Much of the Seattle Kraken’s success this season has come from playing from ahead, building a lead and then holding on—sometimes for dear life—or even blowing said lead before bouncing back. In a 5-1 loss to the Minnesota Wild on Saturday, the Kraken were chasing from the first minute of the game.
To their credit, the Kraken did respond after an early gaffe and played great for the rest of the opening frame. But the game turned on its ear in the second period, and Seattle went down with a whimper against a skilled and well-organized Wild team.
“[Minnesota] played very well,” coach Lane Lambert said. “They played a solid team game. They were up, they made sure they had people back. It was tough to penetrate a little bit, and in order to do that, you’ve got to win a few more battles.”
Here are Three Takeaways from a 5-1 Kraken loss to the Wild.
Takeaway 1: Two breakaways, two goals
The Kraken made two egregious mistakes in this game that led to breakaways, and both ended up in the back of their net.
The first came about 20 seconds into the game. Kirill Kaprizov cycled the puck low in Minnesota’s end, then sprinted up ice. Adam Larsson pinched along the boards but lost the contested puck to Joel Eriksson Ek, who punched it past him and got it up the wall to Kaprizov, who was already across the red line.
Meanwhile, Vince Dunn completely lost track of Kaprizov, so Kaprizov was in alone with Joey Daccord for the first shot of the game. Kaprizov made an elite move to fake his shot and get Daccord to drop down, then deked to his backhand and chipped it into a mostly open net.
1-0 #mnwild VERY early. Vince Dunn somehow lost track of Kirill Kaprizov–the NHL’s top goal scorer–after he flew the zone. #SeaKraken chasing the game from the jump. https://t.co/7FFlAm3I9A
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 25, 2026
“We have a forecheck protocol in place, and we— Look, there were two or three mistakes made on it, so not good,” Lambert said. “Certainly not the way you want to come out of the gate.”
Dunn took some responsibility for the mishap.
“[It’s a] very untraditional forecheck, and I know they’re going to take off,” Dunn said. “And I need to be more aware and be that safety for our guys.”
Berkly Catton scored the next goal 10 minutes later (another beauty on a connection with Kaapo Kakko) to make it 1-1, and in fact, the Kraken played a strong first period aside from that early screwup. They very well could have been ahead going into the intermission.
THE LI’L CAT! 🐱 🚨 Another game, another sick goal involving Kaapo Kakko and Berkly Catton. This came 1 second after a power play ended. The second unit of Montour / Samoskevich / Wright / Kakko / Catton looked awesome. Snapping it around before the goal. 1-1 #SeaKraken https://t.co/jk8rahdgcW
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 25, 2026
They spent the first two minutes of the second period on a power play, which also could have kept the momentum for the frame and put Seattle in the driver’s seat. But both units failed to convert, and as the penalty to Blake Coleman—called at the end of the first for running over Daccord—was ticking down, Shane Wright started to head to the bench for a swap with Dunn.
As Wright was skating to the bench, though, Kakko passed to him at the point, so Wright hit the brakes and received the puck. Dunn had already jumped on to replace him but went back off when he realized Wright wasn’t coming to the bench, narrowly avoiding a too-many-men penalty. Wright then tried to force a pass back to Kakko below the goal line, but Matt Kiersted jumped the lane and intercepted it.
After making the errant pass, Wright oddly completed the change he had intended to make a couple seconds earlier. On came Dunn, but by the time he got onto the ice, Kiersted had already thrown a perfect aerial stretch pass to Coleman, fresh out of the penalty box. Coleman cruised down Lenny Wilkens Way and sniped it off the post and in.
2-1 #mnwild. Bad change between Shane Wright and Vince Dunn as a power play was ending, and Blake Coleman scores on a breakaway. https://t.co/g0BPFGlhum
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 25, 2026
“It was just a complete lack of awareness by us of what’s going on behind us in terms of guys coming out of the penalty box,” Lambert said. “I mean, it just can’t happen.”
Takeaway 2: Another tough night for Joey
You can’t fault Daccord for those two breakaway goals, and the Olli Maatta goal on a wrist shot from the point that made it 3-1 at 11:33 of the second just floated through a ton of traffic. There wasn’t much he could do there other than hope it hit him.
But you could see in his reaction that he wasn’t pleased with himself for the Eriksson Ek goal that made it 4-1 at 13:00 of the second and effectively iced the game for Minnesota.
Ryker Evans gets robbed by Wallstedt at one end, and Joel Eriksson Ek makes it 4-1 at the other. Joey will want that one back… tough rebound. #mnwild #SeaKraken https://t.co/Kw4VrfXuVq
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 25, 2026
Seconds after Jesper Wallstedt robbed Ryker Evans at the other end, Minnesota had a 3-on-2 rush brewing. Matt Boldy shot from distance. It was an easy one that Daccord would have liked to kick into the corner or swallow up. But it hit Daccord’s stick and took a weird bounce a couple feet in front of him. Before he could gather it back in, Eriksson Ek got to it and popped it up in the air. The puck dropped behind Daccord and trickled over the line.
Daccord is now 3-3-0 on the season, and his three losses (against very good opponents, mind you) have come with four, five, and eight goals against. His goals-against average has ballooned to 3.95, and his save percentage has dipped to .882.
