In last week’s Monday Musings, I mentioned that getting three out of a possible six points in the week would be fine, and that is exactly what the Seattle Kraken did. Could it have been better? Of course, but the Kraken are playing well enough to be a borderline playoff team right now, which is a significant improvement from where they were a few weeks back.
The team will certainly need to get to another level, but for now, they have 11 points over the last 10 games, which is better than Anaheim, Vancouver, and Vegas. The team just feels more stable than before and no longer has me freaking out from any individual loss.
The Vancouver game that the Kraken lost 5-1 was, in my opinion, much closer than the scoreboard showed. I probably lowered my expectations heading into that game since I figured Vancouver was still ornery about the Kraken win in Vancouver just a week earlier and would come out blazing. It was not the Kraken’s best effort, but they were in a one-goal game until Sam Lafferty tipped one past Joey Daccord with about 10 minutes left in the game. That appeared to be the moment the wheels came off the tracks a bit for the Kraken.
Physicality and enforcement
There is a noticeable number of fans requesting the services of an enforcer to deal with the physicality teams are imposing on the Kraken right now. I personally don’t see the need for it, though I know plenty of you will tell me I am wrong. This year’s team is roughly built the same way as last season’s team, and I don’t think Seattle has the luxury of placing an anchor in the lineup just so the team can have a more physical presence.
If the team feels this is something it needs to address, the most likely scenario would be to call up John Hayden from the Coachella Valley Firebirds. In a scenario where Hayden draws into the lineup, who would you take out? Pierre-Edouard Bellemare leads the centers in face-off percentage and penalty-kill time. Kailer Yamamoto has three goals and has the second-most power play time of the forward group. Tye Kartye has three goals and plays with a more physical style already.
I thought maybe Hayden could be called up to slot in for Brandon Tanev, though Andrew Poturalski actually got the callup. Tanev took a clean, hard hit from Nils Hoglander on Friday night, which is coincidently one of the hits a lot of fans are upset about. I took more exception to the Tyler Meyers high hit on Oliver Bjorkstrand in the third period, though.
Side note, did you know the Kraken are tied for fourth in the league with seven games with a fighting major?
Let’s get quizzical. Name the seven players for the Kraken with fighting majors this season (answer at the bottom of the post).
Other Kraken musings:
With the 7-1 victory on Wednesday night against San Jose, the Kraken logged their sixth victory against the Sharks. That is the most against any opponent in the team’s two-plus seasons of existence. The Kraken have beaten the Predators the second most out of any opponent with five wins, and then there are seven other teams they have beaten four times in their existence.
It was crazy to see the Canucks win 5-1 at Climate Pledge on Friday then lose in regulation to the San Jose Sharks a day later. Those were the same San Jose Sharks that were dominated by the Kraken last Wednesday.
The Kraken goal differential is a -15 right now. Teams that are a zero goal differential or better have a good chance at making the playoffs.
The Kraken’s overtime loss to the Calgary Flames last Monday was the sixth Kraken loss in overtime or shootout this season. They only had six overtime or shootout losses over the entire 2021-22 season and eight all last season. I have no idea if that is good or bad. It is just an observation.
Tucker Robertson, a fourth-round pick of the Seattle Kraken in the 2022 NHL Entry Draft, scored his first career AHL goal on Saturday in a 4-2 win for the Coachella Valley Firebirds over the Bakersfield Condors.
There’s an expression I use in my life, “Don’t make a decision until you have to,” but I am starting to wonder who comes out of the lineup when Andre Burakovsky is cleared to play. He has been skating with the team in a red non-contact jersey lately. Could Kartye be the odd man out, or will there be a new roster scenario the team needs to deal with by then? How long might Tanev be out?
It is incredible how lean the Kraken keep their roster, with the only healthy scratch on Friday night being Jaycob Megna. This has to be a strategic decision to accrue salary cap space.
Player performance
David Goyette (SBY/SEA) – The center selected in the second round of the 2022 NHL Entry Draft has three goals and four assists over his last four games playing for the Sudbury Wolves in the OHL.
Lukas Dragicevic (TCA/SEA) – A defenseman picked in the second round of the 2023 NHL Entry Draft might have started the season a bit cold, but he is really starting to heat up. Dragicevic has seven assists over his last four games for the Tri-City Americans including this dandy of a sequence:
Alex Lyon (DET) – The Detroit goaltender got two starts and two wins for the Red Wings this past week. Lyon was the third-string goalie in Detroit and did not get into a regular-season game until Nov. 17. If his name sounds familiar, Lyon helped propel the Florida Panthers into the playoffs last season with a great stretch run.
