It’s cliché to say a team ‘hung on to win,’ but there’s no other way to describe the Seattle Kraken’s victory against the Nashville Predators. It would be the first win in Seattle’s franchise history.
Seattle was in control over the first two periods.
The Kraken owned the puck, building a 3-2 lead, and looked like they were going to sail their way to a win. Things took a turn in favor of the Predators over the final 20 minutes, however, as Nashville controlled everything and outshot the Kraken 13-1. Philipp Grubauer stood tall for Seattle and made great save after great save to turn away the tying bid. The goalie ended the night making 27 saves.
Brandon Tanev would score an empty net goal – for Seattle’s only shot in the period – to preserve a 4-3 victory as Seattle is in the ‘W’ column for the first time.
“I know the guys were really excited to be able to get the first win,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said. “When it sinks in it’s the first win in franchise history, it’s a big deal for everybody.
Over the first two periods, Seattle held a 25-17 shots on goal advantage, a 5-on-5 shot attempt lead of 31-17, and 58 percent of the scoring chances. In the third period, Nashville held a 21-2 shot attempt lead and produced 11 scoring chances to Seattle’s one.
Grubauer simply was a monster in net and the difference during the third period. He stopped 10 of those scoring chances, only allowing a six-on-five goal to Mikael Granlund with 40 seconds left which added more drama to an already tense finish.
The Kraken weren’t generating offense but defensively collapsed in front of Grubauer and weathered the storm.
“Players on the bench managed it very well,” Hakstol said. “When you’ve got a captain like [Mark] Giordano, he’s calm as can be. We spent too much time in our own zone, we didn’t have the puck as much as we like. Sometimes the stress of the moment plays into things. There was no chaos on our bench. Guys were talking and doing the right things.”
Grubauer’s third period heroics allowed Seattle to get the puck down ice with 1:21 left in the game. Jared McCann raced it down in the corner and quickly sent it to Tanev in front for what ultimately would clinch the win.
It wasn’t easy but it was as memorable as a franchise’s first win can be.
“It’s huge, it’s something we’ll always remember,” McCann said. “We’ve got the [game] puck right now and we’ll do something nice with it.”
Everyone is scoring
For the second straight game, the Kraken got scoring up and down the lineup. Yes, the McCann, Jaden Schwartz and Jordan Eberle line was good and McCann scored a power-play goal in the first period to tie the game at one.
But it would be Tanev who scored next when he crashed the net on another power play. He found a rebound in the slot and buried it for his first of the game and the season. The goal gave Seattle its first lead in franchise history.
In the second period, Nashville’s Roman Josi scored on a five-on-three power play to even the game up at 2-2. The Kraken would take the lead later in the period when newcomer Alex Barre-Boulet slid a perfect pass to Alex Wennberg who was all alone at the side of the Nashville net. Wennberg easily scored his first of the season to go along with an assist on the night.
Seattle will be a stronger offensive team if it can get scoring up and down the lineup, and for the second game, it got two or more goals from players not on the top line.
Welcome to the Kraken, Barre-Boulet
The Kraken picked up Barre-Boulet off of waivers Monday afternoon from the Tampa Bay Lightning.
At 24 years old, Barre-Boulet had appeared in 15 NHL games prior to Tuesday. He’s posted 34- and 27-goal campaigns in the AHL and has some skill. He arrived to the Kraken with barely enough time to learn some names and faces, but you wouldn’t have known by his play.
He was on a line with Wennberg and Joonas Donskoi, and they came up with the go-ahead goal.
“He made a key play in the game,” Hakstol said. “That was a hell of a play to find Wennberg on the back door. I thought he was rock solid.”
By the numbers
Seattle was a perfect 2-for-2 on the power-play Tuesday which is remarkable considering how little time they’ve had together as a group. So far, they’ve kept the formula simple. Get traffic and get pucks to the net.
Morgan Geekie led the Kraken with four shots on goal in just over 19 minutes of ice time. His line, with Tanev and Ryan Donato, didn’t produce goals, but despite the one-sided third period ended the night with 64 percent of five-on-five shot attempts while they were on the ice.
McCann added an assist Thursday and has scored in both games Seattle has played.
