After Seattle’s 6-2 loss to the Golden Knights on Tuesday, I was ridiculed by Vegas fans for my Walk and Talk, in which I stated that (A.) I thought the gameplay was a bit more even than a 6-2 score would indicate and (B.) Ben Meyers’ hit that injured Victor Olofsson was not malicious.
Well, regarding point “A” above, I could say something similar about this 6-3 Kraken win over the Detroit Red Wings on Friday—the gameplay was closer, or even tilted against Seattle, than the positive 6-3 result would imply. As for point “B,” the NHL apparently agreed with me on that one and didn’t give Meyers any supplemental discipline.
This ended up being a big benefit for the Kraken against Detroit, because Meyers and his fourth-line mates drove the bus.
“They came hard at us in their building in the first period,” coach Lane Lambert said. “I thought we could have probably countered that a bit better by making some more plays or winning some more battles, but we weathered the storm, our goaltender was really good, and then I thought from there, the game was a little bit more evenly matched.”
Here are Three Takeaways from a 6-3 Kraken win over the Red Wings.
Takeaway 1: The Li’l Cat’s Meow
During Training Camp, we could see that Berkly Catton had improved significantly over the offseason after spending his summer skating with the likes of Matty Beniers, Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith, and others. We also heard from Kraken brass that Catton looked like the best player in camp.
Then, during Seattle’s first game of the season at the Calgary Flames, a pro scout sitting near me in the rickety Saddledome press box leaned over and said very matter-of-factly that Catton is the Kraken’s best player.
Is this true? Is the 20-year-old Catton, who played 27 games last season before scoring his first goal and posted just 17 points, now Seattle’s best player?
In the first few games of this season, Catton has played like it. He’s fast, shifty, dynamic, and on several occasions in this game against Detroit, he showed defensive responsibility, quickly recovering from turnovers and stealing the puck right back.
In that first Calgary game, it was a shift by Catton, Shane Wright, and Ryan Winterton that got the Kraken going after a slow start. In this one, it was a combination of Catton, Kaapo Kakko, and the newly formed third pair of Ville Ottavainen and Josh Mahura that connected to get things moving in the right direction toward the end of a dreadful opening frame.
Trailing 1-0 and getting dominated all over the ice in the first period (the Red Wings held a 16-3 shots-on-goal advantage at this point), Catton made a good read in the defensive zone after Mahura pried the puck free. He circled below the goal line to pick up the loose puck and took a hit to make a pass to Ottavainen.
Catton then raced up the ice, and by the time Ottavainen had hit Mahura with a cross-ice pass and Mahura had centered it to Kakko, Catton was in position to pick up the drop pass (or fortuitous fumble) from Kakko, deke, and lift it over a very leaky John Gibson.
THE LI’L CAT! 🐱 🚨 Clipping the whole sequence here, because it starts and ends with Berkly Catton. Both Ville Ottavainen and Josh Mahura made nice plays to get this puck up the ice, too. 1-1 #SeaKraken https://t.co/oEcnEE7Ttt
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 9, 2026
That goal came at 14:52 of the first and made things feel very doable for a Seattle team that had previously looked like it was on its way to a convincing loss.
Takeaway 2: What a night for the fourth line
On a recent Sound Of Hockey Podcast (it must have been the most recent one, but I don’t know… they all run together in my brain), I talked about the mix of forward lines now that Mackie Samoskevich is back from injury and playing on the first line. That pushed Winterton back down to the fourth line, where he’s skated with some combination of Freddy Gaudreau and one of Meyers or Curtis Douglas (remember, Jacob Melanson is still out with an upper-body injury).
My take on the podcast was that with Winterton, this is a line that can produce offense, harkening back to Year 2, when Morgan Geekie, Ryan Donato, and Daniel Sprong seemed to come through with depth production every night.
The line isn’t quite that, but there is some real skill there. Gaudreau is off to a great start to the season and sniped the top corner on Gibson twice in this one. Both times, he was set up by Winterton.
FREDDY B. GAUD! 🚨 The fourth line answers immediately. Good skill by Gaudreau, who goes skate to stick and chips it into the top corner. 2-2 #SeaKraken https://t.co/PrJGD36opv
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 10, 2026
Plus, Meyers came out of the penalty box with six minutes left in the second period and found himself on a 2-on-1 with Wright. Meyers looked off Wright and snapped a no-looker over Gibson’s glove and under the bar, making it 5-1 and ending Gibson’s night.
BENNY BOY! 🚨 Ben Meyers, who is NOT suspended, comes out of the box and immediately scores. 5-2 #SeaKraken, and that’s it for John Gibson. In comes Daniil Tarasov. https://t.co/Z1Jz1rJ2wS
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 10, 2026
And who started that play, by the way? Berkly Catton for his second point of the night.
“Huge plays by [Winterton], huge plays by ‘Benny’ just before, too,” Gaudreau said of his goals. “They’re awesome guys to play with. I think we can contribute that way, just by supporting each other and communicating. It’s fun to feel that little chemistry building.”
Takeaway 3: A win’s a win
Considering the final score of this game, it really could have been a Detroit win if Gibson had stopped… well, anything, and Philipp Grubauer hadn’t been sharp—he came up with 37 saves in the end.
The Kraken have had several slow starts in the early stages of this season, so that is something that needs to improve.
“We know when we’ve got to step it up, and they obviously had a lot of shots [in the first period],” Gaudreau said. “But we focused on ourselves and trying to be more connected, skate more, and that’s how it felt like we came out [in the second].”
But to their credit, the Kraken are taking advantage of their opportunities and beating up on bad teams.