Chart of the week
After starting ice cold, the Seattle Kraken shooting percentage has rebounded and is on the right track.
Goal of the week
Andrei Svechnikov scores the game-winning goal in Carolina after taking a puck off the ear.
The Kraken hit the road for four games over the next eight days with a stop in Chicago on Tuesday, then on to play the Eastern Canadian teams for the final three games. This should be a good test. Four points should be the minimum and five points should be the realistic target. Like last season, this team has a better road record than home record.
Chicago has a record of 3-7-0 over their last 10 games and is averaging just 2.6 goals on the season. They are now without the services of Corey Perry and Taylor Hall.
Seattle will face Toronto on Thursday, who is never an easy out, so I anticipate that game to be the biggest challenge of the four games. The Kraken will close out the trip with games against Ottawa and Montreal on Saturday and Monday respectively.
One area I am focused on over this road trip is the power play. It has been one of the bright spots of the season for the Kraken, but it has cooled off or is looking like it could cool off.
Answer to let’s get quizzical: The Seattle Kraken players with fighting majors are Tanev, Jamie Oleksiak, Jared McCann, Jordan Eberle, Tye Kartye, Vince Dunn, and Yanni Gourde.
If you have any questions, comments, or areas you would like me to explore, let me know in the comments section.
What a difference a week makes. Last Monday, it felt like the Seattle Kraken were on the brink of theoretical elimination from contending for a playoff spot, and now I am convinced they are a playoff team. Remember what I said about recency bias a few weeks ago? It apparently works the other way too, because I am now feeling good about this team’s chances this season after its impressive win against Vancouver on Saturday.
The Kraken secured five of a possible six points over the last three games and have looked good in all those games. There is still a long way to go, but there is a lot to be happy about over this last stretch. For starters, the depth scoring that was a key to Seattle’s success in 2022-23 has returned. Over the last three games, the Kraken have scored 10 goals from eight different players. They also won a game that went to a shootout for the first time in 579 days.
No panic
Since Game No. 5 on the season, it has felt like the Kraken have been playing decent hockey most nights, but they just were not getting quality results (and yes, I know there were some real stinkers sprinkled in there). If you play good hockey, the wins should come, so I’m hoping the last week of play is the new normal.
Coach Dave Hakstol has been even-keeled and consistent when speaking to the media, even after what felt like a disastrous loss in Edmonton when Evander Kane scored a hat trick that started with under seven minutes to play in the third period. That could have been a loss that stuck with players for a while, but they bounced back with the shootout win against the Islanders, and that seemed to give them some confidence heading into Vancouver.
3-on-3 changes coming
Broadening the scope of this article a bit, there was a lot of chatter about potential changes to three-on-three overtime rules coming out of the general managers meetings last week. My first question is, “Why do we need to change it again?”
The closest answer I saw was the quote from Arizona Coyotes GM, Bill Armstrong. “The purpose of overtime is to end the game [before the shootout], and we need to make sure that continues to progress.”
So, I looked up the numbers.
Three-on-three was instituted before the 2015-16 season, so you can see the obvious and immediate impact it had on reducing the number of shootout games. But, that number has even been trending down slightly since its inception, so changes in tactics from coaches really haven’t made the shootout happen any more frequently.
I, for one, love the shoutout, even when a team’s shooters are slow and methodical about choosing their shot attempts. It adds a lot of anticipation.
If reducing shootouts is the goal, how about they just say… eliminate them altogether? For the record, I have never heard a fan complain about the three-on-three format other than it being too short.
Other musings
Regular readers will already know this, but the Kraken win over Vancouver was their first win on a Saturday this season. They improved to 1-4-1 on the season on Saturdays.
Alex Wennberg, Brandon Tanev, and Jamie Oleksiak all scored their first goal of the season over the last week.
It’s been nice to see Tanev back on the penalty kill. The team was solid on the PK early in the season without Tanev but has struggled as of late. Turbo’s speed brings a different element that might get teams second guessing when trying to pinch on a 50/50 puck.
One of my favorite moments of the game against the Canucks was when Jared McCann took a (clean) run at Elias Pettersson. I love the emotion McCann shows on the ice.
