The Seattle Kraken announced on Friday they had traded for veteran winger Tomas Tatar in a deal with the Colorado Avalanche, sending back a fifth-round pick in the 2024 NHL Draft.
The native of Ilava, Slovakia, has played 810 career games with the Detroit Red Wings, Vegas Golden Knights, Montreal Canadiens, New Jersey Devils, and Colorado Avalanche. Tatar, 33, was in the midst of a down year in Colorado, having posted just one goal and eight assists in 27 games.
But he is a capable winger who has scored 20-plus goals seven different times in his career, including last season with the Devils, when he racked up 48 points (20-28—48). Tatar’s ice time this season with the Avs had dwindled to an average of 11:16 per game, the lowest of his career other than 2010-11, when he was a rookie in Detroit and only played nine games.
Why it works on paper
This is exactly the type of low-risk trade I hoped to see when I officially hit the panic button after a painful 4-2 Kraken loss at the Montreal Canadiens on Dec. 4. The loss was—at that time—Seattle’s fifth loss in a row, a skid that would eventually balloon to eight games.
After seeing Seattle lose in such miserable, slow-starting fashion to the Habs, I was convinced something needed to change with the personnel. I wanted to see Kraken management start pulling some levers to get things moving in the right direction.
Sure enough, the Kraken have since called up defenseman Ryker Evans, who has made an immediate positive impact, and now they’ve brought in a guy from outside the organization who should (theoretically) help put the puck in the net and improve the team’s depth.
Even if coach Dave Hakstol utilizes Tatar in a top-six role, that still theoretically makes Seattle’s fourth line better, as a more-skilled player will trickle down the lineup.
A low-risk deal
Economically, it’s an easy dart to throw, too. Tatar’s cap hit is only $1.5 million, he’s on a one-year deal, and he only cost the team a fifth-round pick. So if general manager Ron Francis and his staff think there’s still a chance of getting into the playoffs this season—and Tatar can be that catalyst to help jumpstart the group—then why not pull the trigger on a deal like this?
The worst-case scenario is that Tatar doesn’t produce, even with the change of scenery, and then they don’t re-sign him this offseason. Heck, maybe he plays well for the Kraken, but they still don’t get back into playoff position. Is there a world where they trade Tatar at the deadline and even get a better return than a fifth-round pick?
Remember, last season, the Kraken had a lull around this time of year and made a waiver claim on Eeli Tolvanen (that came on Dec. 12). The day they put the Finnish gunslinger into the lineup was the first day of an eight-game winning streak and a jumping-off point for solidifying a playoff spot.
We aren’t saying Tatar will necessarily have that same impact on the Kraken (again, he hasn’t been performing very well this season offensively), but there is an opportunity for him to come in, get a good look at a top-six role to start, and get handed plenty of scoring opportunities.
Cap gymnastics
With all of Seattle’s injuries this season, the team has gotten itself close to the salary cap. To fit Tatar in, the Kraken intentionally pushed even closer to the $83.5 million limit by temporarily swapping Tye Kartye for Shane Wright on the official roster, then placed Jaden Schwartz on long-term injured reserve.
LTIR allows Seattle to go over the cap by the amount of Schwartz’s salary, minus whatever gap they had between the cap and their total cap hit. So, by getting right to the cap, then moving Schwartz to LTIR, Seattle opened an additional $5.5 million in usable cap space. $1.5 million of that space goes to Tatar, so now the team has $4 million left in its LTIR pool until Schwartz returns. Once Schwartz does return (no timetable for him at this point), the team will have to become cap compliant once again.
After the trade was announced, Marian Studenic was returned to Coachella Valley, also putting Seattle at its 23-player roster limit.
A fine trade
I like this trade. Seattle has just started to show some life after breaking its losing streak and getting two straight wins to create some good feelings. By adding to the group, the front office shows it believes the team can still make it to the postseason.
Tatar historically has been a very good player, but it seems Colorado hasn’t been the right fit for him. If he can regain even some of his offensive prowess with the Kraken, at a low cap hit and on an expiring contract, then this should prove to be a good move.
If he continues to flounder and can’t get it going for the rest of the season, then Tatar inflicts minimal-to-no damage on the team’s longer-term plans.
