At Friday’s morning skate, Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said this: “Most importantly, it’s the start of the hockey game. The beginning of the game gives us an opportunity to build a 60-minute performance.” But after a 5-1 loss to the Vancouver Canucks, the Kraken bench boss was not happy with the way his group got out of the gates.
“It’s not an effort issue, it’s a readiness issue,” Hakstol said after the game. “They were the more ready team at the drop of the puck, and you saw that in our execution in the first five minutes of the hockey game. Once you start that way, it’s really hard to catch up in terms of your overall performance.”
Hakstol didn’t mince words in his evaluation. “We had too many guys below the bar tonight, and that’s the bottom line,” he said. “This is not a part-time league. It’s a full 60-minute league.”
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 5-1 Kraken loss to the Canucks.
Takeaway #1 (Curtis): Slow start on the power play
Like so many Americans, the Kraken were a step slower than usual on this day after Thanksgiving, at least to start. Vancouver piled up the first four shot attempts at even strength and seemed to be outworking the boys from Seattle.
Fortunately for the Kraken, though, the team drew the first penalty at 3:23 in the first period, a holding call against Nils Hoglander behind Seattle’s net (Rick Tocchet must have loved that).
And the calls against the Canucks didn’t stop there. J.T. Miller tripped Jaden Schwartz three minutes later, and then Tyler Myers got his stick into Jordan Eberle’s face (with a double-whammy friendly fire on Miller) at 11:33 in the period for a double-minor penalty.
Tyler Myers high sticks Eberle and draws blood for a four-minute penalty and ALSO catches JT Miller.
These plays–none of which were particularly “earned” by Seattle–gifted the Kraken eight minutes of first-period manpower advantage time.
These power plays should have been enough to give the Kraken a jolt and get them on the board. Coming into the game, the Kraken were tied for seventh in the league with a 25 percent conversion rate on the man advantage. And the Canucks’ penalty kill has struggled, conceding goals on 23.4 percent of opponent opportunities, 10th worst in the league.
Unfortunately for the Kraken, just the opposite happened. On the team’s first power play, the group seemed disorganized and sluggish, conceding two breakaway counterstrikes to the Canucks penalty killers–the second of which found the back of the goal off Teddy Blueger’s stick.
What a terrible power play that was for the #SeaKraken.
They gave up two short-handed breakaways in a row. Daccord stopped Dakota Joshua on the first, but Teddy Blueger scored on the second. Justin Schultz turned it over at the red line.
“The first foot out there, we gave up two short-handed breakaways,” Hakstol said. “Obviously not good enough.”
The second power play seemed to start well when Matty Beniers rifled the puck past Canucks goaltender Thatcher Demko, but the play was ruled offside on the zone entry after a successful Vancouver challenge. From there, the Kraken could never quite find an opening against Demko over the remaining five-plus minutes of power-play time in the first period. The result was a net minus-one on the scoreboard in eight minutes five-on-four.
Kraken defenseman Vince Dunn agreed with Hakstol’s assessment. “It’s awful on all of our parts. Both units will have to take a look at where we were going wrong and come to a quick fix… The foundation of what we were doing out there was not executed well. We made things a lot more complicated than we needed to.”
Takeaway #2 (Darren): Missed opportunities in second period
I agree, Curtis, that the first-period power-play miscues were a big issue on this night. But it’s funny to think that if the Kraken hadn’t been offside some 18ish seconds before Beniers scored an apparent equalizer, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The negated goal changed that narrative dramatically and probably altered the course of the game. Such is life.
The other thing that altered the course of the game was Seattle’s inability to score in the opening eight minutes of the second period, when the Kraken came to life and tilted the ice. In that time, they put eight shots on Thatcher Demko without allowing a shot to Vancouver, and they had a few great looks that Demko shut down.
When a team has a stretch like that, it has to capitalize, because the momentum will eventually swing back the other way. Sure enough, a sloppy-looking play in Seattle’s end led to Conor Garland whacking a loose puck toward Joey Daccord, and Dakota Joshua cleaning up the rebound to make it 2-0.
#SeaKraken can't find the handle on a loose puck in the slot, and it eventually ends up in the back of their net.
Tye Kartye scored the Kraken’s lone goal of the night (his first goal in exactly a month), but Seattle didn’t build off of it in the third period, and Vancouver eventually ran away with it.
Takeaway #3 (Darren): Tanev hurt, late response
With 2:46 left in the first period, Tanev got caught off balance in the neutral zone and got lit up by Hoglander with a high, hard (clean) hit. Hoglander had the puck, turned it over to Tanev, and the moment Tanev touched it, Hoglander crushed him. Tanev slammed to the ice with all his weight coming down on his left leg and had to get helped to the bench by linesman Brian Gibbons.