The Kraken continue their road trip with a matchup Saturday with the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Seattle Kraken at Nashville Predators 5 p.m. Pacific time Bridgestone Arena, Nashville, Tennessee TV: ROOT Sports Radio: 950 AM KJR
Thursday night’s game shall live on in the minds of Kraken fans everywhere as the first glimpse they got of Alex Barre-Boulet… maybe. Those fans are also hoping for a more favorable outcome in Game 2 than they saw in Game 1, when the Kraken battled back from 3-0 down to level the score with the Vegas Golden Knights, only to concede a questionable game-winning goal just seconds later.
Barre-Boulet, claimed on waivers earlier in the week from the Tampa Bay Lightning, is slotting in for Marcus Johansson who is out indefinitely with a lower body injury. Apparently the Johansson injury happened in the Vegas game, but it’s hard to say when it happened as he played the whole game. It’s also a tough blow for Seattle, because the second line with Johansson, Alex Wennberg, and Joonas Donskoi really did look good Tuesday.
What the Kraken have in 24-year-old Barre-Boulet remains to be seen, but the undrafted forward has three goals in 15 career NHL games and has posted outstanding numbers in the AHL.
Nashville Predators
Tonight is the first game for the Nashville Predators, so you know the atmosphere at Bridgestone Arena will be pretty intense, much like Seattle saw in Vegas. There wasn’t a ton of turnover in Nashville’s roster over the offseason, but the Preds did trade away Viktor Arvidsson and Pekka Rinne retired.
Pregame video
Projected lineup
Since coach Dave Hakstol indicated in his availability today that Barre-Boulet would “take [Johansson’s] spot,” we are assuming that means his spot on the line with Wennberg and Donskoi. The top line was excellent in Vegas, and Morgan Geekie and Ryan Donato both scored, so we don’t envision the other lines getting shuffled. Here’s what we’re projecting.
UPDATE: Carson Soucy is replacing Haydn Fleury in the lineup. Fleury had a couple glaring mistakesagainstVegas, but we also expect the blue line to be a bit fluid for a while, at least until Seattle really knows what it has.
There are no moral victories in the NHL, but… One could argue that there were some moral victories for the Seattle Kraken in their first-ever game Tuesday, a 4-3 loss at the hands of the Vegas Golden Knights.
We at Sound Of Hockey came into the game cautiously optimistic, especially when we learned that Marcus Johansson, Jamie Oleksiak, Jared McCann, and Joonas Donskoi had remarkably cleared Covid protocol and arrived in Vegas in time for the game. But the cynical side of SOH was also bracing for a crushing defeat, because frankly, Vegas is good. Seattle could end up being good as well based on the small sample of exhibition hockey we had seen, but a successful preseason does not a regular season make.
So, like we said, we were bracing.
We braced even harder when the Kraken found themselves down 2-0 just 6:36 into the first period and then down 3-0 before the midway point in the second. To Seattle’s credit, it battled back, and in the end lost by one very questionable goal.
“I saw what I saw,” said coach Dave Hakstol of Chandler Stephenson’s game-winning goal, and what he saw was a distinct kicking motion propelling the puck past Philipp Grubauer.
Losing on a goal that probably shouldn’t have counted after the Kraken battled back from being down three is a real… kick… in… the… tentacles.
Takeaway #1: Better starts needed for Seattle
We saw this a couple times in the preseason as well, where the Kraken come out making sloppy plays with the puck and quickly find themselves in a deficit. That is exactly what happened on Tuesday, after an immediate 30-second buzz from McCann’s line that led to a power play.
Once that game-opening penalty ended, the Kraken were getting decent zone time and some pucks through to Robin Lehner, but it was Vegas that got higher quality chances in the first 20 minutes and went to the dressing room with a two-goal cushion.
We try to avoid making excuses, but Seattle did have a frenzied 36 hours leading up to Tuesday’s contest and was playing the first game in franchise history in one of the most hostile buildings in the NHL on opening night.
So if ever we were to make an excuse for a slow start, this might be the opportunity to do so. There was a lot happening off the ice for Seattle before this one.
Captain Mark Giordano said before the game that the team wasn’t looking for excuses, though, so let’s stick with that line of thinking. No excuses. Seattle needs better first periods moving forward.
Takeaway #2: Morgan Geekie can shoot the puck, allegedly celebrate
A wise man once said, “You can’t out-pizza the hut.” That wise man was Morgan Geekie in a press conference while he was still with the Carolina Hurricanes.
