There was an eerie sense of, “Oh, we’ve seen this one before,” in Thursday night’s game between the Minnesota Wild and the Seattle Kraken. It had hints of the Kraken home opener against the Canucks, when Seattle dominated the second period, but Vancouver somehow got the only goal on a stinker through Philipp Grubauer’s legs. Then an ill-timed penalty in the third allowed the Canucks to tie that game a second time, and it was downhill from there.
There were a few distinct differences on Thursday, though, that showed the Kraken are learning from their mistakes and allowed them to emerge victorious against a good Minnesota Wild club.
The Kraken again dominated the second period Thursday, and again Grubauer faced only a handful of shots during those 20 minutes. Seattle did find one goal this time, and when the big chance came for Minnesota to tie it, Grubauer made a game-breaking save. Then when the ill-timed penalty was again taken halfway through the third, the Kraken netminder again came up huge, making a sequence of mind-boggling saves and getting some puck luck along the way to keep Seattle in front.
It was an impressive 4-1 win by the Kraken, who improved to 3-4-1 and fourth place in the Pacific Division.
A sloppy start and a turning point
Things got off to a shaky start for the Kraken. Minnesota had them hemmed in for much of the first 10 minutes, and the Wild drew first blood. Budding superstar Kirill Kaprizov gloved a puck down behind the goal line, dropped it to himself, and found Ryan Hartman in the slot. Hartman banged it home to give his team a 1-0 lead at 6:27.
Just seconds later, the Wild appeared to score again when a puck caromed off the skate of Marcus Foligno and into the back of the net. The officials immediately called no goal on the ice, but then reviewed to see if there was a distinct kicking motion. Haunting visions of opening night in Vegas surely came racing back for Kraken fans, but this time video confirmed that it was kicked. The goal was negated and Seattle dodged a huge bullet.
“The kicked-in goal is a real turning point, but it’s only a turning point if you take advantage of it,” coach Dave Hakstol said after the game. And Seattle did take advantage of it.
After that, Seattle started to find its sea legs, connected on some passes through the neutral zone, and quickly turned the tides of the game.
Haydn Fleury—a healthy scratch for the home opener on Saturday—scored his first of the season. From the corner, Jaden Schwartz threw the puck through the crease, hoping to find a deflection. Instead, it slid all the way across the ice surface, bounced off the side boards, and came out to Fleury in the high slot. Fleury dusted it off and snapped it through traffic. The puck changed directions on the way to the net and eluded Cam Talbot, bringing the Kraken level at 1-1.
The first period closed with Marcus Foligno taking a four-minute double-minor for high sticking Joonas Donskoi. The Wild killed it off to start the second, but the power play, which gave heaps of zone time to the Kraken, set the tone for the period.
Seattle absolutely owned the puck during that 20 minutes, outshooting Minnesota 17-4.
Talbot was standing tall for the Wild, but Fleury broke through again at 7:33 for his second of the game. He took a sharp-angle shot that Talbot stopped with his shoulder, but the rebound dropped right onto Fleury’s stick, who was in full stride behind the net. Before Talbot could blink, Fleury had looped around and stuffed it into the open cage on the far side, giving the Kraken defenseman the first multi-goal game of his career.
With under 30 seconds left on the clock, Kirill Kaprizov stole the puck from Yanni Gourde at center ice. He raced in on a breakaway and deked to his forehand, but Philipp Grubauer shut the door for just his fourth save of the entire period. Had Kaprizov scored there, it would have unraveled a near-perfect period by Seattle.
Gourde took full responsibility after the game for the turnover, and heaped praise upon his netminder for bailing him out.
Bend but don’t break
The Wild threw everything at the Kraken in the third, as the comeback kids from Minnesota sought another victim of their late-game dramatics. The best opportunities came after Fleury interfered with Kevin Fiala at the 10:01 mark.