Eeli Tolvanen led the forwards in blocked shots last week. He is known for his shot, but he has looked good defensively. Offensively, he only has three goals on the season, which is fine, but he is still due for a breakout game with a couple goals. If he isn’t making a huge impact offensively, being able to block shots and help at Seattle’s end of the ice keeps him in the coaching staff’s good graces.
I have some feedback for Game Ops at Climate Pledge Arena. When there is a penalty in the game, show the replay BEFORE the game starts again. More than a few times last week, a penalty was called, but the replay did not show up on “The Twins” until after game play began. Anyone else notice this? We, as fans, need more time to be irate over the call.
Big congratulations to Everett native Kaden Shahan for being named to the US Junior Select team that will compete in the 2023 World Junior A Challenge in early December. Shahan played much of his youth hockey in the Seattle area. He now plays for the Sioux City Musketeers in the USHL where he has 15 goals and five points in 19 games. He is expected to play at the University of Connecticut next season.
Kraken prospect, Ty Nelson became the North Bay Battalion’s franchise leader in goals, assists, and points for a defenseman. Congrats, Ty!
Oscar Fisker Mølgaard scored two goals on Saturday night for HV71 in the Swedish Hockey League. He was a second-round selection of the Kraken in this most recent entry draft, and apparently, he had some sage advice for one the veterans before the game.
Former Seattle Thunderbird Luke Prokop made his AHL debut last week. Read about Luke’s inspiring story here.
Another former Seattle Thunderbird hit a significant milestone last week. Goaltender Thomas Milic won his first AHL game in a 3-2 win for the Manitoba Moose.
Player performances
Jordan Eberle (SEA) – After missing a few games after being cut by Jaden Schwartz’s skate in practice, Ebs has five points over the last three games. Eberle’s uptick in production has been a sight for sore eyes, as he struggled to contribute in the first part of the season.
Jani Nyman (SEA) – The Seattle Kraken’s second-round pick from the 2022 NHL Entry Draft continued his impressive season with a hat trick for Ilves against SaiPa on Saturday night. At 19 years old, he is tied for second in goals scored (11-5—16) in the Finnish Liiga.
Sidney Crosby (PIT) – I don’t know if anyone has heard of this guy before, but he has five goals over his last four games.
Goal of the week
This was Mølgaard’s second goal of the game and proved to be the game winner for HV71.
This was Alex Nedeljkovic’s second AHL goal. He then got recalled to the Pittsburgh Penguins and pitched a 38-save shutout against the Vegas Golden Knights on Sunday.
Chart of the week
The Seattle Kraken power play has significantly improved this season, and the team has become more dependent on it compared to last year.
Here is a look at the team’s power-play goal percentage compared to the rest of the league this season.
Another big and busy week
For as good as I feel about the team right now, they still have some work to do before we can really say they are a playoff contender. They have another critical week ahead, with three home games against division opponents over the next five days. The Kraken will look for redemption Monday against the Calgary Flames, who are not too far behind the Kraken in the standings.
Then, the Kraken will welcome the San Jose Sharks and Canucks in what I call the “Turkey Sandwich” on the days before and after Thanksgiving respectively. Four points should be the target with three being the minimum for good feelings.
Is there an area you want to dig into for next week? If so, let me know in the comments section, and I will see what I can do.
Another Monday Musings and another sinking feeling about this team. The Kraken are now 0-4-1 on Saturday nights this season… We all knew the Saturday egg was coming against the Oilers, right? Edmonton was coming off a humiliating loss to the San Jose Sharks, and the Kraken were coming off one of their best games of the season in Colorado, so we had seen this act before.
In fact, we saw it against Calgary just one week prior, and we saw it last season when Vancouver won its first game of the season against the Kraken after starting the season with seven straight losses. I mentally prepared myself for the loss all day Saturday to minimize that sad Sunday vibe that I usually feel after a Saturday loss.
The week wasn’t a total failure. Last week I wrote that I was hoping for four out of six points, but three would be fine. It is fine, but I can’t shake that sinking feeling in my gut that they could have had more points. I think they were probably the better team Tuesday night in Arizona but only came away with a shootout loss and one point. Thursday against the Avs was one of the more exciting games of the season and ended with a last-minute game-winning goal by Oliver Bjorkstrand.
The Avalanche win felt like a signature win to send the boys streaking, but it was not to be.