Visibly in pain, Tanev stayed on the bench for the remainder of the first and came out to test the leg at the start of the second. But he determined he couldn’t go, went back to the dressing room, and was officially ruled out with a lower-body injury.
A second issue happened in this game that was arguably worse than the hit on Tanev, when Tyler Myers—the same guy that injured Matty Beniers with a cheap shot last season—delivered a high hit on Oliver Bjorkstrand in the third period and appeared to make contact with his head. Sam Lafferty scored to make it 3-1 just moments after this hit that shook up Bjorkstrand.
Before I make this point, I want to be clear that I’m not a big proponent of fighting. I think it’s fine in some scenarios, but if it got removed from the game altogether, I wouldn’t be sad about it. I also don’t think signing or trading for a tough guy or calling up John Hayden is the end-all answer for the lack of response a lot of people think it would be. (Although, to be fair, Hayden did drop the gloves with the 6-foot-8 Myers in pre-season.)
I do think it’s important, though, that players stick up for one another and minimally show opposing teams they’re not willing to accept their teammates getting hurt, regardless of if the hit that causes the injury is technically clean or dirty.
I asked Hakstol if he wants to see a physical response when a key player gets injured on a big hit, and he said, “Depends on the situation. I won’t get into that one.” Fair enough. It’s a sticky subject, and getting into the details of how he wants his team to respond doesn’t benefit Hakstol or his players.
Without trying to guess how I think Hakstol wants his team to handle these issues, the way I view it is that having a physical response doesn’t have to mean somebody squares off in a bare-knuckle boxing match at center ice. But there should be *some* immediate reaction that makes a guy like Hoglander think twice about taking the exact same run at Brandon Tanev that Brett Howden took at him on opening night in Vegas. (I will refrain from saying somebody should immediately jump Myers in this scenario, because I wouldn’t want to go after a guy twice my size either.)
After all, Howden’s hit cost Tanev the first month of the season, and the pesky forward has been showing just how important he is to this team in his seven games since returning from that injury. Now he’s potentially gone again, and still, nobody immediately went after Hoglander, just like how nobody went after Howden, nobody went after Andrew Mangiapane when he smashed Jared McCann’s face into the ice, and nobody went after Jacob Trouba when he cost Andre Burakovsky six-to-eight weeks on the shelf.
It is worth noting that Kartye did seem to be challenging Hoglander late in the game when he got his 10-minute misconduct, and Yanni Gourde dropped the gloves with Blueger. Were those instances related to the hits on Tanev and Bjorkstrand? Perhaps. But those challenges came at the very end of the game when Seattle was already down 5-1.
Anecdotally, I seem to recall that last season almost anyone on the team (heck, Ryan Donato seemed to do it semi-regularly, and he is not known for his toughness) would jump on an offending player, sometimes getting his own clock cleaned in the process. What happened to that mindset? It’s not about having guys that will stand toe-to-toe and get their faces punched in, but rather having a pack mentality that simply doesn’t accept opposing teams taking liberties with your players.
That was a markedly easy win for the Seattle Kraken over the San Jose Sharks in the season’s first battle of the sea creatures. The Kraken came out flying, scored four goals in the first, and for much of the game the Sharks looked like they didn’t even belong on the same ice.
“We were ready to go at the drop of the puck,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “We came out, we scored early, but just the way we played from the drop of the puck, I thought, really, it put the momentum where we needed it to be.”
It was a big night offensively for several Kraken players, especially Oliver Bjorkstrand, who had a goal and three assists, and Eeli Tolvanen, who had two goals and one assist. Their line with Yanni Gourde combined for four goals and nine total points on the night. Brandon Tanev, Jared McCann, and Adam Larsson also had goals, and Jamie Oleksiak had two assists.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 7-1 Kraken shellackin’ of the Sharks.
Takeaway #1 (Darren): Good Kraken or bad Sharks?
It was hard tell if this game was a product of the Kraken putting together an exceptional performance or if it was more about a bad Sharks team playing even worse than usual. We think it was a mix of the two.
Seattle really did overwhelm the Sharks and managed to pen their inferior opponents into their zone for long stretches of the first two periods. When that happened, the San Jose defenders would all collapse down into a clump in front of the goal, leaving oodles of space for Seattle to work around the perimeter.
