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Three Takeaways – Kraken go down with a whimper in 5-1 loss to Wild

Darren Brown

Joey Daccord 102426

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.

“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.

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.

“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.

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.

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