During that penalty kill, Grubauer showed why Seattle signed him to a six-year, $35.4 million free agent contract in the offseason, making a whole host of point-blank saves. He also got a bit lucky, when Joel Eriksson Ek had him dead to rights, but somehow pushed the puck through the crease, off the far post, and out the other side.
On the sequence of saves by Grubauer, Fleury said, “I was in the penalty box, so I was really thanking him for that. That was huge. I think that’s why he makes the big bucks.”
Two empty-net goals, one by Brandon Tanev and one that Mark Giordano remarkably banked off the boards from the defensive zone, sealed it for the Kraken.
Three Takeaways
Kraken are progressing
It’s still early in the season, but this was a big-time victory against a good club that has played well in the early stages. Hakstol seems pleased with the progress the team is making, and rightfully so. It’s fascinating to watch the Kraken learn from their mistakes from night to night, and comparing the Canucks game on Saturday with the Wild game on Thursday is a great way to see that happening in almost real time.
The odd-man rushes that plagued the team early on have been mostly curtailed, and when things have broken down—like they did at the end of the second on Thursday—Grubauer has been a saving grace the last couple games.
Meanwhile, the score-by-committee approach seems to be working suddenly. It’s been well documented that Seattle does not have a star scorer that will put up 30 or 40 goals, so it has to get production from its lower lines and its defense. Well, Tanev leads the team in goals and added to his total against the Wild, and Fleury scored two on Thursday. So… it’s working.
Can’t help rooting for Fleury
It’s hard not to root for Fleury. At the home opener, where teams traditionally announce the entire roster, he had to come to the bench in street clothes and give a wave to the fans, despite being a healthy scratch that night. He got back in on Tuesday against Montreal and played well, earning himself another game Thursday. Against the Wild, he took full advantage of his opportunity and earned first star honors for his two huge goals, including the eventual game winner.
The Kraken are proving to be a second-period team, and they showed it against the Wild in what Grubauer called one of the best periods he’s ever seen. They don’t always get off to hot starts, but they’ve tilted the ice in the second frame on multiple occasions now.
Explains Fleury, “Hak really stresses valuing the puck in the second period, trapping the other team in their zone with the long change. Our forwards did a really good job of that in the second. They really wore their D out down low in the offensive zone, and we were able to have a couple of quick-up plays where they weren’t able to change. And then their forwards and their D are out there for two minutes.”
It’s good to know that there’s a shift in the game script coming when Seattle is slow out of the gates, but the starts are the next problem that needs fixing. That will continue to be an emphasis for Hakstol and his staff moving forward.
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at Sound Of Hockey and the host, producer, and editor of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is an inconsistent beer league goalie who believes that five players have to make a mistake before the puck gets to him. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFunBrown or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
It could have been one of those nights that live on in Seattle Kraken lore forever, and in a way it still will. But what if Nathan Bastian had converted on the Mason Appleton rebound that skipped right off his stick in the second period? What if the Appleton breakaway chance that Thatcher Demko just swept off his goal line had trickled just a smidge faster? What if the pass back to Vince Dunn at the point with four minutes left in regulation hadn’t been out of his reach?
While it was certainly a momentous night that those in attendance will never forget, the outcome did leave a residue in the mouths of Seattle fans, players, and coaches. For as magical as the first game ever at Climate Pledge Arena was—and it really was magical—imagine if Seattle had won.
“It was electric in here all night,” said captain Mark Giordano after the game. “I mean the fans— that’s right up there with any [game I’ve played].”
“I don’t know if you can get more,” coach Dave Hakstol quipped when asked if he wanted to see more from the fanbase. “That was outstanding. Yeah, it was an amazing atmosphere, and you know, the bottom line is we wanted to reward the group in the stands with a win tonight. It’s a sour taste, you know walking out of the rink tonight, and that’s a part of it because [the fans] were awesome.”
Ah, what could have been.
The Kraken are evolving before our eyes
The Kraken have morphed into a very different team after a couple days of practice. Hakstol talked a lot about giving up too much off the rush during Seattle’s challenging two-week road trip that ended with a 1-3-1 record.
