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.
As the Seattle Kraken prepared to take on the struggling Calgary Flames Saturday, line rushes at their morning skate looked familiar to what we’ve seen over the past week. Assuming nothing changes between practice and game time, this will be the third game in a row coach Dave Hakstol has trotted out the exact same lineup, dating back to the team’s road-trip-closing overtime win against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Oct. 30.
Seattle got off to a slow start to its season, going 1-4-1 in its first six games. Its lineup has been shuffled several times since then partly out of necessity (Brandon Tanev and Andre Burakovsky each got injured in those first two weeks) and partly because Hakstol wasn’t seeing results from groups that were so successful together last season.
The Kraken have started to find success, going 3-1-1 in their last five games, and it seems their line shuffling is settled… for now.
“You come out of wins, you come out of games where you find ways to get points as a group, you’re pretty cautious to make changes,” Hakstol said. “Now, that doesn’t mean we can’t do it, but we’ve liked some of the combinations.”
What’s working?
The forward mix Seattle has gone with the last two games (and will stick with Saturday against the Flames) has looked like this:
Tye Kartye – Matty Beniers – Oliver Bjorkstrand Jaden Schwartz – Alex Wennberg – Jordan Eberle Jared McCann – Yanni Gourde – Eeli Tolvanen Devin Shore – Pierre-Edouard Bellemare – Kailer Yamamoto
When the Kraken started their recent four-game road trip in Detroit, everything looked identical to the above, except Eberle and Bjorkstrand were flipped. With Burakovsky out of the lineup, Eberle skated alongside the two youngsters with whom he found success in last season’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. But the last tweak to the lines came when Bjorkstrand and Eberle traded spots, and things have gone swimmingly for Seattle since that minor change.
“We’ve won a few games, so it seems to be working,” Bjorkstrand said. “We obviously had a slow start, so we’re trying to find a little bit of something that’s working, but I think it looks good. I think we have a lot of combinations that could work.”
The Kraken started the season with forward combinations that were practically etched in stone for long stretches of last season, especially McCann, Beniers, and Eberle playing together on the top line, and Tolvanen, Gourde, and Bjorkstrand making up the third line. But Hakstol recognized those groups didn’t have the same mojo in the early stages of the current campaign, so he quickly recalibrated.
Hakstol said, “When you look at Gourdie, McCann and Tolvi, right? We know that Gourdie and Tolvi have great chemistry. Jared McCann has fit in well there. I thought Matty Beniers had a real good hockey game the other night [against Nashville], and Ollie Bjorkstrand was a part of that. So that group showed a little bit of chemistry together.”
Plenty of depth
The Kraken have enough skilled players that Hakstol can sprinkle them up and down the lineup, even with a guy like Burakovsky out long term, and that depth creates mismatches for some of Seattle’s top players. How can an opponent properly match up against a 40-goal scorer in McCann skating on the team’s third line? As we’re seeing lately, it’s a tall task for opposing coaches to answer that question.
“We have a lot of guys who can score goals and create chemistry with anybody,” said McCann. “And I’m playing with two guys that– I know what they’re gonna do, meat-and-potatoes kinds of guys that just focus on what makes them successful. And I feel like that’s what I was kind of missing at the beginning of the year. I was just trying to make things a little complicated. Getting back to watching guys like Yanni and Tolvi play that way just helps my game.”
Gourde has liked what he’s seen from all of Seattle’s top three lines lately. “This locker room, up and down the lineup, everybody can play different positions, and right now, it’s working that way, and it’s fun to watch,” Gourde said. “And you see that Wennberg line has been really good, effective. That Beniers line, they’ve been staying on pucks, playing fast… and our line, I mean, we’ve just got to keep going and keep building and keep building that transition and rush and be a little bit better in our D-zone.”
Still a work in progress
Is this how the lines will remain for the rest of the season? Of course not. More injuries will happen, and Burakovsky and Tanev will eventually come back. But there are trios of forwards that have shown they can work well together when things get shaken up again.
“It’s never going to be the right mix,” Gourde said. “It can change on a daily basis; it’s not something that is anchored in and that’s going to stay.”
Hakstol does seem confident in the group as it stands, though, and he’s also cognizant of the harmful effects too much line juggling can have on a team.
“One of the things you have to be careful with is it’s not always a line combination that’s not working,” Hakstol said. “So sometimes it’s about giving guys a little bit of time, rather than switching things up every two or three days and not allowing guys to get any comfort together at all. So there’s a fine line there.”
Lifting up slumping goal scorers
There are three forwards in the Kraken lineup—Jordan Eberle, Matty Beniers, and Eeli Tolvanen—that have struggled to find the offensive prowess they each showed last season. Those three have combined for just two goals this season, and Beniers, the reigning Calder Trophy winner, remains goalless.
