If you’ve ever gone on a trip, maybe a week or two long, chances are there usually comes a point where you’re just ready to go home, even if you have a few days remaining. For the Seattle Kraken, that couldn’t have been more the case when it fell 8-3 to the Florida Panthers on Saturday night at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida.
The Panthers got the pressure going early, with Sam Bennett batting in a puck that was up in the air at 1:05 of the first period. While Shane Wright, with his third of the year, was able to knot things up midway through, the onslaught came in the last five minutes of the frame.
A Ryker Evans delay-of-game and an Adam Larsson high-sticking penalty led to Florida’s Carter Verhaeghe scoring twice near the end of the first. The Panthers pounced on the open areas the Kraken were giving them, and as head coach Lane Lambert points out, Florida’s the type of team where if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.
“There was a stretch of five minutes that turned the game on the wrong side,” Lambert said of the collapse towards the end of the first period. “We have certain situations that we have protocols for. Didn’t do a good enough job of executing and that’s what happens when you’re playing against a good hockey team like that. They have a tendency to take advantage of situations when you make mistakes.”
From there, it was all Panthers. Dueling hat tricks from Carter Verhaeghe and Sam Bennett marked the first such occurrence in team history. That also marked three straight games for the Panthers in which a player recorded a natural hat trick, the first such occurrence in league history. A natural hat trick occurs when a player scores three consecutive goals, which do not have to occur in the same period.
Still, the Kraken finished its first long road-trip of the season 3-1-1, securing seven out of a possible 10 points early on. While there are certainly positives to take away, there’s still a lot of work for the team to do. Here are the three takeaways from the Kraken’s loss at the Panthers.
Takeaway 1: Getting outmatched by better teams
Don’t let last season fool you. The Panthers still possess the bones of the teams that won back-to-back Stanley Cups. The Kraken’s four losses thus far all came at the expense of teams that either won or were in the Stanley Cup Final within the 2020s (EDM, VGK, TB and FLA), and all of which considered among the model organizations in the league.
While signs of improvement are there, especially on the road-trip, performances against the likes of Florida and Vegas suggest Seattle still has a long way to go before being serious contenders.
“We got beat in every area tonight,” Lambert said. “You ask me what I needed to see, a lot more of everything.”
Even when the Kraken tried to get things going, the Panthers were quick to spoil a lot of rush chances for the Kraken, halting forward progress in the neutral zone and using their sticks to get into puck lanes.
“The last two teams [were] some of the best teams in the league,” Kraken forward Shane Wright said. “The level we want to get to and need to get to, that’s kind of the pace, speed, and intensity that we need to get to. We’ve shown that we can play with those teams, just got to do that [on a] consistent basis.”
Takeaway 2: Quite a bit of puck-watching
Florida has so many pure shooters who frustrate opposing defensive units, and the Kraken were no exception. The Panthers won puck battles and capitalized with goals from long range.
It’s hard to put sole blame on anyone in a blowout loss, but the second line of Jordan Eberle, Chandler Stephenson and Bobby McMann were quite an outlier. The group together garnered a plus-minus rating of minus-14 in this game. While guarding quality players like Bennett, Verhaeghe and Matthew or Brady Tkachuk isn’t exactly a walk in the park, the Kraken didn’t exactly make it any easier on themselves tonight.
Florida was efficient at getting to the quality scoring areas. It’s also important to mention the performance of Joey Daccord, who saved 29 of 37 shots on the evening. That was two blow up starts out of his last three appearances.
Takeaway 3: Overall, a solid road trip
This trip definitely didn’t end on the note the Kraken wanted, but that’s how it goes sometimes. The Kraken won just one game in regulation in 2025-26 when visiting Eastern Conference venues, and this season the team has already surpassed that with three wins on the trip.
If you were to show somebody at the beginning of October that the Kraken would go 3-1-1 on this trip and come out relatively unscathed, minus the injury to Brandon Montour, they would take that in an instant.
“I mean it’s seven out of 10 points so not everything’s bad news,” Wright said. “Obviously it sucks to end that way but I think overall as the whole, the road trip was good for us.”
The Kraken are ready to get home. The team will now fly the 2,000-plus-mile trip home and begin a stretch of seven of eight games at Climate Pledge Arena, starting with the Utah Mammoth on Tuesday night.
Well, it’s the last game of a long road trip and we basically had 2 AHL level defensemen out there. Florida is a loaded team and anyone who thought we had a chance of not getting blown out, nevermind winning this game, lives a life of bliss. They had a great roadtrip in spite of this. Now, the injury to Monty is more concerning and if we’re without him for a long stretch then the next month is going to be rough.
