Once again, never a doubt for the Seattle Kraken.
The Kraken fumbled away a multi-goal lead for the fourth time since Oct. 13, when they took a two-goal lead at the Philadelphia Flyers, lost it, but then recovered to win in a shootout. Since then, they gave up a three-goal lead to the Detroit Red Wings and won again in a shootout, then blew another two-goal lead against the Utah Mammoth but bounced back to win 5-3.
The latest edition of the Kraken testing the cardiac health of their fans came Wednesday against the Toronto Maple Leafs. Seattle again went to the third period up by two after Chandler Stephenson scored a power-play goal to make it 3-2 at 3:33 of the second period, and Ryker Evans followed that up at 10:58 with a banger of a goal to make it 4-2.
But the tide turned dramatically again in the third, until Brandon Montour put things back on the rails with just 33 seconds left in the game.
Here are Three Takeaways from a dramatic 5-4 Kraken win over the Maple Leafs.
Takeaway 1: More third-period shenanigans
As was the case in the three previous iterations of this style of win, you still have to give the Kraken a ton of credit for righting the ship after letting a lead slip away. It’s a concerning trend that it keeps happening, but coach Lane Lambert has reminded us that being in that position in the first place is a good thing.
Game script is certainly a factor—when you’re ahead by two or more, it’s easy to sit back and try to protect, even if you’re intending to play on your toes. But at some point, it would be nice to see Seattle take a lead and then just bury an opposing team rather than having to find late-game heroics every time.
“Teams that are down… I mean, we’ve been in that situation,” said Stephenson, who had two points on the night. “You’re just kind of playing, I don’t want to say recklessly, but you’re just playing. It doesn’t really matter if one goes in because you’re down. So, whereas when you’re protecting a lead, you’re being more conservative, you’re trying to obviously defend a little bit better, and sometimes it’s that you defend a little bit too much and kind of back yourself into a corner.”
Through these four nail-biting wins, Lambert has continued to lean into the positive outcomes as opposed to dwelling on the temporarily lost leads.
On this night, he pointed out that Jack Roslovic’s goal that cut the deficit to 4-3 and gave Toronto the momentum came at 4-on-4, and Auston Matthews’ game-tying goal that looked like it was going to send the contest to overtime came with Sergei Bobrovsky pulled for an extra skater.
“I think that you’d always like to see [a more assertive approach] a little bit, for sure,” Lambert said. “We’d love to have a few more shots and things like that. But I thought we were really sound. They didn’t get a scoring chance 5-on-5 in the third period. Let me just put it that way.”
So, Lambert is indicating that he’s happy with how the team defended down the stretch, even though it gave up the two goals.
Takeaway 2: Josh Ma-haple Leafs Killer
As has been the case for much of the season, the Kraken again got contributions from all across their lineup Wednesday, including another beautiful Berkly Catton goal, the Stephenson power-play goal, and three goals from the blue line.
We’ll talk about Brandon Montour’s game-winner in Takeaway 3, but how about the goals by Josh Mahura and Ryker Evans?
Mahura—who also scored the overtime game-winner against these same Leafs last season—briefly put Seattle back in the driver’s seat after Gavin McKenna had scored his first of two power-play goals late in the first.
Just like he did to start the game, Lambert put out his fourth line along with his third defense pair. He said that was just a matchup thing because Toronto was starting its fourth line, and Lambert had last change at home.
“I think you kind of see who each team’s starting in the game and in the periods, and our mindset is just to keep it simple,” Mahura said. “Try to get some… I don’t know, I don’t want to say O-zone time, but just some puck possession time and try to play not in our end and be breaking pucks out. So it’s nothing crazy like in the sense of, we’re trying to necessarily accomplish something, but just going out and executing our game plan.”
Well, they executed it beautifully to start the second, and it led to Mahura scoring his first goal of the season and first since that great GWG last season. Freddy Gaudreau made a quick-out pass from the right half wall and hit Ben Meyers in stride. Mahura recognized an odd-man rush opportunity and jumped up into the play. Meyers put it on Mahura’s stick, and Mahura had a wide-open net to make it 2-1.