Geekie’s theory looked to be holding true 12 minutes into the third period Tuesday when he took a pass in the neutral zone and skated up the right side. He looked for a teammate to pass to, but learned he was all alone on what would surely turn out to be a nothing play, right?
Recognizing he was all alone with nowhere to go, the 23-year-old center loaded up and fired his heat-seeking missile of a snapshot from the top of the right circle. Vegas netminder Robin Lehner looked caught off guard by how quickly the puck got to him. It beat him cleanly over the glove, hit under the crossbar and went straight down to level the score at 3-3.
We didn’t see the celebration (we were tweeting in all caps), and ESPN did not capture it on the broadcast. SinBin.Vegas did see it, and said it was akin to the stick twirl and sword sheathing that Geekie did when he scored against Vancouver in Seattle’s first preseason game.
The Vegas bench noticed the celebration and apparently didn’t love it. With renewed vigor, the Golden Knights retook the lead 35 seconds later.
Hakstol responded Wednesday.
Dave Hakstol on how Vegas reacted to Geekie’s goal celebration: “I know Morgan really well and that’s not his personality… I looked at it on tape just to try to confirm or see it, and there's really nothing there. There’s certainly no intention, there never would be.”
So in a way, it turns out you can out-pizza the hut after all.
Takeaway #3: Control what you can and give nothing back
The “give nothing back” portion of this takeaway title is superfluous, but there was a very Pirates of the Caribbean flavor to a lot of the Vegas game presentation Tuesday, and we wanted this one to sound as plunderous as possible.
The “control what you can” chunk refers to the fact that the Kraken may have gotten hosed (depending on your bias) by NHL officiating for the first time in franchise history, a true milestone in the journey.
One thing newer hockey fans will learn as we go is that the sport is inherently chaotic. Some nights the puck will bounce your way, and some nights it will not. Similarly, calls will sometimes go your way, but usually they will not.
All you can do is work to be the better team every night, and when you do that, you will win more often than you lose, chaos be damned. Seattle showed tenacity by climbing out of a 3-0 crater, but Vegas had the better of the chances in a sloppy first period for the Kraken and dominated the beginning of the second.
Even with that tenacity, every bounce and every call had to go Seattle’s way in the second half of the game for the Kraken to come out on top. That surprisingly almost happened, but chaos ultimately reigned supreme.
Control more of the game and limit the impact of the chaos, because the chaos will be be ever-present.
Bonus Takeaway: What a night
I’m switching to first-person mode here, because I need to tell you about my own experience from Tuesday’s game.
I will never forget it.
I will never forget being on the plaza outside T-Mobile Arena before the game, surrounded by hundreds of partying Kraken fans, as Seattle’s players and coaches slowly trickled by en route to the arena. Seeing them react with surprise and appreciation as the revelers called out their names and urged them on was special to witness.
Inside the building, 18,000 jaws hit the floor when a three-dimensional Kraken rose out of the ice and was eventually burned back to the depths by a heroic knight in a show that locals called the best production ever by a franchise known for its over-the-top theatrics.
The gameplay was riveting. The atmosphere was intense. The night was unforgettable. Now imagine if Seattle would have completed the comeback.
That’s Game 1 out of 82 (and hopefully way more). Welcome to the NHL, folks.
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at Sound Of Hockey and the host, producer, and editor of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is an inconsistent beer league goalie who believes that five players have to make a mistake before the puck gets to him. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFunBrown or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
Seattle Kraken at Vegas Golden Knights 7 p.m. Pacific T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas, Nevada TV: ESPN, ESPN+, Sportsnet
It’s here! It’s here! It’s finally here! Opening night for the inaugural season of NHL hockey in Seattle has finally arrived. It’s been an unbelievable journey to get to this point, and it really was surreal to be sitting in T-Mobile Arena Tuesday morning, watching Seattle Kraken players (specifically those who aren’t in Covid protocol) going through their morning drills and preparing to take on the Vegas Golden Knights.
Vegas is arguably the toughest Pacific Division test under normal circumstances, so to have five players in Covid protocol as recently as Monday feels a bit unfair to an organization that has worked so hard to prepare its roster and its players for this moment. But as newly named captain Mark Giordano said Tuesday morning, the players in the locker room aren’t looking for excuses. They are ready and eager to go, and some players are going to get opportunities that may not have expected them.