What do you think of this acquisition, folks?
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.
We knew 22-year-old defense prospect, Ryker Evans, was close to being ready for the NHL when we watched him in Seattle Kraken training camp before this season. In pre-season games, he consistently drove offensive opportunities and always looked so smooth on the ice. So, we weren’t surprised to see him recalled from AHL Coachella Valley last week, but the timing was interesting.
With Seattle in the midst of what would become an eight-game skid, coach Dave Hakstol decided it was time for a jolt to the blue line. In came Evans, and suddenly there was a new rotation happening between Brian Dumoulin and Justin Schultz, with the veterans taking turns being supplanted from the lineup by the rookie.
It got easier for Hakstol to decide which veteran should come out when Schultz became unavailable for a couple games after getting hit in the face with a puck in the 4-3 overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday. But now that Schultz is back, we are curious to see how this gets managed moving forward. After all, Evans has done nothing but impress since his arrival.
“I was pretty shocked [to get called up],” Evans said. “I mean, obviously, it’s something you dream of as a kid, and to get the opportunity is pretty cool. It’s kind of just been a whirlwind the last couple of days.”
Impressive start to Evans’ NHL career
Talking to Evans, who has the most level, calm demeanor you can imagine, you would never know he just made his NHL debut a few days ago. His play on the ice mirrors the way he carries himself off the ice, as he has yet to look frazzled in a game. In fact, on his very first NHL shift, he jumped up in the play and led an offensive rush with Tye Kartye, something you wouldn’t expect from a rookie NHLer dealing with the nerves of his debut.
The call-up seems to have come at the right time and has injected more offensive flair into Seattle’s lineup, which has struggled so mightily at that end of the ice. Evans said it was odd to parachute in when the team was in the deepest valley of its season to date.
“It’s tough, obviously, even when you’re losing,” Evans said. “I just wanted to come in and bring as much energy as I could, just bring some new life into the dressing room and kind of find a spark so that we can get back on the winning path here.”
He made some defensive mistakes in that first outing against New Jersey, but we’ve really liked the way he seems to be settling into Seattle’s end of the ice, and his offensive talents have been on full display. In his first game against the Devils, he made a move behind New Jersey’s net to hit the brakes, bump the puck behind himself, and send veteran forward Ondrej Palat flying past him.
Making a play like that in his first NHL game shows the confidence he has in his abilities to actually get players to bite on his moves without too much risk of turning the puck over.
Evans’ first impact on a scoresheet also came off an outstanding play low in the offensive zone in Tuesday’s 4-0 win over the Florida Panthers. Soon after a face-off, he saw a lane open down the half wall. Rather than dumping or rimming the puck around, he took the ice that was being given to him and skated the puck down below the goal line. He swung the puck around and centered a perfect pass for Pierre-Edouard Bellemare to score into a mostly open net and extend Seattle’s lead to 2-0.
“It was good that I was able to help a little bit,” Evans said, with his usual nonchalant tone. “It was great to get the win. We needed that one, and it’s huge for our confidence.”
His teammates are also seeing what we see, a good sign that Evans does have the ability to play consistently at the NHL level. After all, players tend to know when a guy has the “it” factor.
We first heard a player indicate they were impressed by Evans’ aptness when Joey Daccord joined the Sound Of Hockey Podcast during last season. Unprompted, Daccord gushed over how slick Evans was on the ice.
Devin Shore also had very positive commentary on the youngster after Wednesday’s optional practice.
”I’ve been playing with him in [Coachella Valley] too, and he’s been great there,” Shore said. “The name of the game right now is skating, and he obviously has that, and he plays with his head up. So if you got a guy in the back end with the skill that can skate, plays with this head up, good things are gonna happen. I’m really happy for him. He’s a great kid.”
Smooth skating is no accident
Evans was drafted as an over-ager, being passed up by all 31 other NHL teams in the draft prior to Seattle’s inaugural season. The next time around, when the Kraken selected him in the second round, No. 35 overall, we recall seeing draft pundits from far and wide criticizing the team for going “off the board” to select him. Fast forward, and the bold selection seems to be paying off.