Yanni Gourde nearly scored just 15 seconds into the game on a breakaway that Vancouver goalie Thatcher Demko turned away with his blocker. But after that rush, Seattle’s attack was measured during the first period Saturday.
The skaters on the ice would try to get control in the offensive zone, but if there was nothing there, nobody over-committed. Instead, as soon as possession was ceded, all five Kraken players were consistently racing to the neutral zone to set up a trap for Vancouver.
“We settled things down a little bit in the neutral zone in terms of the way we approached our neutral zone play,” Hakstol explained of the altered style. “You talk about having five guys in the picture going both directions, and we did a pretty good job tonight. We didn’t give up a whole lot off the rush.”
In fact, there were practically no odd-man rushes against for the Kraken all night, save for maybe a partial break on the Garland game winner, but even that was the result of a fluky play in the offensive zone.
Vancouver did own the puck and zone time for most of the opening 20 minutes and made Philipp Grubauer work a bit. But most opportunities for the Canucks came from the perimeter, right where Hakstol wants them.
The Kraken finally started to push back late in the period, especially after an impressive penalty kill that featured a big Brandon Tanev hit and a painful Joonas Donskoi shot block, as well as a power play that nearly scored several times.
The Kraken sustained pressure for the final three minutes of the period, and with just three seconds left before the horn Dunn scored the first goal ever at Climate Pledge Arena. With tired Canucks desperately trying to get the clock to zero, Dunn took a pass from Adam Larsson, delayed, and wired a perfect wristshot off the right post and in.
Climate Pledge Arena erupted with the Kraken heading to the dressing room ahead 1-0.
Kraken got the better of the play, but the Canucks got the goal in the second
In the second, the Kraken looked like a different team again. While there was still some trapping whenever they gave up control, they spent most of the stanza with the puck and in the offensive zone and had a couple of very near misses. As Hakstol said, Seattle “tilted the ice” that period.
The first Grade ‘A’ chance came when Appleton put a shot with purpose into the feet of Demko from a bad angle. Demko kicked a juicy rebound right onto the stick of a streaking Bastian, but Bastian partially fanned on what looked like a sure goal.
Later, Appleton had a clear breakaway and fired a shot into Demko’s armpit. The puck squirted through the Canuck netminder and sat right on the goal line for a moment before Demko was able to dive back and sweep the puck off the line.
The Canucks did not register a shot on goal for the first 11 minutes of the period. Then Giordano tried to bank a breakout pass off the boards to Alex Wennberg, but Garland got a stick on it and quickly found Bo Horvat in the slot. Horvat put it right through the wickets of Grubauer, a goal that the Seattle netminder probably wanted back on the first shot of the period.
With the Kraken threatening all period long, it was Vancouver that got the lone goal.
A late penalty and a bad bounce doom Kraken
Giordano atoned for the errant pass and gave the Kraken a 2-1 lead back at 5:09 of the third period, after Jared McCann found him breaking over the blue line.
Unlike other nights when Seattle has had late leads, it did not sit back. Instead, it continued to pressure offensively without sacrificing structure in the neutral and defensive zones.
Still, you could really feel the tying goal coming. Carson Soucy went to the box for the second time at 12:34 after tripping Juho Lammikko, a tough time to take a penalty. It took Vancouver just 18 seconds of power play time before Quinn Hughes put a shot into Grubauer’s pads that Horvat found and deposited for his second of the night.
With the Kraken pushing back and threatening to retake the lead, an errant pass to Dunn at the point was just out of his reach. Garland jumped past the defender and raced through the neutral zone, firing a shot from the right circle that again beat Grubauer through the five hole.
That game winner came at 15:58 of the third and sucked the air out of an otherwise raucous building.
“I liked the way we played in the third, you know taking a penalty at a tough time against a good power play hurt us,” Hakstol said. “And then the one bounce of the game went their way on the game winner.”