Lack of high-danger chances
One thing I did not like about the Saturday night game against Edmonton was the lack of high-danger chances. It just never felt like the Kraken were getting looks at the net until the third period when it was way too late. It is not the first time I’ve felt that way in a loss. Here is a look at the number of high-danger shots by game and the game outcomes.
I am not exactly going out on a limb here, but the Kraken need to generate more shots from in close if they expect to win. The Rangers, Flames, and now the Oilers games have felt like Seattle never really had a chance. How they generate those high-danger shots is not clear to me, but it does seem to correlate with players battling through to get to the top of the crease, similar to what Zach Hyman did three times in 10 minutes for the Oilers on Saturday.
Derek Ryan and promoting the game
I always enjoy seeing Derek Ryan visit Climate Pledge Arena. Derek’s journey through Spokane, Canadian College, Swiss league, Swedish league, the AHL, and the NHL is remarkable in its own right. One thing I especially love about Derek is that he took the time to talk to us on the Sound Of Hockey Podcast back in November of 2020. He did not need to talk to us, but he implied he did the interview because he felt it was important to help grow the game and promote the sport. A lot is asked of NHL players and coaches, so when someone outside the Seattle hockey scene like Ryan makes the time for us, it makes me a fan for life.
Other Musings
The Kraken are 4-4-2 in their last 10 games, good for 50 percent of the points available in that time span. It’s not horrible until you realize the Kings, Golden Knights, and Canucks have captured at least 70 percent of the points available to them over their respective last 10 games.
It is still early in the season, but the NHL’s Pacific Division looks daunting. The Kraken have only played one game (Vegas on opening night) against any of the top four teams in the Pacific, and they are 0-3-0 in games against all divisional opponents.
Nobody brings me more joy when they score than Bjorkstrand. I’ve been following his career since he played with the Portland Winterhawks and still think the trade for him last summer was a major coup. I was jumping up and down in Denver when he scored that game winner on Thursday.
You must figure Colorado is going to come into Seattle fuming. They squandered at least a point to the Kraken on Thursday when they allowed a goal with 32 seconds left in regulation and then had a rather embarrassing 8-2 defeat to the Blues at home on Saturday. I am scared already.
It has been fun to see Ryan Winterton get the call-up this week. I think it will be some time before we can call him an everyday NHLer, but even in limited minutes, I like what I’ve seen. He brings more physicality than I would have expected out of a 20-year-old first-year pro getting called up to the NHL. I think he has a bright future in this organization.
Even though Andre Burakovsky was not playing at the level we expected him to play early this season, this team really misses him. He is a huge scoring threat, and having him out crushes Seattle’s depth.
Speaking of Burakovsky, we would like to congratulate him and Johanna on the birth of their baby girl on Wednesday.
The Kraken only had four regulation Saturday losses all last season. They have four so far this season.
I am wondering if I should change this column to Fridays for the sole purpose of feeling better when I write it. The Kraken are 3-1-1 on Thursdays this season. Friday Fusings? I don’t know. We’ll workshop it.
Seattle Kraken fourth-round selection from the 2021 NHL Entry Draft, Ville Ottavainen, had his first North American professional goal over the weekend for Coachella Valley.
Monday night’s game against the Avalanche will be my 100th Seattle Kraken game at Climate Pledge Arena. There are moments where it still feels like a dream. This will be another one of those moments.
Player performances
Jaden Schwartz (SEA) – A regular call-out here on Monday Musings, Schwartz continues to be the best player on the Kraken this season. He has four goals and two assists in five games in November and is on a four-game goal-scoring streak and nine-game point streak.
Andrei Loshko (ROU/SEA) – The Kraken’s fourth-round selection from the 2023 draft had three goals in three games for the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies in the QMJHL over the past week. Loshko gets a lot of praise for his defensive maturity, so it is nice to see him starting to get a bit of a scoring touch.
Connor Bedard (CHI) – Have you heard about this guy? He has six points in the last three games including this little beauty. Bedard and the Blackhawks come to town in mid-December. I imagine that will be a hot ticket.
MacDonald is a freshman at Harvard and has four points in five games.
Chart of the week
This is an updated chart from a couple weeks ago. The chart for the 2022-23 records at this point really illustrates how playoff teams start to establish themselves near the top half of the league around this time of year.
This does not mean that teams need to be in a playoff position at this time of the season, but it pains me to say that no team that had a points percentage of .500 or lower at this stage made the playoffs last season. Yikes.