The Calgary, Alberta, native said he wasn’t surprised he didn’t get picked in the 2020 draft, the first time he was eligible. “I don’t think I was fully at the point where I could have been drafted,” Evans said. “I just wasn’t developed enough, and I definitely didn’t have a good enough year, and I kind of knew that… Obviously, you hope you get picked. But it’s kind of earned. So I didn’t think I was I was there yet.”
One of the reasons Seattle’s scouting department liked Evans was because of his outstanding skating ability. It’s not just his speed, but his agility in being able to walk the blue line (as seen on the power play) and change directions on a dime that make his movements on the ice look effortless. This skating ability is no accident.
“My dad’s a power skating coach, so growing up, skating was always a No. 1 asset of mine,” Evans said. “Being smaller too, I had to figure out different ways to use my body and stuff like that. So, you just develop those skills growing up like that, and over time, you start to fine tune things.”
“Blade Boy”
In Daccord’s post-game media availability following the win over Florida on Tuesday, he referred to Evans as “Blade Boy” but declined to elaborate on why he calls him that.
Well, it turns out the moniker really does refer to blades, as in skate blades, because Evans is VERY particular about the steel he skates on.
He has 35 pairs of blades that he swaps out approximately every two games, and he keeps track of which pair he’s wearing at any given time. “Right now, I’m wearing set 28 out of 35,” Evans said.
He also is so specific about how he wants them sharpened, he only trusts one person in the world to sharpen his steel, his “guy” back in his hometown of Calgary. That’s not because he doesn’t like the job that gets done by any of the equipment managers on any of the teams he’s played for, he just doesn’t want to change his process.
“I send them back to Calgary to my guy,” Evans said. “It’s no shot at anyone. That’s just what I’ve always done.”
Worth noting, as Evans was telling Sound Of Hockey about the nickname, Chris Driedger walked into the dressing room and gave a big laugh, so clearly the players find Evans’ penchant for perfect steel a bit comical.
We say, if it works, keep doing it. So far for Ryker Evans, it seems to be working.
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.
The Seattle Kraken are on a five-game losing streak and sinking farther out of playoff contention with every passing defeat, but you wouldn’t have known it at Wednesday’s practice at Kraken Community Iceplex.
The team returned to home ice for the first time since a dreadful four-game road trip on which it notched just one standings point out of a possible eight and never led a game. Yet the players were hooting and hollering over good plays and goals, the coach was in a positive mood when talking to media, and there was a buzz in the air with the arrival of newly recalled top defensive prospect, Ryker Evans.
Heck, even the assessment of the recent games from some of the players was more upbeat than one might have expected.
“The last two games, I don’t feel like we got outplayed or anything,” Pierre-Edouard Bellemare said. “I think we created those terrible bounces. I mean, Ottawa was two kind of flukes of bounces, but there’s still two turnovers that created two goals and we lost 2-0, right?
“And then last game, we didn’t start the game like we were supposed to at all, and we fed their attack by just literally giving them the puck. So that being said, what do you do to change that game? Because besides those [mishaps], we actually played pretty decently in those games.”
So, if you were panicking about the outlook of Seattle’s season, it may bring you some solace to know that the team is far from panicked at this point. Instead, the players and coach seemed excited to get back home and go back to work Thursday against the New Jersey Devils.
Overcoming Seattle’s scoring struggles
The Kraken’s offensive struggles became magnified on the road trip when the team failed to overcome several bad bounces. That Ottawa game was the best example. Seattle had plenty of chances against Anton Forsberg but couldn’t get even one puck past him. Meanwhile, a blown tire and a miscommunication in the defensive zone was all the Senators needed to score the game’s only two goals.
“We work extremely hard to get a goal, and then we give up a goal [way] too easily,” Bellemare said. “The mistakes are way too high, and then when we play good, it’s not high enough.”
Eeli Tolvanen, whose line with Yanni Gourde and Oliver Bjorkstrand was easily Seattle’s best forward group during the trip, shared a similar assessment to Bellemare. “I felt like we’ve played pretty well other than the first period in Montreal,” Tolvanen said. “But yeah, they’re tough losses. You don’t want to lose too many in a row, but I feel like if you look at some of the games, we created a lot.”
Tolvanen said that if they keep playing the way they’ve been playing, the Kraken will start getting results soon.