MUZZ MAGIC! 🚨 Just your run-of-the-mill, ho-hum Josh Mahura goal assisted by Ben Meyers. 2-1 #SeaKraken https://t.co/1dusqTm8h2
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 29, 2026
Later in that same frame, Toronto cleared to the neutral zone, where Stephenson caught the puck and quickly began the transition back to offense. He passed to Samoskevich at the red line, who made a hard cut to give himself some room. Samoskevich then found Evans flying over the blue line, and Evans fired a perfect shot that clanked off the far post and rattled in behind Bobrovsky.
RYKER STRIKER! 🎯 🚨 Samoskevich and Evans were FLYING over the line, and Evans fires it in stride and snipes it off the post. 4-2 #SeaKraken https://t.co/h1CZ57n4Gm
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 29, 2026
“It was very impressive. Impressive enough that I didn’t even know it went in,” Samoskevich said of Evans’ shot. “He’s a great player. I think he’s playing really good right now. I think everyone’s playing really good, and when we play at that speed, we’re hard to play against.”
Takeaway 3: More late-game heroics
With about 40 seconds left in regulation and the game appearing destined for overtime, Bobby McMann floated a high flip that wobbled its way toward Bobrovsky. With the puck taking an odd bounce and Matty Beniers crashing, Bobrovsky had no choice but to cover it and take a whistle.
Beniers won the ensuing offensive-zone draw back, and Jordan Eberle jumped on the puck and quickly slid it across to an open Brandon Montour, who had circled outside to give himself plenty of space from Roslovic. Montour glided in to just above the right dot, wound up, and sent a laser beam toward Bobrovsky that squeezed between his pads and into the net.
MONTOUR MADNESS 🚨 After Toronto ties it with 1:30 left, Brandon Montour sneaks it in with 32 seconds left to seal the win for #SeaKraken What a win! https://t.co/Qa0G96Vyzg
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) October 29, 2026
Like we said, never a doubt.
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!!!
Killing the power play has been a thorn to the Kraken side so far this year. I’m sure they are trying to get it figured out, but it can’t continue the way it is now. Off to Calgary who are playing very well as of late… Overall there is a lot of positives going on with the Kraken.
I don’t know why, but there is a lot of puck watching in the NHL these days. Sometimes they look like pee-wees. Matthews is 8 feet off the side of the net, and Dunn is playing pylon in no-man’s-land with his back to him. It’s kind of comical.
I woke up with a sore neck. I’m sure that had nothing to do with the stress of last night’s game at all. You know what they say…two goal lead is the worst lead in hockey.
It was fast, fun game. Going to just leave it at that. Go Kraken!
That is a glass-half-full interpretation of the coach’s comment. The glass-half-empty view is that their special teams play is still not very good, especially the PK (and somehow they are also terrible at 4 v 4). The PK is 28th in the league. That was supposed to be an obvious and relatively easy area for improvement this year, what is going on? Also, Grubauer finally had an off-night, what can ya do. Fortunately, Bobrovsky was worse! Geez he looks washed. I am shedding no tears.
Shane Wright also had a rough night, some turnovers and flubbed shots. Man, Catton is getting me excited, though.
Why are there so many days off in this stretch of the schedule, *before* the Finland trip? Seems odd. Pretty cool though that they stayed comfortably in 3rd place even after sitting on their butts for 3 days, with the Ducks and Sharks floundering. It is eeeeeaaaaaarrrrrrrlyyyy though, I should probably not be looking at the standings yet.
What the hell is Larsson doing dumping the puck in at 4 v 4 with 30 seconds left? Handed it over, they skated down and instantly scored.
Kraken have just two games a week over each of these next four weeks. I know the Finland trip is part of that, but the other weeks seem needlessly thin. The Kraken having that much time off makes me nervous. On Thanksgiving the Kraken will only have played 22 games while the Ducks and Sharks will be at 26 and 27 respectively.
Lindgren being out, and Oleksiak moving on has left a PK 1 set up with Vince Dunn on it which isn’t ideal. Still it should be better than it is.
Catton has looked great and so far they are outscoring their defensive issues. Hopefully they can keep it up.
According to Natural Stat Trick Dunn spent just over 6:00 on the PK all of last season. He’s already over 23:00 this season.