“He’s had some numbers [against him],” Lambert said. “I thought he made some good saves. I thought the fourth goal really hurt. It was just a short rebound there, and especially after he had played very well during the [four-minute penalty kill just before]. But at the end of the day, we have to generate a little bit more offensively.”
There’s no question Daccord needs a rock-solid outing soon, both for his own sake and for the sake of the team.
Takeaway 3: Kraken go down with a whimper
While Seattle has shown resiliency in recovering from blown leads, it hasn’t yet shown much of an ability to come back from deficits. When things have started to go sideways, they’ve gone properly sideways, as was the case against Vegas and Florida.
In this one, the Kraken took a punch in the mouth in the second period, gave up three goals, and sent just one lousy shot at Jesper Wallstedt in the full 20-minute frame. The shot, by the way, was a backhander by Wright on that period-opening power play, 30 seconds before he turned it over to create the Coleman breakaway. So Seattle went without a shot for more than 19 minutes of that period.
Trailing 4-1 heading to the third, we assumed the game script alone would lead to relentless pressure from the Kraken, but that simply didn’t happen.
“Give them credit,” Lambert said. “They played a pretty sound, solid hockey game.”
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.
I’m sorry but the answer to McCann being injured is not Douglas!!! I really hope they get that sorted before next game.
I feel bad for Daccord he’s getting these games where the team just completely falls apart in front of him this season.
Yeah I think he went because Nyman just came that day so had no time to practice with the team. I am hopeful we get to see what he can bring to the team. Especially on the power play, which has already been a pleasant surprise.
There is no answer to McCann being injured. He is the team’s best forward.
There has to be a better answer the Douglas.
I have learned to wait 24 hours to comment to avoid irrational thinking and unnecessary curse words. Thanks Darren for your take and Go Kraken!
I’m assuming CV playing the night before limited the options for the active roster, but there likely weren’t many ways Lambert could go last night, and that was the wrong team to be playing when that happens. It looked to me being there that they were double-shifting with Catton, et al and limiting both Fleury and Douglas, and effectively even more short-handed.
Any updates on Lindren’s return? I think they are desperately in need of either getting back to their expected top 5 D-men and rotating the other three depending on match-ups, but likely even bringing in a “stay more at home” type d-man from outside the organization. Ottavainen shows shades of being that, with a little o-zone upside, but he’s still pretty raw…
Douglas only got 5:16 of total ice time and just a single shift of :44 seconds in the entire second period. Meyers was second in TOI with 13:01. Over half of Douglas’s time (2:53) came in the final 16:00 with the game out of hand. I think it’s safe to say Nyman wasn’t available and they were forced to double-shift for Douglas. I’m sure some folks will bemoan the stupid management for even having Douglas on the team when they could have Nyman or OFM sitting in the pressbox rather than playing in Coachella, but I expect with three days off Jani will get up to speed and worked into the lineup against the Leafs.
Let’s hope so… yes I was critical of even adding Douglas to our roster, seriously what is the point of having a player that can’t play at an NHL level. I mentioned this earlier in the season and pointed out that there might be times that they are forced to play him because of injuries. Last night was a perfect example, have someone in the rafters that can play hockey and you can get on the ice more then 5:16. You’re essentially just playing shorthand and wasting a roster spot. I’m not suggesting that they put a developing player in the rafters, there are other options.
In regards to the game itself yesterday I’d take a player playing their second game in a row who just flew up over basically playing shorthand.
I feel terrible for all the people for whom that might have been their first Kraken game. It was Beer League Kraken. Listless. Lackluster. Dispassionate…whatever you want to call it. That didn’t look like a team trying to win a very winnable hockey game.
Our defense recorded a grand total of 5 hits over three periods. Cale Fleury had the most with 2. Evans and Dunn both had zero hits.
It’s possible this was a game where not having Melanson to drag them into the fight hurt us.
My dispassionate side that doesn’t care about the fans says “ok, we are looking at 25 or so more losses ahead, at a minimum. This was just a night where our system got beat by the other team’s system and execution. No one got hurt. Just look ahead to the next game.” That doesn’t help the people who wasted their time and money last night.
I will give them the one escape available. Every line was different in that game than in all previous games this seasons. 4 new line combos. We could chalk it up to that.
It was someone possibly you? Mentioned that they liked that the kraken were keeping lines together. Hopefully they get healthy and have that option. Bringing in Douglas messed up all the lines though… bringing in a replacement for McCann would have been sooo much better in so many ways.
Correction. I think the Stephenson line remained unchanged.
Or maybe just put Meyers up for McCann, Catton and Stephenson lines are unchanged and you have Douglas-Gaudreau-Winterton. I don’t know. I like we had some good line chemistry.
You can’t fault Joey for letting in those goals, but you’d like him to look like a competent goaltender and make a good effort on the saves and that was missing. Darren, you used to skewer Gru for games like this. Goalies are there as your backup plan and Joey didn’t really make any difficult saves last night. The same is true a few other games this year. Starters need to be difference makers and this year Gru has been doing that time and time again. I can’t think of the last time Joey did and that sucks.