“The Ottawa game, we had two individual [bad breaks], like Matty loses an edge, and they get a breakaway out of it. Stuff happened like that but other than that, I feel like we’ve played pretty well. If we just keep going that way, I feel like we’re going to win more than lose.”
Coach Dave Hakstol was a bit more surgical in his breakdown of what needs to change for Seattle.
“We have to identify some of the areas where we need improvement,” Hakstol said. “And defensively, we’re pretty happy with everything, [though] there are always improvement areas that we can do better in. But if you look at it offensively, there’s two or three categories that we obviously need to improve.”
When Seattle came home from its first east coast road trip of the season with a 2-1-1 record, a couple breaks in the other direction, and the Kraken could have been feeling very bad about themselves at that point. That is what happened on this trip. As Hakstol highlighted, the margins on the trip were again slim, so some more offense generation in a few areas, and the results could have been more palatable.
“When you look over the long haul, statistically, one or two more opportunities, on your out-numbered rushes, one or two more opportunities from the slot in good areas, one more rebound for us takes us from bottom of the league to top of the league,” Hakstol said. “So, those are some of the areas that we’ve identified, and we know that we need to work and improve it.”
Evans arrives
At some point, when things are going badly for a team, a personnel change is needed to get things heading back in the right direction. Evans, the smooth-skating 21-year-old defenseman, represents such a change, although it remained unclear Wednesday if he would immediately slot into the lineup against New Jersey.
The top three defense pairs remained in tact, while Evans skated with Jaycob Megna, who has been a healthy scratch for every Kraken game so far this season.
Hakstol confirmed Evans is here “for a reason,” though, meaning he should expect to play during his stint with the big club. But the coach wouldn’t tip his hand about his plans for Thursday’s game.
“He’s done a nice job, worked really hard,” Hakstol said of Evans. “With his development coming off an outstanding year last year and an excellent training camp this year a good start to his year down there. So this is a great time coming into this homestand to add him to our group.”
We were on the record predicting Evans would make the Kraken roster out of training camp, but he ended up as the final cut from the blue line and was sent to Coachella Valley. There, he has notched eight points in 18 games this season after a dazzling 44-point campaign in 2022-23.
Evans is excited for his NHL debut, whenever that may come, and hopes he can bring a spark to the floundering Kraken.
“I like to use my skating, moving the puck up and joining the rush,” Evans said. “So, just [I’ll just be] playing my game, moving my feet.”
Burakovsky “real close” to returning
Speaking of things Hakstol wouldn’t confirm or deny, Andre Burakovsky practiced in full Wednesday and skated on a line with Alex Wennberg and Jared McCann. It was the winger’s first time taking line rushes since suffering an upper-body injury in Seattle’s 4-1 loss to the New York Rangers on Oct. 21.
Hakstol wouldn’t say he expected Burakovsky to be available Thursday, but signs are pointing toward an imminent return to game action.
“He’s been champing at the bit now for the last couple of days, but we’re making sure we take all the right steps,” Hakstol said.
Like with Evans, the Kraken are surely hoping Burakovsky can help jumpstart the Kraken offensively.
“[Burakovsky] is one of the guys on our roster that helps generate offense, and he can generate it on his own,” Hakstol said. “So the pace that he brings, and some of his creativity offensively will be a nice addition to our lineup.”
Goalie Gear Corner
While we are on the record saying we’ve grown tired of the brown leather look for outdoor games and other throwback uniform scenarios, Philipp Grubauer’s new setup for the Winter Classic is beautiful. The deep sea and ice blue accents really make the gear pop on the ice, and it should look great with Seattle’s jerseys.
Oh, hello Philipp Grubauer’s Winter Classic setup! 👋
The Seattle Kraken sweater for the 2024 Discover Winter Classic *apparently* got revealed Friday, in very confusing fashion. Players from the Utah Jazz walked into their game against the Phoenix Suns wearing what appeared to be Seattle’s jerseys for the NHL’s annual tentpole event, coming to T-Mobile Park on New Year’s Day.
Ok, so Utah Jazz bizarreness aside, we love these.
Nice ode to the Metropolitans without being too “on the nose” with either the color scheme or the crest. It’s uniquely #SeaKraken, and it’s beautiful.
