by Andy Eide | Apr 22, 2022 | Gameday Coverage
What started promising soon turned to the fodder of nightmares in St. Paul for the Seattle Kraken on Friday. The Minnesota Wild scored six unanswered goals after the Kraken led early and skated away with a 6-3 win at Xcel Energy Center.
As well as Seattle played in the first period, when they struck early for a 2-0 lead, the Wild matched and flew past the Kraken in the second period with five scores.
“They’re gonna get some life, they’re a good team, and they had a lot of life in the second period,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said. “We fed a lot of that as well. You can’t do that, to be blunt. We’ve played really good hockey over the last stretch here and in the second period they were a team that was playing for a playoff position and seeding. They played for real, we played 20 minutes of shinny hockey.”
It was a record night for Minnesota (49-21-7). Kirill Kaprizov scored a goal with three assists to become the first player in Wild history to top the 100-point mark in a season. When the final horn sounded, Kaprizov had 103 points.
Minnesota forward Kevin Fiala had five assists, also a franchise record, and Joel Eriksson-Ek scored twice with an assist. Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 25 shots.
Not much went right for the Kraken (26-46-6), who got goals from Daniel Sprong, Yanni Gourde, and Matty Beniers. The rookie extended his career opening point streak to five straight games (three goals, two assists). In the first of a back-to-back (the Kraken are in Dallas on Saturday) schedule, Philipp Grubauer took the brunt of the damage and made 29 saves.
Strong Kraken start evaporated quickly
Seattle jumped out to a two-goal lead in the first with a pair of nice plays.
The Kraken took the lead 1-0 at 6:16 after the forecheck forced Fleury into losing the puck. Joonas Donskoi picked it up and threw it to Sprong in front of the net with a wide-open net.
Seattle doubled it’s lead at 10:20 after Karson Kuhlman and Gourde passed it back and forth three times before Gourde scored his 20th of the season.
“We were sharp to start the game,” Hakstol said. “That shows a little bit and we took advantage of a couple of holes that they had defensively. They weren’t as sharp to start the game. That was one that we had an odd-numbered situation on a nice play by those guys to finish it off.”
Eriksson-Ek cut the Kraken lead to 2-1 with a power-play goal at 16:01 when he one-timed a pass from Kaprizov. At the time it seemed like the game would turn into a close, back-and-forth match, but it wouldn’t be.
“I can go through every one of the goals against if you want, but I’m not going to do that,” Hakstol said.
The Kraken would get loose with the puck, take penalties, and struggled on special teams. The Wild were 3-for-5 on the power play.
Eriksson-Ek scored again early in the second to tie the game and then the floodgates opened.
Minnesota scored four more times in the second on goals from Kaprizov, Hartman, Mats Zuccarello, and Nicolas Deslauriers. The Kraken started the period with the lead but would skate off, heads low, trailing 6-2.
“We got sloppy, and it’s nothing more than that,” Hakstol said. “Why we did, I can’t tell you exactly, I can’t put my finger on it. Just, we got sloppy. You know, you start looking for points, you start looking for easy space and there is not any against good teams at this time of year. That’s a tough period for us.”
Beniers scored the only goal in the third. It came on a Kraken power play at 5:16 of the third when he beat Fleury from the slot.
Beniers factoids
By scoring a goal, Beniers is the first rookie to start his career with a five-game point streak since former Spokane Chief Ty Smith did it with the New Jersey Devils in 2021. The last time a rookie had a longer point streak to start was Jonathan Toews who had points in 10 straight to begin his career with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2007-08.
Since Beniers joined the Kraken, Seattle has scored at least three goals in all five games he played.
by bliesse | Apr 21, 2022 | Gameday Coverage
All photos taken by Brian Liesse. Photos are property of Sound Of Hockey and cannot be reused.
by Darren Brown | Apr 21, 2022 | Gameday Coverage
Walking into Climate Pledge Arena Wednesday, we found ourselves thinking back to some of the surprising home victories the Kraken pulled off earlier this season. Games that jumped to mind were the Dec. 3 win against Edmonton, when the Oilers came in cooking, and the Jan. 23 victory over the Florida Panthers, who now have 116 points in the standings.
The Kraken faced another team Wednesday that currently has 116 points, the Colorado Avalanche, and in impressive fashion held that high-octane group mostly at bay. Remember, this is the same team that came to Seattle in November and completely outclassed the Kraken with a 7-3 drubbing, then rallied in the third period to beat the Kraken again in January.
But Wednesday felt like it was going to be different from those other two meetings. The Kraken had played two good games in a row coming in, and seeing visions of surprising past victories felt like a real sign that something fun was going to happen.