UPDATE: Jared McCann, Jamie Oleksiak, and Joonas Donskoi all cleared Covid protocol and will play. We spotted Oleksiak walking into the arena, so we figured there could be some changes coming from what we were projecting earlier. Apparently when Dave Hakstol said the lineup was a “work in progress” Tuesday morning, this is why.
Very slick, Mr. Hakstol! Very slick indeed!
#SeaKraken forwards Jared McCann and Joonas Donskoi plus D-man Jamie Oleksiak have all arrived in Vegas, confirms GM Ron Francis. Let's go, Game 1 puck drop in 90 minutes.
One other bit of welcome news in all of the chaos of the last 24 hours was that Marcus Johansson was cleared from Covid protocol just in time to make the team flight on Monday evening. He said he did not test positive, but he was a close contact, so he had to wait for clearance to be able to take the trip to Vegas.
Jamie Oleksiak, Jared McCann, Joonas Donskoi, and Calle Jarnkrok remain in protocol, though, so they were not allowed to make the trip, and coach Dave Hakstol gave no prediction for when they might be able to join the team.
So, what the Kraken have is what they get to work with tonight. They did claim Alex Barre-Boulet off waivers from the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday, and he is in Las Vegas but didn’t make it in time for the morning skate. Hakstol didn’t indicate whether or not they’d put him right into the lineup having never even skated with the team, but he is available. Our *guess* is that they’ll go with their more known quantities, but we shall see.
Vegas Golden Knights
All reports indicate that the Golden Knights had a lousy preseason and lost 4-0 to the Sharks in their last exhibition game, which was the team’s “dress rehearsal” for opening night.
Still, you know T-Mobile Arena is going to be electric on Tuesday, and the players will come ready.
Interestingly, Vegas is expected to play Dylan Coghlan, a 23-year-old defensemen, on its fourth forward line, as the Golden Knights have remarkably already found themselves in salary cap hell. That’s a fascinating predicament for a team that just ran into this last season.
Here’s what our friends at SinBin.Vegas see as the lineup for Vegas.
Thus, this is a guess at the lines today (definitely wouldn't say this is confirmed)
Here’s how the team is lined up in warmups. This looks a lot better than what we were projecting earlier.
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at Sound Of Hockey and the host, producer, and editor of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is an inconsistent beer league goalie who believes that five players have to make a mistake before the puck gets to him. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFunBrown or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
Sick of preseason? Of course you are. BUT! BUT! It’s the Kraken’s LAST preseason game tonight in Vancouver, which means you’re getting something that will look very close to Seattle’s initial roster.
Recently, coach Dave Hakstol implied that the last preseason game could be a dress rehearsal for opening night, but in the same breath cautioned us, saying that may not be the case for this particular group. And he’s probably being truthful in that statement because a guy like Marcus Johansson, for example, is going to end up on the team but is not dressing tonight.
There’s also the Yanni Gourde factor to consider. He’s been downplaying his readiness and the fact that he switched out of a red non-contact jersey the last two days, but one can’t help but wonder how far off he truly might be.
If Gourde’s return is imminent, and he’s ready to go within the first few weeks of the regular season starting, then that changes the entire makeup of Seattle’s lineup for the better. In that case, Hakstol’s cautioning on line combinations and the initial roster will be validated.
What we have tonight probably is not the exact lineup that we’re going to see for the season opener in Vegas next week, but it is darn close. Worth noting, the all-Swede line has been broken up with Johansson out of the lineup, so Hakstol has really put Ryan Donato in a position to succeed here.
Philipp Grubauer will go the distance this evening, which we have not seen him do before. He has looked dialed in at practice of late and was solid in his most recent preseason appearance, so keep an eye on the Kraken’s No. 1-A goalie tonight.
Canucks still dressing a sub-par lineup
After Seattle mostly dominated and won 5-3 in Spokane two Sundays ago against a largely AHL roster, we were expecting to see a slightly more seasoned group this time around. That still doesn’t appear to be the case, though, as the Canucks are not yet in dress rehearsal mode. They still have two preseason games to play after tonight, so they are saving a lot of their veteran players.
We will see a better top line in Tanner Pearson, Bo Horvat, and Nils Hoglander, plus an NHL goalie in Thacher Demko. But Brock Boeser, Elias Pettersson, and Quinn Hughes will not participate tonight, among others.