Of course, having a completely unaffiliated basketball team unveil a hockey team’s sweaters for a major event is confusing for everyone involved, but the point of this story is to talk about the jerseys themselves, which—for the record—we absolutely love.
What the Kraken, the NHL, and Adidas came up with is an obvious ode to the Seattle Metropolitans, a team that played in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association from 1915 to 1924 and won the Stanley Cup in 1917. But they managed to make it uniquely “Kraken,” with different colors and even a crest that says, This is a Metropolitans-esque jersey, but it’s not a Metropolitans jersey.
The original Metropolitans uniforms were Christmas colored, with red, white, and green horizontal stripes running through the bodies of the shirts. These special Winter Classic sweaters are deep sea blue, ice blue, and a new cream color we don’t believe the franchise has officially used before. The crest is Seattle’s “red alert” color, which has been used in the trim of the team’s regular home and road uniforms for the past three seasons and also makes up the eye of the usual Kraken crest.
The word “Kraken” meandering through the middle of the logo is, in our opinion, what makes this look so special. The offset letters, the big block font, and again, the nod to the Metropolitans without just pasting a Metropolitans logo on there is so, so cool.
Now, why did the jerseys get revealed by the Utah Jazz? Our short answer is that we don’t know. Our longer answer is that we asked around, and we believe this rollout was led by the NHL and Adidas, because they have led past rollouts of Winter Classic and Heritage Classic uniforms.
Why they chose to roll the jerseys out that way remains a mystery, for now.
Sunday’s Seattle Kraken practice was a spicy one. Fresh off a 4-1 stinker of a loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday, the team went back to work Sunday at Kraken Community Iceplex, looking to find the consistency that has been lacking in its game. The practice had a more serious tone to it than we’ve seen in most on-ice sessions, as coach Dave Hakstol put his players through drills that focused on speed, quick transitions, and battling physically.
For a moment in the middle of the skate, Hakstol was perhaps the most animated we’ve ever seen him. He stopped a drill and waited for complete quiet in the arena before shouting an obscenity-laced monologue that onlooking media heard loud and clear. We will redact the message a bit, but to give you an idea, it very directly challenged Seattle’s shooting mentality and ended with the phrase, “Shoot the f***ing puck!”
“Direct and honest”
Seattle’s coach finished the practice by having his players gather around the center circle, and he slowly drifted around the face-off dot, looking each player in the eye and delivering another message. This speech was in more of a hushed tone, so we can’t tell you what Hakstol said, but it ended with stick taps from the players.
“We worked on things that we have to work at, and we went out and did it at the pace that’s necessary for it to really become ingrained in what we do,” Hakstol said after practice.
Saturday’s performance by the Kraken was disappointing, no doubt. They were coming off two solid games on the road, earning three out of four possible points against Arizona and Colorado. But Seattle laid an egg in the first period at home against an Oilers club that came in struggling so badly that even with a road win, it still fired its head coach, Jay Woodcroft, and assistant coach, Dave Manson, Sunday morning.
“Direct and honest,” Hakstol said about his message to his team Sunday. “As we look at ourselves individually and collectively, if we take that approach, we’re going to be ok. But right now we have work to do, and that’s what the result from last night says is we have work to do.”
Kraken struggling to string wins together
Last season’s Kraken team built its success around win streaks. They had plenty of stretches where they would win one, lose one, win two, lose two. But then they’d suddenly rip off a bunch of wins in a row and vault up the standings.
They ended the season with five separate win streaks of five games or more, with the first coming between Oct. 29 and Nov. 8. Those calendar dates have come and gone in the 2023-24 season, and so far, the Kraken have failed to win more than two straight.
“This is a tough league to string wins together,” Hakstol said. “I stood here yesterday and said we had done a really good job of gaining points in the majority of our last six-to-eight games, and that’s true. But in between, we’ve had the games where we haven’t been competitive on the points, and those points have gone away for free to our opponent. And that can happen.”
In his 11-year NHL career, defenseman Brian Dumoulin has seen plenty of ups and downs, but he can’t pinpoint what has been plaguing the Kraken so far this season.