We do not think it’s a coincidence that none of those three are on a line together currently. Instead, Tolvanen is now playing with the team’s top goal scorer in McCann, Beniers is with Bjorkstrand, who has had a solid all-around start to the season, and Eberle is playing with Schwartz, who has been Seattle’s most consistent player so far. Eventually, the goals being scored by others should rub off on Eberle, Beniers, and Tolvanen.
Asked specifically about Beniers, Hakstol thinks he’ll get the monkey off his back soon.
“One’s going to bounce in for him,” Hakstol said. “Whether he shoots it in the net or it bounces in off his ass, one’s going to go in sooner or later. And when it does, that’s going to loosen him up a little bit offensively.”
Other tidbits – Gourde testing neck guard
A big topic around the hockey world lately has been the use of neck guards, after Adam Johnson was tragically killed playing in a game for the Nottingham Panthers of the EIHL. In the wake of that horrifying incident, a handful of players around the NHL have been seen wearing protective equipment around the throat area.
Gourde was the first Kraken player to be seen wearing one Saturday.
“We all know what happened, and I think we’re testing some stuff out here to see how it feels,” Gourde said. “Protecting yourself is probably the biggest answer for [why I was wearing it].”
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.
In the run-up to Halloween, watching the Kraken’s four road games against Detroit, Carolina, Florida, and Tampa Bay sometimes felt more like Groundhog Day. It was virtually the same script for each contest; the Kraken would jump out to a two-goal lead, then let it fade away at varying speeds, before the game would come down to the wire and become a 50-50 crapshoot.
Seattle came home with a 2-1-1 record and five standings points in the end, a successful result, especially considering the quality of competition the team faced. Still, there’s work to be done to keep those slip-ups from happening moving forward.
“I’ve been on many teams where it just feels like every game is going to come down to the wire,” Devin Shore said. “You’re scratching and clawing for every point. It’s great to get out to those leads, but all the other 31 teams in the league are getting paid a lot of money to beat us too, so they’re pretty darn good, and they have the ability to come back.”
What linked the four games together so closely was the fact that at some point in each one, Seattle led by the same pesky margin. Seattle isn’t the first team to blow two-goal leads, though, and it won’t be the last.
There has long been a theory that the two-goal lead is the hardest lead in hockey to maintain, but why is that? Shouldn’t a two-goal lead be easier to keep than a one-goal lead?
“It’s probably all mental”
The theory around the two-goal lead usually has to do with how the leading team plays when it gets that extra cushion between itself and its opponent. Whether it’s a shift in mentality or tactics and whether that shift is happening consciously or subconsciously are two topics that are open for debate.
“I think it’s just that you know you have a two-goal lead, and maybe the mind, in a sense, relaxes, I guess,” Oliver Bjorkstrand said. “Maybe you feel a little too comfortable with the lead, and that gives a little bit of an edge to another team to kind of come back. And they get the one, it’s only a one-goal lead. So, I don’t know, it’s probably all mental. I don’t try to think that way.”
From the Kraken perspective, Jamie Oleksiak believes Seattle can keep any lead, but the group needs to re-learn how to avoid letdowns, regardless of the margin on the scoreboard.
“You have to learn how to win as a team,” Oleksiak said. “I think last year, we got used to and comfortable playing with two-goal leads in playoffs, and that’s a big part of it. Because in playoffs you’re playing a lot of one-goal, two-goal games, and I think we definitely got over the hump last year with that.”
Oleksiak also reiterated that this was a positive trip for the team, and that the group made big strides toward finding its game consistently. “It’s still early in the season. I still think we’re kind of building the confidence and whatnot in our game.”
“I don’t buy it”
Not everyone believes in the two-goal lead hypothesis.
“I don’t really buy that, to be honest,” said Shore. “Like, I’ve heard it a lot before, but I’d rather [have] a two-goal lead than a one-goal lead.”
Instead, Shore thought letting two-goal leads slip is just a factor of momentum. He said that when a team is down two and scores to make it a one-goal game, then the momentum has shifted for that team. So, it’s not so much that the trailing team has an advantage when it gets down by two, it’s just that scoring a goal can turn the tide of a game.
“You don’t want that to become too much of a trend. But [comebacks are] gonna happen, and it’s more how you respond and how you stick to playing the right way and not letting it faze you.”
Avoiding the letdowns
Going through game scenarios like this early in the season should help the Kraken down the line. And considering they still managed to come home feeling good about themselves, despite the blown leads in all four games, makes it a relatively inexpensive lesson.
But how does the team avoid these letdowns moving forward?
We heard Jared McCann say during the trip that the Kraken need to keep playing offense in those situations, and Bjorkstrand shared similar sentiments.