This is a jam-packed week with four games in six nights and some quality opponents to boot. The Kraken will face an angry Avalanche team on Monday, travel to Edmonton for a single-game road trip on Wednesday night, go back to Climate Pledge Arena on Thursday to host the Islanders, and will close out the week with a game in Vancouver on Saturday night. Four out of eight possible points will be fine, but anything less could be devastating for the team.
I don’t want to look too far ahead, but I am really looking forward to the game on Saturday versus Vancouver. The Canucks are playing extremely well, so I’m hoping the Kraken really elevate their game to compete.
Last week, I mentioned that if the Kraken were to get four out of a possible six points from the three games between then and now, it would resemble a playoff team. They got four out of six points by beating Tampa Bay and Nashville and losing to Calgary. So why do I feel so icky and bummed about the Kraken right now? Recency bias.
Recency bias gives “greater importance to the most recent event” that often misleads us into overweighting the most recent events when determining the long-term outlook for future events. This happens in positive and negative scenarios. Right now, we have a bad taste in our mouths from the team’s performance against the Flames on Saturday.
Let’s acknowledge the good over the last week. The Kraken got a big win against a very good Tampa Bay Lightning team last Monday that marked the first win in franchise history against that club. They then beat Nashville on Thursday night at home. That was a bit of a redemption game after losing to the Predators back on Oct. 12, which – up until Saturday night – was the worst they played all season.
What’s up with Matty?
The short answer is that I don’t know. I hate the expression, since I feel it is something that hockey media makes up to create a narrative, but he could be “gripping the stick too tightly” right now. The last couple games, it feels like he is not playing with the same confidence we saw last year. There are times where seems to be passing instead of creating a shooting lane for himself, and other times where he is finding space to create a shooting option but misfires the shot.
I’ve seen him out on the power play, but I am not noticing him as a scoring threat or even a key part of the power play right now. He is third on the Kraken in total power-play time this season with 31:27 of ice time, but he only has three shots on goal. Conversely, Andre Burakovsky, who has been out since Oct. 21, has less than half that time as Matty with the same number of power-play shots. This could be by design in how the power play is structured, but Beniers has been largely unnoticeable.
It could also be that opposing teams know him a little better this season and know how to make his life difficult, or it could be some self-inflicted pressure he is putting on himself. No matter what it is, I know he will get through it and will be fine. Slumps happen, and they probably happen more often to young players in this league than we even know. I keep wishing for some kind of fluky, ugly goal to help him break out of this funk.
Other Kraken musings:
Jaden Schwartz has been playing excellent this season, but I think Oliver Bjorkstrand has been the best player over the last five games or so. Both Schwartz and Bjorkstrand have 10 points on the season and have shown up at critical times in games.
Bjorkstrand scored his fourth goal of the season on Saturday night. He did not score his fourth goal last season until Dec. 22.
Beniers has yet to score this season; last season he had five goals by Nov. 5.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the Kraken rank eighth in the league in power play percentage at 25.7 percent, despite how ice cold (1 for 11) the power play was to start the season. The Kraken have at least one power-play goal in each of their last three games.
The Coachella Valley Firebirds are 5-2-0 on the season after winning four straight games. It has been a total team effort; they have 15 different goal scorers this season.
Shane Wright and Max McCormick lead the Firebirds with four goals apiece.
In just their second season, the Firebirds have the largest season ticket base in the AHL. It’s a remarkable achievement and testament to the leadership at Oak View Group. OVG has raised the bar in how to launch a franchise, both at the NHL level and now the AHL level. I often wonder if that is why we are starting to hear more expansion talk around the NHL.
Niklas Kokko, one of the Kraken’s second-round selections from 2022 NHL Entry Draft, is currently leading the Finnish Liiga in save percentage. He earned his first career shutout last week. Kokko is expected to be the primary goalie for Finland in the World Junior Championship at the end of December.
It was pretty cool to see “marathoner” Zdeno Chara run his second marathon of the year. On Sunday, he completed the New York Marathon in 3:19:19, which is an improvement on his Boston Marathon time of 3:38:23 in April. Congrats Big Z.
After injuring his shoulder in the World Championships last summer, free agent defenseman Ethan Bear is getting close to being fully rehabilitated and is destined for an NHL contract. He probably isn’t a fit for the Kraken, but I am excited to see this former Seattle Thunderbird back in the NHL.