Well this is one way to get that PDO down. Already trimmed to a more reasonable, though still a bit high, 1.034.
Detroit is Tuesday, Utah is Thursday. Hopefully a repeat of our last matchup with the Red Wings is in order.
No Lindgren and no Montour make Homer go crazy. I know it wasn’t really the issue that doomed the Kraken in that game, but it sure didn’t help matters. Ottavainen had a couple more ugly moments in front of the net, and although Fleury looked alright Evans was discombobulated without his usual partner. On the positive side, during pre-game I heard Ian Furness say that Lindgren is day-to-day, so help may be on the way.
The defensive issues did not stop there. Adam Larsson, after a teriffic game in Tampa had a brutal outing in South Florida getting his assignments confused with his partner on the penalty kill and getting beaten along the boards by guys he would normally crush and mug. Also, although Daccord had no chance whatsoever on a lot of those goals, he did not steal any saves when the defense left him hanging out to dry, as it often did.
Fatigue is the word of the day for the forward group. They were repeatedly puck-watching on defense and getting skated around through center ice. I don’t think it is any coincidence that the oldest of the four lines looked the worst on the night. All those plane trips and all that hotel-hopping and all of Tampa’s speed and backchecking clearly left them running on Empty against the Panthers. That road trip was a game too long. Man, schedulers ought to know that, despite being in the same state Tampa and Sunrise are nowhere near one another. They’re like Seattle and Walla Walla or San Francisco and San Diego. You need to fly from one to the other.
I only hope that this does not lead to more sloppiness during the home stand. This is a game to be flushed. The worst thing that can happen is the guys losing trust in one another.
Evans has been rough all year, even with Montour.
IDK I thought Evan’s has looked pretty good all season, he clearly wasn’t working well with Fleury last night though. I believe he finished a -1… not so bad in a game where others were-5 😂
“line of Jordan Eberle, Chandler Stephenson and Bobby McMann were quite an outlier. The group together garnered a plus-minus rating of minus-14 in this game. While guarding quality players like Bennett, Verhaeghe and Matthew or Brady Tkachuk isn’t exactly a walk in the park”
very bad night for Stephenson and I don’t feel like it’s fair to justify it by matchups, it seemed to me that other lines were getting that same matchup but faired better. I honestly can’t remember seeing a line play so poorly. Stephenson was on the ice for 5 goals at 5 on 5…. That has to be a kraken record.
Ho long does Samoskevich stay on the first line, he clearly isn’t more then the third liner that we traded for and doesn’t look cut out to be on the top line. I would much rather see Winterton on that line at this point. Or maybe bring Firkus up for a few games and see how that looks. The bus is being driven by the third and fourth lines it’s time to get the first line going somehow. I didn’t understand the hype around Samoskevich when we acquired him and I still don’t, he has a few flashes where he drives the puck but has very poor hockey IQ and seems to turn the puck over constantly. There doesn’t appear to be much chemistry with Matty.
The Catton line was again the best on the ice, that’s encouraging for our future. They also looked like the best PP line but were getting limited power play time. That has to change, play line that is earning the ice time.
It wasn’t just Stephenson either; it was Eberle and McMann as well. Eberle is the guy who blew the board battle, despite having Larsson there for help, and allowed the pass to the slot for the first goal. All three of them just looked gassed.
Samoskevich has been good at using his quickness to take advantage of plays begun by Beniers and McCann, but,yeah, that’s something Winterton could do as well. Winterton would also be able to beat checks better. I am in no hurry to break up the Gaudreau line in its present form, but I would not be too surprised to see the two of them switch at some point despite Samoskevich being too good for a fourth line role. Speaking of the Gaudreau line in its present form, what does the team do when Melanson gets healthy?
The Kakko/Catton/Wright line was getting trapped in their own zone for extended shifts, although that may have been exaggerated by Montour’s absence and by the general mess that is the defensive situation whenever Larsson isn’t his best self. The Kakko line is usually good on the power play, but they also are vulnerable to giving up short-handed rushes and to getting knocked off the puck whenever they can’t just race around checks. I would not say that they have earned PP1 yet.
Hindsight: would have been a good game to rest Eberle or Stephenson, maybe both, and let Douglas match up with the Tkachuks, maybe go with 7 defensemen.
They play Detroit Tuesday, Utah on Thursday FYI!