“I think we just need to bear down a little bit more and not change the way we play,” Bjorkstrand said. “I mean, we know how we play best, and that’s skating, being aggressive, and battles, all that stuff. So if [we have] a two-goal lead, we’ve got to keep going.”
“Sometimes when you think defense too much, you’re kind of sitting back, and it gives too much space and time for another team.”
Coach Dave Hakstol also offered a simple remedy to the problem for his team. “For us, it’s keep playing the same way and try and make it a three-goal lead, plain and simple.”
Other tidbits: Shore finding a role
Shore, a veteran of 426 NHL games, did not break training camp with the Kraken. Instead, he was placed on waivers and assigned to AHL Coachella Valley to start the season. He wasn’t there long, though, before Brandon Tanev and Andre Burakovsky both went down with long-term injuries, creating a hole in Seattle’s forward corps. Shore got the first call-up of the season.
“It’s a privilege to be up here, and I’m enjoying every second,” Shore said.
After Tanev went down on opening night in Vegas, Tye Kartye slid into his spot after being a healthy scratch against the Golden Knights. Once Burakovsky got hurt, Kartye was elevated to a top-six role, and in came Shore to backfill on the fourth line. He played all four games of the road trip and averaged 8:17 of ice time per game.
“There are a ton of different ways to contribute in a hockey game,” Shore said. “A lot of them are doing the little things and stuff that might go unnoticed by others, but never the guys on the bench, which is really important. But if you can chip in on the score sheet, all the better.”
Shore did that in spectacular fashion against Carolina to get his first goal and point as a Kraken. Bjorkstrand hit him with a 100-foot, waist-high pass that Shore somehow batted down at the blue line, before he raced in, deked, and scored on a breakaway.
Where does that goal rank in terms of the prettiest goals Shore has scored in his career?
“It might be No. 1, for sure,” he said. “They all count as one, though, so I’ll take ’em any way I can get ’em. But it was nice to see that one go in.”
Ummmmmmmmm…. Ok, Devin Shore.
Wait for the third replay. He took Bjorkstrand's stretch pass right out of the air. Heckuva way to get your first goal with a new team.
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.
Historically, it has been hard to get a good read on a team until about the 10-game mark of the NHL season. Well, the 10th game of the 2023-24 Seattle Kraken campaign will be played Monday night against the Tampa Bay Lightning, a team the Kraken have never beaten before.
I have been preaching patience through the first several weeks of the season, and I have liked what I have seen over the last week of games. But the team has only locked up three out of a possible six points on this trip and six out of a possible 18 on the season. That is a lower point total than they had at this spot during the inaugural season (seven points).
Of course, the optimist in me could still say, Well, they are only two points off where they were last season (eight points), so stop freaking out.
We are all guilty of human biases in our day-to-day lives, and analyzing hockey teams is no different. I often need to ask myself if I am being critical enough about the team this season, and do I have a fair and accurate read of the current Kraken expectations? To answer that question, I am going to do my best to be more objective in this week’s Monday Musings to analyze the team’s performance to date and project if this group can make the playoffs again.
Shooting and scoring
One area the team has obviously struggled with over the season is scoring. Seattle is ranked 28th in the league with 2.22 goals per game, and they had 3.33 goals per game at this point last season. The easy thing to point out is their low shooting percentage of 7.2 percent which is also 28th in the league. This has been turning around a bit, with Seattle clocking in at 11.3 percent over the last five games, and if you isolate the high-danger shooting percentage, that is also showing signs of a turnaround.
I looked at some of the volume metrics such as shot attempts and high-danger shots over the last five games, and the Kraken are at or above league average in most categories.
So, what is the issue? In my opinion, the Kraken are still feeling the impact of the first four games of the season. The team was ice cold at shooting the puck, and it made analysts and fans alike latch onto what was being said coming into the season that we should expect a regression out of this Kraken team. It still may be true that the Kraken are regressing, but if those first four games hadn’t played out so poorly for Seattle, we would be having a different conversation right now, even with the mixed results on this road trip. Despite their record, I feel confident that the Kraken are at least an average hockey team.
The goalie situation
Both Philipp Grubauer and Joey Daccord have been playing fine between the pipes this season. I was a little surprised to see Joey get the call three games in a row, but I liked coach Dave Hakstol’s explanation after the Florida game. “Both our guys are playing well, so [Joey’s] had a little bit of momentum here, and that’s why I went back with him tonight. And he gave us every opportunity to win the game.”
Over the last two seasons, Daccord has done everything he could in the AHL and just needed some regular reps in the NHL to see if he can truly be an everyday NHL goalie. Although it is early, you can see his confidence growing every game. I think he is on his way.