Case in point, this Yanni Gourde goal that made it 4-0:
GOURDE GOAL! 🚨
It's wild how much time and space Seattle has in the offensive zone so far. Look how deep all five Sharks players collapse.
Yanni banks it off Kahkonen and in from a sharp angle.
We asked Tolvanen if he sensed there was more time and space in the offensive zone in this one. “Oh, yeah,” Tolvanen said emphatically. “I think we did a really good job changing. They had tired guys out there, and we were able to change, then we’d get fresh guys out there. So I think that’s going to make it easier, and you don’t get tired when you play in the offensive zone.”
The Kraken had a whopping 82 percent of the shot quality in this game, another indicator that both teams very much got what they deserved.
From the San Jose perspective, their coach and players were seething after the game, and coach David Quinn said the effort was “embarrassing.”
“We weren’t ready to play,” Quinn said. “Two breakaways in the first minute and a half – just absolutely embarrassing. We lost every single battle, got beat off the walls, and every time there was a 50-50 puck battle, we were fishing for pucks and got on the wrong side of it.”
He had very strong words throughout his presser, which tells us this level of ineptitude was appalling, even for a historically bad team.
Still, take nothing away from Seattle, because the team did exactly what it was supposed to do against a bad team.
Takeaway #2 (Curtis): Best defense is a good (puck control) offense
Not to be lost in the Kraken’s scoring outburst was the team’s defensive performance. Seattle suppressed San Jose’s offense Wednesday night to an extent quite literally unprecedented in franchise history.
The Kraken allowed the Sharks only 14 shots on goal, which is tied for fewest in franchise history–matching the total Ottawa had on April 18, 2022. And the shots tended to be of the low-danger variety. According to Natural Stat Trick, San Jose generated shot quality expected to create just .75 goals. This is .31 goals lower than Seattle’s stingiest defensive performance before Wednesday night–a Dec. 29, 2021, 3-2 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers.
Of course, the Sharks have struggled to score this season. Entering Wednesday night, the Sharks had scored just 27 goals, by far the fewest in the league. Stung by poor finishing and perhaps some bad luck, the Sharks had generated shot quality expected to create 45 goals over 18 games (2.5 per game). The team’s weakest offensive showing came Nov. 10 against Vegas, when San Jose was shut out on shots worth 1.43 expected goals.
In other words, when looking at shot quality, Wednesday’s offensive showing from San Jose was almost 50 percent worse than the team’s previous worst in the 2023-24 season. That says something for Seattle’s defensive effort, even over a struggling Sharks team.
How did Seattle achieve it? Kraken defenders turned in strong work defending the high-danger areas of their own zone, conceding only two shot attempts from the slot all game.
But, more importantly, Seattle prevented San Jose from logging much time in the offensive zone in the first place. As Darren noted above, Seattle dominated possession through the neutral zone and into the Kraken offensive zone. One sequence in particular in the second period stood out when the Kraken kept the puck in the San Jose defensive zone for almost two full consecutive shifts. The sequence did not directly lead to a goal but it helped stretch out 18 minutes in the second period during which San Jose didn’t get even a single shot on goal.
As the saying goes–the best defense is a good offense. For the Kraken on Wednesday, it was.
Takeaway #3 (Darren): Top three lines all going
With a huge night from the Tolvanen/Gourde/Bjorkstrand line, all three of Seattle’s top-three forward lines are working well together right now. That third line was the big producer Wednesday, but the top two also chipped in on Larsson’s goal (Eberle and McCann assisted), and Tanev had the early icebreaker after a nice breakout pass by Alex Wennberg.
“I think we’re feeling it,” Bjorkstrand said of his line. “Maybe a few lucky bounces off the glass, but we like playing together, and I think it just kind of went our way today.”
We’ve also really liked the Jaden Schwartz/Wennberg/Tanev line, which has been excellent since Tanev returned from injury.
“It might be a bit of an odd look on a line chart when [Tanev] is on the right side there with Wenny,” Hakstol said. “But it’s been a good fit because he brings that pace, he gets you up ice, he gets you into the offensive zone.”
Seeing all three lines cooking at once gives reason for optimism that the Kraken can continue to build. The players are saying all the right things right now, recognizing that their game has improved since a miserable start to the season, but they don’t seem satisfied with where they sit.
* * *
While the Kraken won Wednesday night, Pacific Division competitors Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, and Anaheim all lost. This puts Seattle is in a playoff spot on Thanksgiving, an important checkpoint on a team’s playoff chances. Can Seattle keep building on these good feelings to climb more securely into that playoff picture? What do you think?