And it did! Here are our Three Takeaways from an impressive 3-2 Kraken win over the Avalanche, giving Seattle its first three-game winning streak in franchise history.
Takeaway #1: Fast start spells success for Kraken against Avalanche
As they did against the Senators on Monday, the Kraken came out flying on Wednesday and jumped out to an early 3-0 lead, taking advantage of a shaky Pavel Francouz. Kole Lind—scratched against Ottawa—got Seattle on the board first just 1:12 into the game with his second career NHL goal.
It came on a set play in which Will Borgen recognized that Lind had the jump on J.T. Compher and intentionally iced it. Lind beat out the icing call, picked up the rebound off the endwall, and made a nice move around Francouz.
Jordan Eberle followed that up with a snipe over Francouz’s shoulder at 5:23, and Yanni Gourde crashed the net on a Jared McCann shot that caromed off Gourde and in at 14:44.
Congratulations to Eberle for winning the NHL’s “Jagermeister Shot of the Night,” which we previously did not know was a thing.
Though the Avalanche would get back in it with tallies late in the first and third periods, the three opening-frame goals were all the support Philipp Grubauer needed to knock off his old team.
Grubauer, who stopped 27 of 29 shots on the night, gave all the credit to the players in front of him. “We were just in shooting lanes, boxing guys out,” Grubauer said. “[The Avalanche] have the skill to make the play that’s not there or the play that doesn’t seem obvious. So, really good job by everybody being in the lanes [with good] sticks.”
Eberle, who has been trotted out to talk to the media after some miserable losses this season, was in high spirits after the victory. “Any time you go up 3-0 early, it’s a bonus,” he said of the team’s hot start. “At the same time, against these guys, you understand that they have the firepower to be able to just easily come back from that, but I thought we did a good job for the most part limiting their chances and trying to help Grubi out as much as we could. When things broke down, he was there to make saves.”
Takeaway #2: Shut down Slow down their stars
In the aforementioned memorable Dec. 3 win against the Oilers, Seattle did a very good job of limiting the damage inflicted by Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid. Each superstar had a goal and an assist that night, but neither was able to really take over the game the way one might have expected.
The Kraken employed similar tactics on Wednesday, using a whole-team approach to defending against Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar. Again, both guys got on the scoresheet, as Makar scored a sick goal late in the first, and MacKinnon’s shot from distance led to Artturi Lehkonen’s goal in the closing minutes of the third.
But like in the game against Edmonton, the Kraken didn’t give Colorado’s biggest superstars too many opportunities. They were smart through the neutral zone, and when the Avs got set up in the offensive zone, Seattle did a tremendous job of keeping the puck on the perimeter.
“I guess we kept them for the most part off the scoreboard,” coach Dave Hakstol said of MacKinnon and Makar. “You just don’t shut those guys down. You’ve got to work hard, stay above [the puck], check out of the middle. … It starts with our first and second layers. They did a really good job. The forwards did a good job tonight, about as well as I would have hoped we could do in terms of deflecting and pushing some of that speed outside.”
That’s how you beat elite teams with elite players.
Takeaway #3: We’re going streaking!
As much as we (quietly) want to see the Kraken rack up a few more organic losses to really solidify a top draft pick, it is very fun to see this team winning games. They’ve been much better since the Trade Deadline, and witnessing them get their third consecutive win for the first time this season was neat, especially against a team like the Avalanche.
“I think the last three games we’ve played teams that are pretty skilled up front,” Grubauer said. “We kind of changed our mentality a little bit. Especially tonight, I think we looked like a playoff team. We did all the right things from in our zone, from the forecheck, and through the neutral zone. We were supporting each other. [We were] on top of the puck, PK, special teams did a really good job.”
It’s been a grind and a process to get to this point, but the Kraken do appear to be playing some of their most cohesive hockey of the season right now. Eberle, who has been on his fair share of both winning and losing teams over the years, had some interesting things to say on the topic.
“We’re learning,” Eberle explained. “I’ve always found that winning and losing is such a fine line in this league. I mean, when you’re on the losing side of it, you tend to think the world is ending, but you don’t understand how close you are to actually being there. And then when you finally start to get leads, and then you blow them, you’re just getting that much closer.”
The narrative earlier in the season was often that the team was finding ways to lose games it could have won, but it seems to be flipping that script of late. “It’s not a mystery. It’s hard to win in this league,” Hakstol said. “You have a new group that’s a little bit unsure, that’s all it takes, and all of a sudden a small crack turns into a pretty large chasm. So right now there’s not a lot of cracks there. Guys are working hard, guys are in sync, guys are trusting each other.”