Grubauer has been mostly good in his outings, but he has gotten almost no goal support. More on that in a bit.
Other hockey thoughts from around the Northwest
It is easy to look at some of the goals scored against the Kraken over the last few games and just blame it on bad luck, but good teams do not put themselves in a position to be beaten by a bad bounce or two. It is part of playing the games, and you can’t expect to get all the breaks. Seattle had some good bounce against Florida too, so it’s hard to hang the entire loss on a ricochet off a stanchion.
The Kraken have scored first in six of their first nine games of the season. They have only won one of those games.
He has not scored a goal yet, but Will Borgen has played great this season.
Matty Beniers has looked good at times this season, but I would really like to see him find the back of the net. He is also dead last in the league in +/- with a -12. +/- is a stat that isn’t widely used anymore, but still, you never want to see one of your top players ranking last in anything. Let’s get Matty going.
Both Ryan Winterton and Jacob Melanson scored their first career professional goals on Saturday in an 8-2 victory for the Coachella Valley Firebirds.
Chris Driedger started the first four games this season for the Firebirds and has a save percentage of .948 and a goals-against average of 1.52 per game. If he was disappointed to be sent down to the AHL after training camp, he isn’t showing it with his play.
The Seattle Thunderbirds are retiring Patrick Marleau’s jersey on Friday. It reminds me how often the late great Andy Eide and I used to argue about who was the greatest Seattle Thunderbird of all time. I was on Team Marleau, Andy always went to bat for Glen Goodall. Andy was always right, since he saw them both play for the T-Birds. I just chose Marleau since I was once a Sharks fan.
Speaking of the Thunderbirds, I had Gracyn Sawchyn on my radar for one of the best player performances of the week. Sawchyn had two goals and three assists in the T-Birds’ 5-2 win against the Red Deer Rebels on Tuesday. Sawychn missed two games over the weekend due to a lower-body injury.
Player performance
Jagger Firkus (Moose Jaw Warriors, WHL) – This is not a mistake. Firkus was on top of our list last week and continues his blistering pace in the WHL this season. After six points in three games two weeks ago, Firkus had nine points over four games in the last week, including a hat-trick on Sunday. Firkus now has 29 points in 14 games for Moose Jaw this season. The Warriors will come through the US division in late February and March.
Jaden Schwartz (SEA) – Schwartz had two goals and two assists over the last three games this past week for the Kraken. The points are great, but he has also been impressing me in the face-off circle during the power play. He only took five face-offs on the power play over the last week, but he won four of them. That goes a long way to help the Kraken improve their possession time on the manpower advantage.
Joey Daccord (SEA) – He went 1-1-1 for the Kraken over the last week and set a franchise record and a career high on Thursday when he made 45 saves.
Chart of the week
A Sound Of Hockey Patreon member asked us on a Mailbag podcast episode last week if we had any thoughts on the lack of goal support for Grubauer over the last few seasons. We believe it is too early to confirm if this is actually a trend this season, but it is stunning to see the difference in support, even if it is just nine games.
Goal of the week
This was easy. The Devin Shore sequence and goal from the Carolina game was incredible.
Ummmmmmmmm…. Ok, Devin Shore.
Wait for the third replay. He took Bjorkstrand's stretch pass right out of the air. Heckuva way to get your first goal with a new team.
I’m using a deeper cut for this honorable mention goal of the week, but Seattle Kraken seventh-round selection from the 2023 NHL Draft, Zaccharya Wisdom, scored his third goal of the season for Colorado College with this nifty backhander.
It would be an exaggeration to call this week a critical week for the Kraken, but I think this week will go a long way in determining how good this team could be. They have the game on Monday night against the Tampa Bay Lightning, then have two home games against the Nashville Predators – a team that beat them in the second game of the season – and then finish this week with a game against the Calgary Flames.
Any points against Tampa Bay will be a pleasant surprise. Andrei Vasilevskiy has been out all season, but backup goaltender Jonas Johansson has back-to-back shutouts over his last two games, so getting a point is looking challenging. Although Nashville is better than a lot of people expected this season, they are beatable, and the Kraken have been playing better since the Kraken lost 3-0 in Nashville in the last meeting between those teams.
The big game might be Saturday against the Calgary Flames. Before the season started, I circled the Flames game as a game of note. I thought Calgary would be a team contending with the Kraken for a playoff spot in the Pacific Division this season. Neither the Kraken nor the Flames have looked like playoff teams so far, but Saturday could be devastating for either team to lose in regulation.
This is not a do-or-die scenario for the Kraken this week, but the hole they’re digging is getting deeper and deeper, so showing some resemblance of a playoff team would go a long way right now. Ideally, this means the Kraken get four out of a possible six points this week.