We still will not be comparing apples to apples as we dissect tonight’s game, but this is what the Kraken have to work with. On paper, Seattle really should be the better team tonight.
Projected lineup
Here’s our projected lineup, based on what Hakstol said after morning skate.
Apparently having your top players in the lineup is helpful after all. On Tuesday, Seattle head coach Dave Hakstol held Jared McCann, Jordan Eberle, Jaden Schwartz, Mark Giordano, and Philipp Grubauer out of the lineup—standard practice for any team in preseason—and the result was unsurprisingly a 6-0 drubbing at the hands of Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers. On Wednesday, the Kraken dressed those top players, and the result was a good, even battle with the Calgary Flames that ended in a 4-3 shootout win for Seattle.
Here are our takeaways from the Kraken’s third preseason game.
Takeaway #1: Seattle might have something cooking with its top line
So about that Eberle-McCann-Schwartz line…
There’s some obvious chemistry forming here, which bodes well for the Kraken. When the top-scoring trio was on the ice Wednesday, the pace and the passing seemed to ratchet up a notch and went up even higher when they got out there at the same time as the top defensive pairing of Giordano and Adam Larsson.
On the first goal, just three minutes into the game, Cale Fleury made a nice stretch pass from the defensive zone to Schwartz near the far blue line. Schwartz, while falling, found McCann who carried it into the zone, then dished to Giordano who was streaking into the slot. Giordano slipped one through the wickets of Dan Vladar, and the home Calgary faithful went giddy for their beloved Gio.
It was a pretty tic-tac-toe passing play that allowed Seattle to go from regrouping in its own zone to scoring at the other end in about five seconds.
In the third period, with the game level at two goals apiece and the teams playing at four-on-four, Eberle picked off an errant Michael Stone pass behind Calgary’s goal line and immediately found an open Schwartz in the slot, who buried his second of the game. That sequence took two seconds.
There was almost a third goal by Schwartz, which also would have been assisted by Eberle, but Vladar robbed Schwartz of the hat trick with a desperation toe save.
There’s bound to be some line shuffling throughout the course of the season, but Hakstol has to like what he has seen in two games from McCann, Eberle, and Schwartz. It will be interesting to watch if he continues to play them together for these last three preseason games—when they’re all in the lineup, that is—or if he moves any of them around to see how the chemistry might look with other mixes.
Takeaway #2: Seattle could use some work on three-on-three
The game in general looked a bit sloppy Wednesday, as is often the case in contests that feature just 43 combined shots on goal between the two teams. When we got to three-on-three overtime, we were expecting to see the high-octane, flowing brand of hockey that we’ve become accustomed to in past regular seasons.
That isn’t what we got, and it was a reminder that although we are a full week into training camp, the Kraken have really only had a few days of practice. And with the squad split into two groups, Hakstol and his staff have spent very little time on the finer details like special teams and three-on-three.
It’s also a stark reminder that Seattle has a unique challenge in that it has never done any of this before. Hakstol has maintained that every year poses similar challenges, because every team is—in a way—starting over and building something from scratch. But other teams have the luxury of familiarity between most of the players and usually between the players and the coaches. The Kraken have no such luxuries, so they will need to continue to ramp up quickly as we approach opening night just 12 days from now.
Takeaway #3: Don’t cross check guys
In yesterday’s NHL, cross checking was easily the most frequently committed offense that got penalized with the least frequency. Did that make sense? What I’m trying to say is that players got away with cross checking all the time as recently as last season.
The NHL has decided to crack down on cross checking this season, and we’ve already seen it called a handful of times in the Kraken’s three preseason games, including once for each team in Wednesday’s game.
The change evokes memories of the period after the NHL returned from the 2004-05 lockout and decided that the clutch-and-grab era was officially over. Suddenly every stick infraction made through the neutral zone—remember, in the clutch-and-grab era, there was a stick infraction made on every trip through the neutral zone—was penalized.
History has proven that players will eventually adjust and stop cross checking guys in the lower back when they’re already down on the ice or hitting them so hard with the shaft of the stick that they topple over. But that will take time, so for now, expect a lot more of these calls to be made.
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at Sound Of Hockey and the host, producer, and editor of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is an inconsistent beer league goalie who believes that five players have to make a mistake before the puck gets to him. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFunBrown or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