“It’s a weird situation,” Dumoulin said. “We felt really good about our game in Arizona and also in Colorado, and obviously got the result in Colorado, and coming home we haven’t been great. We definitely spotted [the Oilers] a few goals, and they had a big 10 minutes there, and we kind of lost the game just in that 10 minutes. It’s just a little bit frustrating in that aspect, but we’ve got to believe in ourselves.”
Dumoulin added that he thinks the Kraken players can do a better job of staying in control of their emotions during games and not letting momentum swings impact the way they play.
“Instead of the highs being high and the lows being low, just kind of be even-keel,” Dumoulin said. “Realize if you played well or if you didn’t, and if you got the result or didn’t, just continue with our structure and live shift to shift instead of looking at it game to game.”
Ryan Winterton “making the most” of his call-up
Kraken forward Ryan Winterton, 20, made his NHL debut in Colorado on Thursday. He had been recalled the day before from AHL Coachella Valley after just seven career games of professional hockey. That may sound like a quick timeline, but his arrival at the sport’s highest level has come with some major bumps in the road.
“It’s surreal, for sure,” Winterton said. “I wouldn’t say I’m surprised [to be here], but it’s definitely been a long journey, you know? A bunch of adversity. It hasn’t been the cleanest ride, that’s for sure, but I’m happy I’m here, and I’m going to make the most of it.”
The Markham, Ontario, native has had a challenging development path. Remember, the entire 2020-21 Ontario Hockey League season was nixed due to COVID, and that caused Winterton to drop to the Kraken in the third round of the 2021 NHL Entry Draft. After getting selected, he then suffered two separate shoulder injuries that limited him to 37 games in 2021-22 and 34 games in 2022-23.
Ryan Winterton skating with the OHL Hamilton Bulldogs (Photo courtesy Hamilton Bulldogs)
Still, the Kraken organization is clearly high on Winterton’s potential as an NHL player and wasted no time in giving him his first call-up to the big club. Firebirds coach Dan Bylsma delivered the news to Winterton over the phone.
“Coach Bylsma called me when I was— we were preparing for a game that night in Coachella, and I was actually taking my pre-game nap,” Winterton remembered. “He called me twice, so I thought I should answer. He gave me the news, and I’ve never really had a smile like that last so long. I think it was a full 24 hours or longer, so it was pretty cool.”
In his whirlwind scramble to meet the Kraken in Denver, Winterton miscalculated his packing.
“You pack a carry-on, and then you kind of live out of that for as long as I’m here,” Winterton said. “I didn’t really pack for this weather, the cold. I was in California, so it was pretty hot. So, I might have to go shopping today or tomorrow— well, today, because we have a game tomorrow.”
As veterans like Brandon Tanev and Jordan Eberle work their way back from injuries (we expect Tanev to return Monday against Colorado, while Eberle is still at least a game or two away), space will have to be made in Seattle’s lineup. But Winterton survived the “cut” Sunday and was kept with the Kraken, while veteran Devin Shore was reassigned to Coachella Valley.
Interestingly, Winterton skated on a potential “all kids” fourth line Sunday that featured himself, Shane Wright, and Tye Kartye. Whether they stick together for Seattle’s game against the Avalanche remains to be seen, but it is an intriguing mix of young players that could bring a real spark against Colorado’s depth defensive units.
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.
The Kraken lost 6-3 to the Calgary Flames Saturday in an uncharacteristically poor effort. We’ve seen them lose in a lot of ways, but they don’t typically get outhustled, and that seemed to happen for a long stretch against a down-on-its-luck Flames team that had lost six in a row coming in.
Mikael Backlund gets the loose puck after Grubauer had made a breakaway save on Greer but couldn't find the puck to cover it. pic.twitter.com/QTtM0KmZXQ
“I feel like maybe they were more desperate than us,” said Pierre-Edouard Bellemare. “I think hungrier, won some battles, and it got away.”
Even through a sloppy middle period, in which the Kraken fired a measly three shots at Flames goalie Dan Vladar, it still felt like Seattle would come out victorious against its struggling opponent. But Noah Hanifin’s power-play goal late in that second period put the game in doubt, and the third period went sideways quickly.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 6-3 Kraken loss to the Flames.