Bonus Takeaway: Congratulations, Vaughan Rody!
At this point, you may have heard our podcast interview with Vaughan Rody or read our Q&A with him, but he did officially ref his last game Wednesday, closing out his 22-year career as an NHL linesman. The Kraken gave him a nice little video tribute early in the game, and the players stuck around to shake his hand after.
We asked Hakstol about Rody after the game. “He’s very good at what he does,” Hakstol said. “But more importantly for me, it’s just the way he goes about it. He’s first class. He’s one of the guys that’s— there’s always a time in the game when you have an opportunity to say hello, and I got a ton of respect for him in the way he does his job.”
by bliesse | Apr 19, 2022 | Gameday Coverage
All photos taken by Brian Liesse. Photos are property of Sound Of Hockey and cannot be reused.
by Darren Brown | Apr 19, 2022 | Gameday Coverage
You would think that after all the hype over the last week and a half, Matty Beniers scoring for the second time in as many home games would have been the big story on Monday. The 19-year-old rookie did pot another goal in a 4-2 Kraken win over the Senators with a high tip of an Adam Larsson shot-pass. The goal earned Beniers the No. 3 star of the night and his third point in just three NHL games.
But Beniers was overshadowed Monday by two other players that have only been on the team a short while, guys that are playing for contracts when this season ends. There will be plenty of Beniers talk to come, but this particular night belonged to Daniel Sprong and Victor Rask.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a second consecutive home win for the Kraken.
Takeaway #1: Sprong and Rask helped themselves Monday
This is a challenging juncture for guys like Sprong and Rask, who have both played on multiple teams this season, and who are both on expiring deals. The future is certainly murky for the duo, and they each needed a night like Monday to help their cases heading into the offseason.
At the Trade Deadline, Sprong was acquired as part of the Marcus Johansson trade to the Washington Capitals. After the deal, general manager Ron Francis made it sound like the Capitals wanted Seattle to take Sprong, indicating they weren’t particularly high on him. Rask, meanwhile, was acquired for nothing from the Minnesota Wild, who had passed him through waivers and sent him to the AHL.
Sprong burst onto the Seattle scene with three goals in his first three games as a Kraken, but had since gone quiet. He broke a seven-game pointless streak with his power-play goal to open the scoring against Ottawa, off a beautiful pass through the seam from… you guessed it… Rask.
Coincidentally, we had just asked coach Dave Hakstol about Rask and Sprong after practice on Sunday. He said good things about Rask, praising his smarts and his good stick. About Sprong, he implied that he hadn’t been thrilled with the Dutch forward’s two-way game, but he also said that the two had a recent conversation about it and that Sprong had shown improvement against the Devils on Saturday.
On Monday, even Sprong admitted that he had been struggling since his initial three-game outburst after joining Seattle. “After that—Dallas, Chicago, St. Louis—those three games, I got away from it a bit,” Sprong said of his two-way game. “I think I just started cheating a little, and then against Calgary I think I did the right things a little better, and then we had a good talk. It’s good when the coach communicates with you his standard of your game, and I think I responded really well, and I just want to finish off the season strong now.”
Sprong certainly can shoot the puck, and he looks like he was bred to shoot from the left circle on the power play. That’s probably not a coincidence, considering where he played previously. “I’ve watched the greatest goal scorer of all time for two years in that spot,” Sprong said, referring to former teammate Alex Ovechkin. “I learned a lot from him over that time, which I’m very grateful for. He was really good to me, talking to me about things like that, so I just know I’ve got to find that area, and then I know I’ve got a good shot, a good one-timer. I don’t need much space. Rask made a great play, and I had an open net.”
“That’s his spot,” Hakstol said. “He’s a shooter, and he can score from there. With Spronger the big thing—I talked to you guys about it [Sunday]—is the two-way game and his attention to detail there. He worked 200 feet again tonight, so a goal is… that’s what he does. We know he can shoot from that spot, and he did a good job. That was a big goal.”
Rask built off the outstanding pass in the first period and scored the eventual game winner in the second period. On a three-on-two rush, Alex Wennberg dished to Joonas Donskoi and then drove to the net, creating a nice passing lane for Donskoi. Donskoi found Rask on the other side of the ice, and before Anton Forsberg could get across, Rask had already fired it home.
“Rasky’s goal, that’s a good goal,” said Hakstol. “There’s a lot of pieces to that that make it a good goal. We skate and get some puck pressure, and then we’re able to transition quick on it. It’s a good play by all those guys and for sure by Victor to finish that off. That’s not an easy catch and shoot, across his body, but he got it, and he got it away quick. He’s a smart player, he has a good stick and good poise in all situations.”
