After Lane Lambert was blunt in his assessment of the Seattle Kraken’s performance against the Anaheim Ducks on Friday—calling it, “The worst 40 minutes we played all year,”—I was curious to see what kind of tone Seattle’s practice would take Saturday, as the team prepared for a 12 p.m. game against the New Jersey Devils on Sunday.
After all, Lambert used some of his strongest language to date in describing how his team played, so would they get the bag-skate treatment? Would Lambert scream at them and come down with a heavy hand?
In this case, not exactly. In front of a surprisingly large crowd for the open-to-the-public skate, the practice was a focused, up-tempo session that revolved around transitions, rushes, and special teams. But it wasn’t of the “skate until you puke” variety.
I asked Lambert how he addresses the group the day after a game like the one it played on Friday: does he come at it from an instructional angle, or react heavy-handedly?
“It depends where you’re at in the season,” Lambert said. “It depends where you’re at in the schedule. There’s all kinds of different sorts of scenarios that go into it, and there’s different ways to approach it, just like you said.”
My thought is that if the schedule weren’t compressed the way it has been because of the upcoming Olympics, we may have seen a more reprimanding approach employed by Lambert on Saturday. But with another game just 24 hours away, Lambert clearly felt the on-ice portion needed to be more tactical than punitive.
Lambert shared that the team had a morning meeting, and the messaging was, “Just whatever you have to do, from a preparation standpoint, as an individual, you’ve got to do it. We talked about our starts this morning, so it’s clearly an issue, and we just have to be better in that area.”
Following up on the Shane Wright situation
Nothing has changed in the last… oh, 12 hours since I asked Shane Wright how he’s dealing with the “outside noise” of trade rumors about him, and he said, “I don’t really care too much about that. It’s no offense to you guys, reporters, at the end of the day, you can’t really trust too much what they say. And at the end of day, it’s just rumors. I’m not too worried about that.”
Lambert said Friday that the team has been working on a few areas of Shane’s game and that he’s seeing improvement from the 22-year-old center. So I also asked Lambert Saturday to elaborate on what those areas are.
“I think he’s way better in the defensive zone right now,” Lambert said. “I think his positioning, his understanding of his positioning when he comes into the defensive zone, is miles ahead of where it was 20, 25, 30 games ago, and I think that his ability and his confidence—and we’ve talked about this before—to hold onto pucks and make plays has improved throughout the year. And I think all of those things coupled together are making him and will make him a better hockey player.”
Something tells me there are fans who won’t like the next part of what Lambert said, especially in the context that Cutter Gauthier—drafted one spot behind Wright at No. 5 in the 2022 NHL Draft—burned around Vince Dunn on Friday and scored his 23rd goal of the season.
“I think [Wright] is doing a really good job of embracing what we’re coaching into him, and sometimes players—in order to play the right way—sometimes they have to play for the team type of thing. I’m not saying he wasn’t before, but sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit of your personal statistics in order to embrace the way to play, in order for the team to have success. I think he’s done an amazing job with that, I really do.”
Asked if that’s a straightforward conversation to have with a young player, Lambert said:
“It is. It’s a conversation that, because at the end of the day, you’re young, and you haven’t had all this experience and stuff like that. You’ve been used to getting points and things like that, and I’m not saying we don’t want him to, I’m just saying we want him to learn how to play the right way, and I think he’s doing a great job of that. I just… there’s a certain way to play for an entire hockey team in order to win in the playoffs, and that’s what I’m building towards.”
One thing Lambert didn’t touch on is Wright’s performance in the face-off circle, something that is clearly valued by the Kraken coach. Face-offs are a flawed stat, but after finishing last season at 44.5 percent in the circle in 79 games, Wright has regressed to just 37.5 percent this year. I do believe this is a big reason his starts are almost exclusively in the offensive zone, and also a big reason why Lambert hasn’t yet placed his wholehearted trust in Wright.
Odds and ends
• It looked like the Kraken will go with the same lineup Sunday against the Devils, with Ryan Lindgren being the only question mark (and I’d guess Joey Daccord gets the start). Lindgren did not participate Saturday, but Lambert said it was just a maintenance day. Cale Fleury took Lindgren’s spot in line rushes next to Ryker Evans.
• Philipp Grubauer was breaking in his Team Germany pads at practice. Joey Daccord also donned a brand-new set of pads, though they are the exact same design as the ones he’s been wearing—just with fewer puck marks.
Philipp Grubauer is breaking in his Team Germany gear. #GoalieGearCorner #SeaKraken
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) January 24, 2026
🎺 🎺 🎺 pic.twitter.com/ZgO19KMKZg
• Ryker Evans, who took a friendly fire high stick from Ben Meyers two games ago and now has a nasty zipper on his lip, played Friday’s game with a visor plus a lower face shield. At practice, he ditched the lower face shield.
• Meyers, week to week with a lower-body injury, was apparently injured blocking a shot in the second period against the New York Islanders on Wednesday. Jacob Melanson replaced him in the lineup Friday, and it appears Melanson will remain in the lineup on Sunday.
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.
Whenever I see a dino coach trying to squeeze a promising young player into a vanilla veteran box with a hermetic screw on lid – I’m reminded of how the Habs realized they were doing that exact thing with their promising youngster Caul Caufield. The Habs, to their credit, reversed course, fired the dino coach and brought in Martin St. Louis as a talent whisperer to unlock Caufield’s (and other young Hab players’) true talent – and look at Caufield now.
It should be Cole not *Caul of course, heh.
Caufield again with a hat trick tonight!
LL is the reason for his poor performance and the reason why we are probably going to see him excel on another team. Do we really want to let this coach who probably won’t last another season dictate what our future holds? Why is ownership sitting there and just watching this mess, put your foot down and fire the front office that hired him.
Thank you so much for asking the potentially uncomfortable questions! With such a small third-party media contingent covering the team, it’s so critical to have independent media in the room.
I recall Dave Hakstol doing the same thing with Matty Beniers in his second season. I also recall fans panicing about the dip in Beniers’s scoring in his second year. Now Matty is scoring at a decent clip again (note the uptick in his offensive zone confidence this season), particularly when he draws Eberle and McCann on his wings.
Honestly, Wright needs to tighten some things up, notably the turnovers, and that sort of thing still being in his game is likely due in large part to the ridiculous amount of organizational upheaval he has been through in the past three years. He can score and create offense, but his line gives up as many goals as it scores and that is with the ludicrous number of offensive zone starts and with a relatively low quality of opposition. As somebody who remembers watching Alexander Daigle, I know that is not a rut that a young center wants to get stuck in. Wright absolutely needs an NHL-caliber responsible aspect to his game, and he needs it before he develops the chancey bad habits that make guys like Brock Boeser into over-paid albatrosses.
I write this and immediately Shane pulls off one of the nastiest back checks I have seen all year (two minutes into the first period). Wow, that was impressive.