—in their home opener Sunday, then this should be viewed as an extremely positive start to the season.

They absolutely could have beaten Edmonton in this game. And considering the Oilers had played two insanely high-scoring games against Vancouver to start their season, holding them to one goal for almost the entire game—while also controlling some stretches—should be viewed as a positive.

There was some bad luck and a couple of absolute robberies by Devon Levi, including a save on Eberle that was so close to going in, the officials actually reviewed the play to see if his glove crossed the line.

“It’s hard after a loss. Losing is not fun,” Lambert said. “But I think if you look at the [first two] games as a whole, we did a lot of good things. We had a lot of commitment, and I thought everybody played an important role. Everybody matters on our hockey team.”

The early returns are encouraging. What say you?

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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