Edvinsson skates on the Red Wings kill and his on-ice GA/60 last season (8.4) was markedly better than each of the Kraken’s regulars (Larsson, Oleksiak, Lindgren). That was on Detroits 25th ranked PK last season by GA/60.
If only our main PK D wasn’t injured…
we should not have won a game getting 17 shots on net, we were very fortunate that Toronto was beat up and their goalie had a worse night then our goalie who looked bad.
Only positive was that Catton again looked good and that we somehow managed to win a game we had no business winning.
Not impressed with LL’s usage of Nyman, just over 8 minutes of ice time in a game he didn’t look bad in when he was on the ice. If you bring the kid up at least play him, punt him on at least the second unit PP and let’s see that shot. Oh wait he’s an offensive player and LL was trying to keep the shots below 20?
I asked him about Jani’s usage (that just tried to autocorrect to “Jani’s sausage,” which made me giggle), and he said it had nothing to do with Jani or a mistake he made. Was more about them trying to protect a lead, and it was only Jani’s first game. He put Stephenson and Freddy on a line together, and that’s why Jani’s ice time got sparse in the later stages.
…and what did he say about Jani’s sausage?
Thankfully nothing.
Thanks for asking that question.
It’s interesting to note that the Leafs had zero even strength goals. I’ve seen no one point that out but if I were a Leafs fan that’s why I’d be focusing on. They looked limp 5 v 5 and they’re all skewering Bob for one goal against when it was the other 19 guys inept even strength performance that put them there in the first place
I mean they were missing half their team…. I’m no Leafs fan but I thought they had a pretty reasonable game considering everyone who’s out of the lineup.
I am with you all the way on that. The Kraken pwned the Leafs at five-on-five for the entire night. The only reason the Leafs were even in the game was special teams. Toronto fans and media outlets love to pick out a scapegoat on their roster and just dump all the team’s woes on him so they can keep pretending that the Leafs are a better team than their record suggests. Unfortunately for Bobrovsky, that is him this year. Yes, he did the Leafs no favors in that game, but really only the Evans goal was squarely on him. Monty explained how he gamed Bobrovsky on the last goal based on their being longtime teammates. Also, Monty was just wide open and unchallenged. The Mahura goal was 100% on the defense for failing to take away the pass. Dominik Hasek isn’t stopping that shot. The Stephenson goal ricocheted off a defenseman’s skate and in, a sterling example of dumb luck. The Catton goal was a colossal defensive breakdown where he just skated slowly up the slot while batting the puck back and forth with absolutely nobody challenging him. That should not happen in the NHL; it was practically a penalty shot. It wasn’t Bobrovsky who lost them the game. The Leafs skaters were just sloppy in their own zone at five-on-five. That’s what ruined them.
“Lambert has continued to lean into the positive outcomes as opposed to dwelling on the temporarily lost leads” I saw some glaring errors by the defence during the penalty kills. On Grews left side the Did not slidde down low and 2 goals resulted in that. This happens to many teams that do not protect the farside post
Not sure what the quote is supposed to hint at here, but individual mistakes on D are a thing that happens to players in game. Three of the goals against were with a man advantage… you know the situation where theres more likely to be a free player by the net.
You are right. That has been a problem over and over again on the penalty kill. I get not wanting to get drawn low, but if a defenseman is going to stay home he had better negate anyone who drives to the net to look for a pass.
Great game! But if the Kraken are going to keeping winning when the puck luck runs out they need to shore up the D and PK.
If HCLL isn’t going to trust the kids, maybe GMJB should trade some with Wright for Edvinsson?
What are you on about? We’ve been playing the kids all season. This “not trusting the kids” narrative is quite possibly the dumbest thing that keeps getting air. It has no basis in reality and if anything reality proves you dead wrong here.
The underlying metrics are not good reading. Right now they are very lucky on offense and defense and they can’t kill penalties.
It’s early but they need to get better at a few things soon.
The kraken have been playing a lot better this year. Even when they give up a lead, they are still finding ways to win in the end, which is a good thing. Although, I still feel like the penalty kill needs work to be fixed. It’s been a tad better than last year so far, but not by much. It’s only October and there’s still lots of hockey left. They got time to improve on it. Hopefully they will get it down in the coming weeks. I really hope it’s solid by March. We could blow out a lot of teams with a strong penalty kill.