Kraken need to find ways to win
The loss was disappointing. It came against what will surely be a bitter rival in Seattle’s emotional home opener. It also came in a game the Kraken really should have beaten a tired group finishing a six-game road trip.
Seattle has found several different ways to lose so far, which have added up to an underwhelming 1-4-1 record. When the Kraken have the game in hand like they did on Saturday, they need to start finding ways to win.
Said Giordano, “We play that sort of game, we’ll be ok more nights than not, I think. We generated a lot more tonight, we created a lot more, and that’s the game. It could go either way. It’s a tight game and they get a couple… They made us pay when they got their chances.”
It’s time for the Kraken to start making other teams pay, or this season could quickly become an uphill battle.
The Kraken are off Sunday. They will practice Monday before welcoming the Montreal Canadiens to Climate Pledge Arena on Tuesday.
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at Sound Of Hockey and the host, producer, and editor of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is an inconsistent beer league goalie who believes that five players have to make a mistake before the puck gets to him. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFunBrown or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
Seattle Kraken versus Vancouver Canucks 7 p.m. Pacific time Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle, Washington How to watch: CBC or stream on Hulu or ESPN+ Radio: 950 KJR AM
A wise and very angry lead singer once whispered into a heavily distorted microphone, “It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?” That singer wasZack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine, and he was most certainly not talking about the Seattle Kraken home opener, which will finally be played Saturday against the Vancouver Canucks.
But that lyric feels like it fits, doesn’t it?
Yes, it does have to start somewhere, and there truly is no better place than here, in Seattle, at Climate Pledge Arena. No more city council meetings. No more construction updates. No more arguing about what the team name should be. No more discussion about who the Kraken will pick from which team. Now, it starts. Now, we just show up and celebrate.
Aw, hell, you can’t stop us now.
No more excuses
It truly was a grind of a road trip for Seattle, with five games in eight nights played in five different cities, spread across three timezones, and with injuries hitting the team along with plenty of Covid-related drama.
There was no time for practice, and the group was surely exhausted by the time it took the ice for its final game of the trip in New Jersey.
But all that is in the past now. The team had a day off followed by two days of practice, and for the first time in the history of the franchise, it will take home ice Saturday with a crowd fully behind it.
There were some obvious issues that needed fixing by the Kraken, and the hope coming off the trip was that a couple practices would allow coach Dave Hakstol and his staff to address them.
“We had a couple of really good workdays,” Hakstol said Friday. “We wanted to pinpoint certain areas, and we were able to do that. In general, our transition game from defense to offense, from offense to defense is really the area that we needed— one of the areas we needed to clean up, both with and without the puck, so that’s one of the areas that we touched on.”
The Covid drama has also apparently subsided within the organization, at least for now. After getting Yanni Gourde and Vince Dunn back from injury prior to the game against the Devils, veteran forward Calle Jarnkrok, who had been in Covid protocol for nearly two weeks, is expected to play his first official game for Seattle.
Inserting players like Gourde and Jarnkrok into the forward lineup changes the whole makeup of the team, and Hakstol will be able to roll out the deepest lineup he has been afforded to date.
So, no more excuses.
Kraken need a hot start
On their very challenging five-game road trip that the Kraken ended with a 1-3-1 record, they made a habit out of falling behind early. Though the team showed resiliency by battling back in Vegas, Nashville, and New Jersey, this trend can’t continue for long if Seattle expects to be in the hunt for a playoff position later in the season.
Saturday, with a rocking building, there will be a lot of emotions at play, and this should propel Seattle to a hot start. It will be Vancouver’s mission to withstand the initial onslaught and counter with a goal or two of its own, like we’ve seen other teams do against the Kraken.
Seattle needs to take advantage of the extra boost at the beginning. Potting a goal or two early would blow the once suspended roof off the newly christened arena.