Player performance
Jani Nyman (Ilves/SEA) – Playing for Ilves in the Finnish Liiga, Nyman had two goals in Ilves’ 6-4 victory over Sport on Saturday night. Nyman is currently donning the Red Bull helmet as the top U20 goal scorer in the league. He now has eight goals and five assists in 19 games for Ilves.
🙌😻 JAMPPA
Ilves siirtyi Vaasassa kahden maalin karkumatkalle tällä Jani Nymanin kauden seitsemännellä osumalla! 🚨
Ryan Winterton (CVF/SEA) – The third-round selection of the 2021 NHL Entry Draft for the Kraken has three goals and five points in his last four games. This is Winterton’s first season of professional hockey after playing in the OHL the last few seasons.
Justin Schultz (SEA) – Has four assists over the last three games including two power-play assists. He has been a significant contributor to the success of the Kraken power play as of late.
Chart of the week
The Kraken have uncharacteristically scored first in most of their games this season, which is usually closely aligned with winning. But the Kraken have won just 25 percent of the games in which they’ve scored first. The league average is 65 percent, so I expect that percentage to improve now that the team is scoring more. In the meantime, it has been an odd statistic through the first 12 games of the season.
Goal of the week
I had a hard time deciding between these two, so I’m picking two goals of the week:
BJORK-JAM! 🚨
Oliver goes BarrDown Studios for a power-play goal! What a shot.
The Kraken hit the road for a quick two-game set starting with the Arizona Coyotes on Tuesday, and then on to Denver to face the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday. The Coyotes are not the pushover we have seen the last few years, and Colorado really took it to the Kraken in a 4-1 win in Seattle’s home opener.
Seattle then returns home next Saturday with a game against a reeling Edmonton Oilers club. Getting four out of a possible six points will again be great, but three would be fine. It is another cliché, but I am looking for a full 60-minute effort in these games. I don’t think we’ve seen one yet, and a full 60 was the theme when the team went streaking last season.
One area where the Kraken must improve is the penalty kill. They have a 73 percent kill rate over the season after not allowing a power-play goal through the first four games. Over the last two weeks, they have a league-worst PK success rate at just 52.9 percent. That is brutally low, and they’ve got no chance at qualifying for the playoffs if they do not turn that around soon. This brief road trip would be a great place to rekindle that early-season magic.
As always, let me know your thoughts, questions, or areas you want me to investigate.
Finally, I want to give a big thank you to our Patreon members. We have a long way to go to be fully sustainable, but the support we have received to date confirms people appreciate our work and want to help it continue and grow.
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.
I do my best to be objective and avoid being swayed too much by the emotional roller coaster that is the NHL season. When I evaluate the question of whether it is time to panic about the Seattle Kraken season to date, the logical part of me says it is not time to panic. Plenty of teams have stumbled out of the blocks, only to finish the season in a playoff spot.
But … My emotional side is freaking out right now.
We knew the first 10 games of the season represented a big challenge for Seattle, and if you would have told me coming in that the Kraken would be 1-4-1 through the first six games, I would have believed you based on the quality of opponents on the schedule. None of that really matters, though, because for as high as I was feeling after Thursday night’s game, it all came crashing down Saturday.
The Kraken looked out of sync against the Rangers, and it just felt like they could not get any sustained pressure or quality chances. Adding more fuel to the angst was the nature of how Andre Burakovsky left the ice after being boarded by Jacob Trouba. Sure enough, the Kraken announced Monday that Burakovsky had undergone a procedure to address the injury and would be out 6-8 weeks. That is a massive blow; the hockey gods seem to be kicking the team when it is already down.
Shooting percentages
Scoring and the Kraken’s low shooting percentage is the theme of the season so far. In 2022-23, they finished second in the NHL behind only the Edmonton Oilers by shooting 11.8 percent. This season they are currently sitting 30th in the league with a shooting percentage of 6.1 percent. I thought Thursday night’s explosion of seven goals against the Carolina Hurricanes might have been the catalyst for getting out of this scoring funk, but the Kraken scored just one goal on 19 shots to land at 5.3 percent Saturday, which is only slightly better than the sub-3 percent they were averaging in the first four games of the season.
Before I go any farther, let me call out that Saturday night might not be the best proxy for the season. The shot quality was extremely low in that game; according to NaturalStatTrick.com, the Kraken had only one high-danger shot on net the entire game. The previous low was five against Colorado.