Takeaway #2: The second period wasn’t fun… but then it was!
The Kraken—likely buoyed by Ottawa’s penalty woes—dominated the first period from start to finish, but only exited the frame with a 1-0 lead. They then entered the second and quickly frittered away that lead, coughing up two quick goals to give the Senators the lead.
“We gave them two easy plays. Just being honest,” Hakstol said. “We gave them two pucks; we gave them a puck in the neutral zone that ended up in the back of our net. We gave them another puck on a breakout that got out of the zone, but it turned around and came right back in the zone because we didn’t take care of it and make a good play with it on the breakout. And it’s in the back of our net in 15 seconds.”
On the first Ottawa goal, Will Borgen partially whiffed on a pass through the neutral zone, and Connor Brown easily picked it off, eventually leading to a Brady Tkachuk goal. On the second goal, Sprong got smoked and tangled up along the boards with Riley Sheahan, and the puck eventually got worked around to Nick Holden, who shot through traffic and beat Chris Driedger.
To Seattle’s credit, the Kraken quickly turned it around. “They just came flying out,” Rask said. “They didn’t have the greatest first period, but we battled through it and came back.”
“We did a good job pushing back on it,” added Hakstol. “The Beniers goal is an important goal to make us feel good and get us going in the right direction.”
After Rask scored at 16:15 to put the Kraken ahead for good, Alex Formenton took a big run at Carson Soucy behind Seattle’s net. Haydn Fleury, who hasn’t had a fight all season, jumped to his defense. Fists and gloves were flying immediately.
“That’s what you gotta do,” Hakstol said. “We’ve talked about that throughout the year. It’s probably not something he’s done a whole lot in his career, but there’s a time and a place, and that was the right time for him to step in and do what he had to do there… I love the fact that he was willing and able to do it at the right time.”
Like we said, it ended up being a pretty fun second period.
Takeaway #3: We learned something about video challenges
We thought Karson Kuhlman had scored a sick goal in the third period to put the Kraken ahead 4-2. Yanni Gourde batted down a puck, fought off a defender, and got it to Kuhlman, who made a dazzling move around Artem Zub and beat Forsberg over his blocker.
However, Ottawa challenged for… [checks notes]… “a missed game stoppage,” and to our surprise, the challenge succeeded.
Replay showed that Gourde had absolutely touched the puck with a high stick, but what confused us about the challenge was that the infraction took place several seconds before the goal. We always thought that challenges for things like a high stick could only come if the goal was, say, scored with a high stick.
We were apparently wrong, and now we’re left questioning everything. But hey, we learned something on Monday, and it’s neat to learn new things, though we would prefer to learn these lessons in less harsh ways.
“I actually said when [Gourde and Kuhlman] came back to the bench, ‘Awesome second effort,’” Hakstol recalled with a chuckle. “It’s like in life, right? You talk about second effort, usually things turn out your way eventually, and I thought it was a great second effort by both Gordo and Kuhly on that. Great play by Kuhly and finish, and unfortunately it came off the board, but it doesn’t take away the effort.”
The Kraken are now 1-0-0 with Macklemore and Marshawn Lynch officially members of the team’s ownership group.
by Darren Brown | Apr 17, 2022 | Gameday Coverage
Where were you when Matty Beniers scored his first NHL goal?
Saturday night at Climate Pledge Arena was one of several from this inaugural season that will stick with us for a long time. The Kraken gave up a goal to the Devils just 3:12 into the game, but bounced back thanks to the play of Beniers, Jared McCann, Philipp Grubauer, and others to earn a 4-3 shootout win.
Here are our Three Takeaways.
Takeaway #1: The legend of Matty Beniers grows
The legend of Matty Beniers grew tenfold on Saturday. Making his home debut with his family in the building, the much-hyped rookie registered his second point in as many games and banged home his first NHL goal.
With the game tied and the Kraken on a power play in the second period, Vince Dunn shot from the left point. Jared McCann deflected it past Nico Daws, and it hit the post before rattling around in the crease. Beniers jumped on it and authoritatively fired it it into an open net.
“It was a great feeling,” Beniers said. “I kind of just jumped into Canner’s arms after that.”
After leading the “fly-by” for high fives, Beniers returned to the bench and got a hearty round of congratulations from his teammates and coaches. And when the goal was announced in Climate Pledge Arena, the crowd gave a chill-inducing standing ovation that was among some of the loudest moments we’ve heard this season.