“The energy obviously is going to be great,” said Kraken captain Mark Giordano after practice on Friday. “The only thing you can get in trouble with when you’re too excited is penalties and stuff like that. I don’t think our team has an issue with that—knock on wood—but yeah, just use that energy in a positive way.”
Vancouver Canucks
After Vancouver showed well in the NHL bubble two seasons ago, reaching the second round, there was hope in British Columbia that the Canucks would take another step in 2020-21, as their young stars gained another year of maturity.
That did not happen.
Everything went wrong for the club last season, and it finished seventh place in the Scotiabank North Division with a 23-29-4 record.
Now in the eighth year of general manager Jim Benning’s seven-year plan (don’t ask), hope has again returned to Vancouver that perhaps this year the group improves.
There are still the young players that will likely torment Kraken fans for the next decade—Brock Boeser, Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, and Bo Horvat—but Benning added several pieces like Jason Dickinson, Conor Garland, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson that could have an impact.
“They got everybody going. It’s a real good hockey team,” Hakstol said of the Canucks. “When you look at the balance, whether it’s loading up the top six or a balance through nine and 12 forwards. You look at the changes they’ve made on the blue line. The thing that stands out about them is they play fast. They play direct, and they play fast, and they start on time.”
So far, the new mix has brought… mixed results, and Vancouver is 2-2-1 and wrapping up its own brutal six-game road trip Saturday. The Canucks are coming off a 4-1 win over an apparently very stinky Chicago Blackhawks team on Thursday.
WIth Vancouver just a stone’s throw up I-5 (Highway 99 north of the border), the proximity alone should make for a heated rivalry between the Canucks and the Kraken.
It has to start somewhere.
Home opener notes
The Kraken are “taking over” Seattle on Saturday as part of the festivities. Per an email from the team, “Lumen Field, T-Mobile Park, Pac Sci Arches, Climate Pledge Arena, Columbia Tower, and The Great Wheel will be lit in the Kraken colors while flags are being raised at Starbucks HQ and across the fleet of Washington State Ferries.”
A pre-game party at Seattle Center’s Armory Food and Event Hall starts at 4 p.m., and there will also be a ceremony just before puck drop honoring those who helped make NHL hockey a reality in Seattle.
Projected lineup
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at Sound Of Hockey and the host, producer, and editor of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is an inconsistent beer league goalie who believes that five players have to make a mistake before the puck gets to him. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFunBrown or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
After a first period where the Seattke Kraken fell behind by a pair of goals to the New Jersey Devils Tuesday, it looked like a repeat of Monday’s blowout loss was on the menu again.
But not this time.
The Kraken pushed back in the second period, got their legs under them, and twice got back within one before finally falling 4-2 against the Devils. The Kraken got goals from Riley Sheahan and Jared McCann while goalie Joey Daccord made 29 saves in an emergency start.
“We just ran out of time and ran out of gas a little bit,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said.
Despite the loss, the Kraken’s third straight, there was excitement as two hours before the game Seattle announced that center Yanni Gourde was coming off injured reserve and would be playing. It would be Gourde’s debut with the Kraken as he has been recovering from an offseason torn labrum operation.
To say he was ‘recovering’ is underselling what he had been up to. Skating with the team from day one of training camp, it was obvious that Gourde was going to be back prior to the initial target of December. At the start of camp, general manager Ron Francis declared Gourde was ‘ahead of schedule.’
Turns out he was way ahead of schedule.
Gourde was good Tuesday. He logged 21:37 of ice time and centered a line with Jared McCann and Jaden Schwartz. While on the ice together the three took 57% of the unblocked shots. Those are encouraging possession numbers.
They didn’t figure in the scoring – Gourde did pick up an assist on a third-period power-play goal – but had several near misses as passes just eluded or hopped over sticks. Schwartz in particular missed the puck by inches on two great feeds from Gourde.
“It’s pretty tough to come in with new linemates, but I think we did a good job of simplifying things and going north and going deep,” Gourde said. “It didn’t work, we didn’t win but we had some good looks.”