There was a lot of chatter entering the season that the Seattle Kraken were due for a regression in scoring this season. That might be true, but this team has shooters, so we should not expect it to stay near the bottom of the league all season. Consider that Matty Beniers, Jordan Eberle, Eeli Tolvanen, and (before his injury) Burakovsky have not scored. All four of them have averaged over 10 percent in shooting their last five seasons. There is too much to go into on this, but I promise to do a deeper dive into the topic later this week.
It is still early. Let’s not panic… yet.
Early improvement in the face-off dot
We identified face-offs as an opportunity for improvement this offseason, and when Pierre-Edouard Bellemare was signed, we thought he should help the team improve in this area. While his own performance is bringing up the team’s statistics, Bellemare seems to be helping other players improve their face-off percentages as well.
Apart from Jordan Eberle, all players have improved their face-off percentages this season to date compared to all last season. Being that Eberle has only taken six draws, I would not worry too much about his 33 percent.
An area I was particularly concerned about coming into the season was the lack of right-shot centermen that could be deployed in the right face-off dot in the defensive zone. This dot is considered the strong side for a right-shot forward and the weak side for a left-shot forward. The Kraken’s four centers are all left shots, which would put the Kraken at a strategic disadvantage when taking face-offs in the right defensive-zone circle. (If you want to read more on this topic, check out this post from over the summer).
The data shows that the Kraken are weaker on the right defensive-zone circle, but even though they are missing the right-shot option (filled last season by Morgan Geekie) to take the right-side face-offs, they are still stronger on that right face-off dot.
It is early in the season, and some of the teams the Kraken have played this season were weaker face-off teams from last season. But even with the limited sample size, this is positive progress in this area.
Other Kraken thoughts
The Burakovsky injury is significant. I was counting on him to play a majority of the season to improve the Kraken offensively and replace the goals of Daniel Sprong.
The injury to Burakovsky, this will provide an opportunity Tye Kartye and Kailer YamamotoI I expect both of them to work up and down the lines and get more scoring opportunities with more skilled linemates. In my opinion, Yamamoto can create more offensive opportunities on the fourth line than Kartye, so I would bet Kartye starts most of the games up the lineup with Yamamoto getting occasional extra shifts outside of the fourth line.
It was fun to see Kartye score his first regular-season goal Thursday against the Hurricanes. It was equally fun was to see how excited he was after he scored.
I’ve often felt Alexander Wennberg is the most underappreciated Kraken player to ever wear the jersey, but I also put Jaden Schwartz in that same boat. Schwartz has two of the three power-play goals scored by the Kraken this season and is often moved around the lines to get other players going.
As a team, I believe the Kraken have played better than their record shows so far (although, maybe not so much against the Rangers). They’ve allowed 3.33 goals against per game, but three of the goals against were on an empty net.
Former 2022-23 Seattle Kraken fourth-liners Morgan Geekie, Daniel Sprong, and Ryan Donato have a total of four goals for their 2023-24 teams. The Kraken’s 2023-24 fourth line of Tye Kartye, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, and Kailer Yamamoto have three goals through the first six games.
It’s way too early to start looking at the standings, but it is calming to see that the third-place Los Angeles Kings have just two more points than the Kraken.
Player performance /Stick taps
Jagger Firkus (Moose Jaw Warriors, WHL) – Firkus has five goals in his last two games, bringing his season goal total to 10 in 10 games. That’s not bad.
Jagger Firkus does his best work in the final minute of the period
Pierre-Edouard Bellemare (Kraken) – Bellemare has a face-off win percentage of 56.5 percent, and he scored his first goal as a Kraken, netting a short-handed goal against the Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday.
Vince Dunn (Kraken) – Dunn had a goal and three assists in the three Kraken games last week. I’ve mentioned several times this season that he has looked off, but I figured it was just a matter of time before he would be back to 2022-23 form. He looked back against Carolina.
I spent most of my Sunday doing data gymnastics to fix my location data from the Saturday game, since it was thrown off by the lighting issue that had the teams trading sides halfway through each period. You see, a defensive-zone face-off varies depending on the period (and arena) of the game. When the teams switch sides in the middle of a period, that logic gets screwed up. I realized this when my wife leaned over to me at the game and said, “This is going to screw up your data.”
As always, let me know if you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions on other areas to investigate by leaving a note in the comments section.