We asked Beniers after the game if he’s ever gotten such an ovation. “No, definitely not. No standing ‘O’ like that. It was pretty amazing. I couldn’t help but smile.” And the warm welcome from the home fans didn’t just come after Beniers scored. “When they were calling names of who started, they called my name, and they went nuts, and then after the goal, it was electric.”
While the goal was exciting because of the milestone and because it gave Seattle its first lead of the game, it was probably one of the easier ones Beniers has scored in his hockey career. More impressive were the plays that Beniers didn’t score on during overtime.
With just over a minute left in the extra period, Beniers rushed into the zone and down the right halfwall. He scooped up the puck with his stick blade, juggled it while skating around Pavel Zacha, then drove to the net and forced Zacha to take a penalty. Then, on the ensuing power play, Beniers tried to go between his own legs to score from the net mouth.
Neither play resulted in a goal, but a 19-year-old kid playing in his second career NHL game and pulling moves like that is something to behold.
It’s Beniers’ complete, two-way play that has coach Dave Hakstol most impressed, though. “Most importantly, as a centerman, he does a very good job in the defensive zone being in the right spots,” Hakstol said. “The creativity is there. As his confidence grows, we’ll continue to see more and more of that offensive creativity.”
Though we’ve seen him in practice, that’s the first time we’ve gotten to watch Beniers play a game in person. He did not disappoint. The obvious tangibles are certainly there; he clearly has the skill and speed to compete in this league. What really strikes us, though, is the poise with which he carries the puck, and the confidence he is clearly playing with right now, despite such a minuscule amount of time in the NHL.
Beniers finished his first home game with a goal on three shots, 18:14 of ice time, 2:19 of power play time, got two LOUD standing ovations, and was named the No. 1 star of the game. Not too shabby.
By the way, by earning the No. 1 star, Beniers also got to do his first career fish toss. We asked him how he thought he did. Initially, he said he thought he did a pretty good job, but then he rethought the answer and said, “I was aiming for a little kid, but I think I overthrew it a little bit. I didn’t see if he got it. I hope he did.”
We have video evidence proving that, in fact, the little kid did not get it. Still, it made a fan pretty happy.
Takeaway #2: Jared McCann quietly had an awesome game
Beniers was the story Saturday, and with good reason. But if it weren’t for McCann, the Kraken would not have won the game.
Streaking into the zone, McCann received a pass from Yanni Gourde in the second period and quickly sensed that he had drawn the attention of all the Devils defenders. He spun and made a deft pass to Carson Soucy, who was left wide open in the slot. Soucy had all the time in the world to pick his spot and bury the puck behind Daws.
“I look at the play that he made on the Soucy goal, in tight spaces, having the ability to find Souce coming down the middle in that soft area, I felt like that was one of the most important momentum swings of the hockey game,” Hakstol said. “Those are the kinds of plays that we need Canner to make.”
“We’ve kind of been better at just creating off the rush,” Soucy said. “Our forwards made some unbelievable plays tonight, even on [Will] Borgen’s goal too, driving to the net. I think just using their speed, just being a threat and then looking for the late guy if that’s an option. I think our forwards did a good job, especially McCann on that last play.”
And while Kraken fans were going gaga over Beniers’ first goal, it was McCann who actually got the puck past Daws by tipping Dunn’s shot off the post, before it ricocheted through the crease.
Again, we recognize that the night belonged to Beniers, and rightfully so. But we wanted to make sure McCann got some credit, because he was a big driver.
Takeaway #3: We can’t forget about Grubauer’s big save in the second
In the second period, the Devils got two power plays in a row when Dunn hooked Jesper Bratt at 7:51, then Jamie Oleksiak held Tomas Tatar at 10:55. The Kraken penalty kill did a good job, but they definitely needed the help of Philipp Grubauer, who came up big during that stretch and prevented the Devils from extending their lead.
After a point shot, Bratt swatted a rebound toward Zacha. Soucy took a swing at it but whiffed, and Zacha appeared to have Grubauer dead to rights. But the German Gentleman sprawled to his left and just got his toe on the shot, robbing Zacha and keeping the score at 2-1.
The second it happened, we thought that could be a turning point in the game, especially if the Kraken completed the penalty kill (they did). Sure enough, Soucy scored the tying goal at the other end a couple minutes later, and suddenly you could sense a Kraken victory on the horizon.
“Grubi’s game was really solid,” Hakstol said. “The first real good opportunity is a great shot that ends up in the back of the net. And that didn’t shake Grubi at all, didn’t rattle him. He played a real solid game all the way through the 65 minutes and then through the shootout, so kudos to him.”
In all, Grubauer stopped 23 of 26 shots, which doesn’t sound *that* impressive on paper, but he was an enormous part of the Kraken victory.
That was a fun night.