Takeaway #1: Cheap shot by Mangiapane had big impact
Moments after Vladar made his biggest save of the game, sprawling to rob Alex Wennberg on what looked like a sure goal, Andrew Mangiapane took a cheap shot at Jared McCann. McCann had slid to block Mangiapane’s shot and was lying in a prone position on the puck. Mangiapane inexplicably cross-checked McCann across the back of the neck, smashing the star forward’s face into the ice and drawing blood.
McCann saves a goal, and Mangiapane cross checks his face into the ice.
Mangiapane has been assessed a match penalty for attempt to injure. He's out of the game, and #SeaKraken have a 5-minute power play. pic.twitter.com/tV5LLzG9Xk
Mangiapane was assessed a five-minute major for cross-checking and a match penalty for intent to injure, removing him from the game.
1:11 into the power play, Oliver Bjorkstrand scored a nearly identical goal to the one he scored Thursday against Nashville, again sniping from the top of the right circle over Vladar’s glove. That gave the Kraken a 1-0 lead with nearly four minutes of power-play time left.
BJORK-JAM! 🚨
That's one way to make a team pay for a dirty hit.
Seattle failed to score for the rest of the major penalty, though, and just 14 seconds after it expired, Martin Pospisil—who had been serving Mangiapane’s penalty—scored on his first NHL shot in his first NHL game after a three-on-two rush.
The goal by Bjorkstrand was nice, but if Seattle could have gotten a second one there, this is probably a different story. Heck, even just keeping Calgary from scoring seconds after the penalty ended may have done the trick.
McCann left the game for a while after the cheap shot, but he did return and played the remainder. We will be curious to see what supplementary discipline comes for Mangiapane.
Also, worth noting, there was no physical response from Seattle after that incident, which is becoming a pattern with this year’s team.
Takeaway #2: Second-period PPG turned the tide
The Kraken had a bad second period by every metric. It isn’t surprising to see Calgary had 70 percent of the shot quality in the frame, especially when you remember that Seattle only shot on goal three times. The share of shot quality would have been tilted even farther in the Flames’ favor, except Tye Kartye had a great look before getting blasted into the boards by Nikita Zadorov.
Kartye gets stopped by Vladar after a nice setup by Shore. Then Kartye gets BLASTED into the boards by Zadorov.
“We weren’t breaking out clean, we weren’t on the forecheck as a five-man unit,” said Justin Schultz. “Just kind of chasing it a lot in the second, and we couldn’t really recover from that.”
Even so, the Kraken were ahead 2-1 and nearly escaped the period with their lead intact. But Eeli Tolvanen and McCann took back-to-back penalties, giving Calgary 46 seconds of five-on-three time, then another 1:14 at five-on-four. The Kraken came within one second of killing off both penalties, but Hanifin’s shot through traffic squeezed through the wickets on Grubauer to make it 2-2 with just one minute left in the second.
“There’s not one singular turning point,” Hakstol said. “But, I mean the obvious one is we work our way through the five-on-three, and you get towards the end of the PK, but ultimately… that changes the complexion of the entire game and obviously changes what the result of the second period is.”
The ugly second frame carried into the start of the third for Seattle, and Yegor Sharangovich put Calgary ahead with a high tip at 1:33. The Flames never relinquished the lead from there.
Hakstol said, “I didn’t think we got lulled into a trap, I thought we got outhustled in the first 10 minutes of the third period, plain and simple.”
Takeaway #3: Not good enough
These games happen, so we’re trying not to overreact here. The Flames saw an opportunity building in the second period to snap their embarrassing losing streak, and they took advantage of a Kraken team that wasn’t relentless enough.
We saw a few games like this last season when the Kraken had gotten a smidge too comfortable with their position in the standings and let winnable games slip through their tentacles. But they’re also not in a position right now—at 4-6-2 on the season—to be taking any team for granted, especially a Calgary club that has dominated Seattle over three seasons (the Kraken are now 1-7-0 all time against Calgary).
We still think the Kraken are close to going on one of their runs like last season, ripping off a bunch of wins in a row, but this game was a step in the wrong direction. Hopefully it’s a case of two steps forward and one step back, and this loss can motivate the club to now take a bunch of steps forward.
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.