New Jersey’s Dawson Mercer opened the scoring by converting a two-on-one at 5:02 of the first period. A bad pinch by defenseman Adam Larsson combined by no high third forward created the break and for the fourth time this season, Seattle gave up the first goal. Just over a minute later Damon Severson would score for the Devils to build a 2-0 lead.
Seattle’s second period was better, and they missed on back-to-back power plays but came close and built momentum. That led to Sheahan’s goal to cut the lead. The momentum was short-lived, though, as Jimmy Vesey would score before the period ended to re-establish New Jersey’s two-goal advantage.
“Not a whole lot had to be said,” Hakstol said about any intermission pep talk he gave the team. “We came out against a fresh team, and they were quicker than us for the majority of the first period. They won a lot of races and got us on transition for one of the goals. As the period went on, I could see us getting our legs.”
McCann would score on a power play late in the third to give the Kraken life again but the Devils would seal the deal with an empty net goal scored by Pavel Zacha.
Daccord answers the call
After making one start in the AHL with Charlotte over the weekend – he made 26 saves and won 4-1 – Daccord was called on to fly to New Jersey and start the game. It turns out that Chris Driedger injured himself at some point during his third period duty Monday in Philadelphia.
Not the best conditions in which to make your first start, but Daccord showed no nerves or uncertainty. He allowed three goals while making 29 saves. None of the goals he allowed were questionable and he made several big saves to keep Seattle within striking distance.
“Joey was outstanding tonight,” Hakstol said. “He made some huge saves for us. It’s not always about big saves it’s when you make them. Joey gave us both, he gave us big saves and he gave them to us at the right time.”
Driedger was placed on injured reserve but no timetable was offered. Daccord will be with the team for at least the next week.
Other notes and tidbits
There was a lot of talk after the game about Seattle’s lack of practice and how it impacted the Kraken as the road trip wore on. “We definitely need some practice time,” captain Mark Giordano said. “You can see it in little areas of the game.”
Seattle will have Wednesday off before getting back to that needed practice on Thursday.
A night after the team didn’t fight as hard as they would like, the compete level was there Tuesday. “I like the fight and the pushback from the guys,” Giordano said. “I think we’re guilty a little bit of guys caring too much. You start squeezing it and overthinking it because you don’t want to be the guy that makes the mistake. We’ve just got to clean up a few areas.”
In the first period New Jersey’s young star Jack Hughes was taken to the ice hard in the corner by Seattle’s Jeremy Louzon. Hughes got up slow favoring a shoulder and did not return to the ice. Similarly, Morgan Geekie was hit in the face by New Jersey’s Jonas Siegenthaler in the second period. Geekie did not return and there was no update after the game.
Seattle Kraken at New Jersey Devils 4 p.m. Pacific time Prudential Center, Newark, New Jersey TV: ROOT Sports Radio: 950 AM KJR
UPDATE: The Kraken dropped some late-breaking news Tuesday afternoon, just hours before Seattle was set to take the ice against the New Jersey Devils. Yanni Gourde, who had been recovering from shoulder surgery that was originally supposed to keep him sidelined for several months, has been activated from injured reserve and will make his debut for Seattle on Tuesday.
In the same tweet from Kraken PR, the team revealed that netminder Chris Driedger, who was expected to start Tuesday, had been placed on IR, while Joey Daccord had been recalled from AHL Charlotte. Daccord will now make the start.
The #SeaKraken have made the following roster moves:
-Yanni Gourde has been activated off of IR -Joey Daccord has been recalled from the Charlotte Checkers -Chris Driedger has been placed on IR -Kole Lind has been reassigned to Charlotte pic.twitter.com/758RuMlDPZ
To get yourself fired up for a Daccord start, you may want to watch this video, which we filmed with him during Kraken training camp.