Now, if only they can figure it out against the good teams…
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.
Go Kraken!!!
I love to hear the Kraken may have a real weapon in Catton. The Kraken, from a team composition standpoint, have really needed one of those guys to turn into a high end goal scorer.
Catton is without a doubt the best player The Kraken have ever had. Number 2 is probably Mackie Samoskevich.
So a couple of games in Mackie is the 2nd best Kraken ever and Catton is the best ever. I think I saw you in a Seinfeld episode: Leapin’ (to conclusions) Larry’s.
For me, Catton is the first Kraken player that really stands out. So far this season, you notice him when he’s not on the stat line. It’s early but that’s been all 5 games.
Detroit’s goalie was shit. If he wasn’t, that might have been a loss. Grubaur deserves most of the credit for this one.
Folks don’t always pay attention to defense, but Vince Dunn is the best player the Kraken have ever had. Great defense, great on the break-out, and almost a lock to win on odd-man rushes, nobody else has made the difference for the team that Dunn has. The with-Dunn/without-Dunn split for the team tells the story.
Shane has understandably flown a little under the radar with Catton’s success, but I’ve appreciated seeing him routinely getting to the front of the net and being in a good position when the opportunity arises. I think they’ll start to capitalize on those more.
Also of note, what an incredible pass from McCann through the crease to Mackie on his goal. It was odd to see the score so lopsided compared to the shot attempts, but the Kraken really got some high quality looks in this one.
Good eye. Wright has really started leaning into that big-bodied forward role this year, and it is paying off. I am still seeing a little bit of hesitation in Wright’s game when he has the puck, but I will bet that if he and his linemates keep building good shifts on top of good shifts that confidence is going to build to where he starts zipping that puck along with authority. You can really start to see that high ceiling of his coming into view.
Ive said it before, but you could see it last year in catton. His size and awkwardness playing in a league where he wasn’t automatically one of the top end guys on the ice was the biggest factor in his stat line last year. But you could see flashes of whats happening right now. I expect by the time hes 24 he will be our Jason Robertson. He has 80+ points written all over him once he hits his prime.
He put in the work and looks great. I expect the wright catton kakko line to become the 2nd line by the middle of the season.
Obrian and Reid are just going to add to this.
Unrelated: Grubi continuing to play amazing has me a little anxious. Im worried we will trade him but im also excited at the potential return. Hes been phenomenal since lane got here.
It seems like every undersized center is comped as Brayden Point and that feels overused but in Catton’s case there could be something there.
I am with you there on Grubauer. What is the team supposed to do now? Kakko and Ostmann look like NHLers, and Saarinen and Vyazavoi are about as exciting as European goalie prospects can possibly get. But Grubauer, at thirty-five years of age and with his expiring contract, looks like the best goalie in the system by a comfortable margin. What is there to do when the prospects are too good to be prospects anymore, and the starters are too good to let leave?
God, can you imagine the regret felt right now by all those GMs of teams with poor goaltending who let Grubauer clear waivers the season prior?
Very excited that Catton continues to look like the real deal.
We shouldn’t have given up so many chances in the first period playing a team of that caliber. Gru is following up a good season with a good start to this season. Still lots of time left and this might not hold but if it does it will create some interesting decisions.
I was shocked that Meyers did not get a suspension. I honestly don’t like the lack of discipline, but, boy howdy, was he good against Detroit (the tripping penalty notwithstanding, but nobody is going to hold that against him when he scored right out of the penalty box). Last season, I think–but cannot say for certain–that the plan going into the season had been to let the Beniers and Stephenson lines neutralize the production of other teams’ top lines and to count on the bottom-six to feast on match-ups against opponents’ bottom-sixes. That didn’t happen, of course, and it ultimately fell to the Beniers line to carry the offensive load. This year, however, the Gaudreau and Catton lines look genuinely dangerous. If the plan works this year, it would change a whole lot about how the team plays.
With all respect to John Forsland, I am not doing that “Little Cat” thing. If anything, Berkley Catton should be “Be(a)r Cat” like the old Navy airplane or the tree-dwelling animal. The airplane was famously fast, and the creature is a predator, so it’s a good hockey name.
On the last point of the article, yeah, they need to be able to do this sort of thing against good teams, particularly teams that are good in the neutral zone like Edmonton and Vegas are. If they can get those zone break-outs to that level this is a team that will surprise people.
One point that hasn’t been mentioned yet is that the bottom pairing of Mahura and Ottavainen availed themselves well in Lindgren’s absence. I wonder in Fleury will rotate in or if the spot will be Ottavainen’s for the forseeable future.
First – Gru is playing great – he kept us in the game;
Second, I’ve hated on Gaudreau taking space on line 2, but putting him on line 4 has woke him up in a very good way;
Third – relax the superlatives on Catton, though he IS playing really well, especially with Wright and Kakko (the “Kid line”) – Lambert, please keep giving them ice time and room to create, and they will… winning is secondary to developing offensive creativity and this line has real potential.
Beniers at -1, plus/minus with one shot on goal is a concern – note he’s 13th currently on team scoring, tied with Meyers who played two fewer games, and right behind him is Bobby McMann. If we’re going to use a five game sample to judge Catton as amazing… might wonder a bit about Beniers and McMann.
Fun fact…
The top scoring line in the league (G/60, 25+min) is:
Draisaitl, McDavid,Podkolzin 8.91
No.3 is:
Lehkonen, MacKinnon, Necas 8.03
Between them is:
Wright, Catton, Kakko 8.35
Of the 77 lines No.8 is:
McCann, Beniers, Samoskevich 5.94