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Here’s our original story:
Sometimes in hockey, the best thing you can do is forget about your last game and move onto the next one. Teams typically look at back-to-back games as a challenge to overcome, but occasionally it’s a benefit to be able to get right back on the horse after taking a hard fall. Seattle got crushed 6-1 in Philadelphia on Monday in a game where nothing went right. Thankfully for the Kraken, they have no time to dwell on the ugly loss and have an opportunity to salvage their brutal five-game season-opening road trip with a victory tonight against the New Jersey Devils.
One thing we thought we would see from Seattle coming into the season was a 1A/1B goalie platoon, where Philipp Grubauer got more starts than Chris Driedger, but Driedger would be used regularly. With that in mind, we were sure that Driedger would get his first start of the year on Monday after Grubauer had gone for each of the first three.
Instead, Grubauer again was in the crease to start the game, indicating that Driedger would finally go Tuesday in Newark. What’s interesting about this utilization is that it’s more indicative of a team with a traditional starter and backup than it is of a team that intends to rotate its battery throughout the season.
Playing Grubauer for the fourth game in a row backfired on Monday. That’s not to say that the goals were Grubauer’s fault—they really weren’t, save for perhaps the fifth one that squeaked through his pads—but having the team’s starter get shelled is not good for anybody.
And because there was another game against the Devils looming Tuesday, coach Dave Hakstol was clearly hoping that Grubauer could gut it out to save Driedger. By Hakstol’s own admission, he ended up leaving Grubauer in for the fifth goal, at which point he probably should have been out of a game that had already gone sideways.
Though there was no morning skate to confirm, we are fully expecting that Driedger will get his first start for the Kraken Tuesday. He stopped six of seven shots Monday in relief and got a little help from his goal posts. The 27-year-old had a breakout season in Florida last year, where he went 14-6-3 with a 2.07 goals against average and .927 save percentage in 23 games, commanding plenty of time despite sharing the net with Sergei Bobrovsky.
In addition to getting beaten up on the scoreboard Monday, Kraken players also took their lumps physically. Nathan Bastian—who returns to New Jersey to face his old team Tuesday—was fed a whole tray of knuckle sandwiches in a fight with Nate Thompson. Jamie Oleksiak landed several rights on Nick Seeler, but also went to the penalty box looking at his hand after hitting Seeler’s helmet with a few of those blows.
While those are all just bumps and bruises, Mason Appleton was involved in an awkward collision late in the game that was a bit more concerning. He was ridden into the boards by Flyers defenseman Keith Yandle in an innocuous-looking play, but Appleton went down in a heap. He then struggled to the bench, where he was doubled over in pain for a while. It was hard to tell what happened on the play, but it looked like he may have tweaked something. Again, no morning skate to confirm if he’ll be back in the lineup Tuesday, but keep an eye on his status when the Kraken take the ice against the Devils.
New Jersey Devils
Many in the hockey world thought that the New Jersey Devils would take a big step last season. They did not, however, finishing 19-30-7 for seventh in the temporarily formed East Division. Can they do it this year? They’re young, but there’s again reason for Devils fans to hope for improvement.
Our choice for breakout player of the year is Jack Hughes, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2019 NHL Entry Draft. When he was selected, it was obvious that he had plenty of growing and maturing to do physically. Now that he’s 20 years old, he appears to be filling out a lot more and sounds confident and ready to lead this Devils team.
Hughes got off to a great start in New Jersey’s first game Friday against the Chicago Blackhawks, scoring two goals including the overtime game winner. He was so excited to have potted the winning goal, he threw his stick in the crowd in celebration, something we don’t believe we’ve seen before.
New Jersey also got a shiny new cornerstone player on the back end in Dougie Hamilton, who signed a seven-year $63 million deal over the summer. The offensive defenseman immediately made his presence known in New Jersey, scoring 17 seconds into that opening game against the Blackhawks.
Ryan Graves—acquired in a pre-Expansion Draft trade with Colorado—skates with Hamilton on an all-new top defensive pairing.
In net, the Devils have problems. Their starter, Mackenzie Blackwood, is one of just a handful of players in the NHL who has so far refused to get vaccinated against Covid-19. This is an issue anyway, but it will be especially painful for New Jersey when they travel to Canada, where—as of now—he will not be eligible to play.
All that is moot for tonight, though, as Blackwood is apparently getting over an injury. So, newly signed Jonathan Bernier gets the nod for the second time in as many games. Bernier, 33, has become a journeyman in the later stages of his career, having now spent time with six NHL organizations. He was 9-11-1 behind a terrible Detroit team last season, with a 2.99 GAA and .914 save percentage, in line with his career numbers.
Former Spokane Chiefs superstar and current Devils defenseman Ty Smith is on injured reserve, so we will not see him against the Kraken.
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at Sound Of Hockey and the host, producer, and editor of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is an inconsistent beer league goalie who believes that five players have to make a mistake before the puck gets to him. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFunBrown or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
They can’t all be Picassos, and the Seattle Kraken certainly aren’t hanging the film from Monday’s 6-1 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers in a museum any time soon.
Seattle actually had some life and a few chances early in the game.
Jordan Eberle got the puck on the doorstep early on but Flyers goalie Carter Hart was able to get his glove on it, or depending on how you look at it, Eberle shot it into his glove, to keep the game scoreless.
Had the Kraken cashed in on one of the early looks perhaps the game would have gone in a more positive direction for Seattle.
“It’s hard to say,” Kraken defenseman Carson Soucy said. “It would be nice if one of those goes in but we just didn’t stick with it enough.”
The Flyers were the ones sticking with it and would score thrice over the last ten minutes of the first period. The goals came from Claude Giroux, Travis Konecny, and Derick Brassard who banked one off Soucy.
It was 3-0 heading into the first intermission, but it already felt like the game was decided.
“We had a really competitive start in the first ten minutes and we did have a couple of good scoring chances,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said. “We gave up the first goal from 200 feet away which was a little bit of a theme tonight…we got beat up ice.”
Hakstol didn’t like the way his team defended the entire ice, feeling the goals were results from the lack of a forecheck or plays in the neutral zone.
Philipp Grubauer took the brunt of those mistakes, allowing five goals on 20 shots through two periods. Chris Driedger started the third period for Seattle and made six saves while allowing one goal in the third.
There was some thought that perhaps Grubauer should have been given the night off earlier and Hakstol said after the game that in hindsight he would have made the switch sooner. He also stressed the change in net wasn’t indicative of how Grubauer has been playing for the Kraken.
Seattle would eventually fall behind 5-0 in the second period before Soucy scored his first as a Kraken to stop the bleeding.
It’s a long season and teams will occasionaly lay an egg the way Seattle did on Monday. After the game there was no panic amongst the Kraken.
“There’s a lot of things that it looks like,” Hakstol said. “We were out of sync, we couldn’t put ourselves back on the right track and that’s the end result.”
Hakstol tweaks the lines
The top line had a new look Monday as Hakstol moved Alex Wennberg to center the Jaden Schwartz and Eberle group.
“We wanted to see a different combination,” Hakstol said. “It was a tough night to evaluate all of that.”
When Wennberg was acquired in free agency the general thinking was that he would take the top center role until Yanni Gourde was available to return from injury. While Hakstol is right, the line didn’t score and how they played in their own end is the stuff for film study.
However, an argument could be made they were the Kraken’s best line Monday, ending the night with positive possession numbers, something to build on moving forward.
Notes
The Kraken will finish their road trip Tuesday with a game against the New Jersey Devils. It’s expected that Driedger will make his first start for Seattle.
Nathan Bastian found himself in the middle of a number of skirmishes and one tilt with former Seattle Thunderbird Nate Thompson. Bastian was on the ice for 6:35 while earning 27 minutes in penalties.
Kole Lind played his first game with the Kraken. He played 9:21 but did not figure in the scoring. It was the eighth NHL game for Lind who played seven for the Vancouver Canucks last season.