For some reason, this 4-3 Seattle Kraken loss to the Calgary Flames in overtime didn’t sting *quite* as badly as the loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Nov. 15. Trying to wrap our heads around why that is, we think it’s because Seattle was coming off a big 60-minute win against the Canucks on Saturday, and this was the fourth consecutive game in which the Kraken earned a point. Plus, this was a one-goal lead instead of the two-goal lead the Kraken held against the Oilers before Evander Kane took them to the woodshed that night.
Perhaps the Kraken have given fans just enough good feelings lately to be more tolerant of late-game slip-ups. Still, victory was again right there for Seattle, but Andrew Mangiapane—the guy who smashed Jared McCann’s face into the ice on Nov. 4—tied it at 15:53 of the third, and Rasmus Andersson won it in overtime.
Worth noting, the Kraken have still never beaten the Flames at home and are now 0-5-1 at Climate Pledge Arena.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a tough 4-3 Kraken overtime loss to the Flames.
Takeaway #1: Grubi down?
Philipp Grubauer didn’t have a great first period, allowing two goals on seven shots, including a Jonathan Huberdeau power-play wrister from beyond the top of the left circle that squeezed under his arm. Joey Daccord took the ice to start the second, and our initial thought was that coach Dave Hakstol had just given Grubi a quick hook because he didn’t seem to be tracking the puck.
But then Grubauer didn’t emerge from the tunnel for a few minutes, and that made it clear his exit from the game was out of necessity.
Hakstol confirmed the departure was due to injury but wouldn’t give any more specifics on what happened, other than saying a couple plays contributed to the goaltender’s injury. We’re thinking one of those may have been the negated goal by Martin Pospisil early in the first, when Pospisil ran over Grubauer. We heard there was a second shot that caused Grubauer to hunch over a bit, but we didn’t notice that one.
In any case, Grubauer stayed on the bench for the remainder of the game, so at first glance, the injury didn’t seem too serious. We shall see.
Daccord played well in relief, stopping the first 16 Calgary shots he faced before Mangiapane tied it. He did overcommit on the overtime goal, which led to Andersson going for the wraparound on the other side, but that was his only real mistake of the game (and to be fair, he recovered in time to make the initial save and got no help on the rebound).
Seattle’s puck management was sloppy in the first period, and that led to a 2-1 deficit after 20 minutes. The team came out flying in the second period, though, and tilted the ice as much as we’ve seen all season, firing 17 pucks at Dan Vladar, scoring twice, and grabbing 80 percent of the shot quality in the frame.
Jordan Eberle tied it 2-2 for Seattle at 8:21 of the second with a backhander that somehow squeezed through the pads of Vladar. Then Jared McCann gave the Kraken a 3-2 lead at 10:25 with a great tip of an Adam Larsson shot out of the air.
MCCANN CAN! 🚨
What a tip on an Adam Larsson blast.
Also… Somebody call the factory for MacKenzie Weegar! He takes out his frustration on the post.
The Kraken needed to get at least one more in that period. They were cooking, and the Flames were on their heels, but Seattle couldn’t get another one by Vladar and took a tenuous 3-2 lead to the third period.
As we’ve seen repeatedly this season, the Kraken got way too defensive in the third, letting the play come to them instead of keeping their foot on the gas pedal. The tables turned once again, and now Calgary was in the driver’s seat, peppering Daccord with 16 shots in the final 20. With the way the game was going at that point, everyone in the building knew the tying goal was coming.
“We played gritty,” McCann said. “But we’ve got to learn from our mistakes here and learn how to finish games off.”
We still can’t explain Seattle’s struggles at maintaining leads this season, other than there’s an obvious shift to defensive hockey once the team gets ahead. We don’t think this is an intentional change in tactics, but once the momentum shifts, they aren’t finding ways to get it back.
The good thing here is that as fixable trends have appeared for this team over the past two seasons, Hakstol and his staff have typically found ways to fix them. Protecting leads is an issue that’s continuously costing the Kraken standings points, so here’s hoping they can figure this one out.
Takeaway #3: Kraken in a “playoff” spot
There’s an old theory that Thanksgiving is an important marker for NHL teams, because statistically, those in playoff spots at the holiday make the postseason more often than not. Well, if the Kraken can beat the lowly 3-14-1 Sharks on Wednesday, they will officially be in a playoff spot on Thanksgiving, no matter what happens with other teams in the Western Conference.
There’s some voodoo accounting happening to get them into said spot, because as of the writing of this story, they’ve played two more games than the Ducks, Coyotes, and Flames, and those three teams are all within two points of Seattle.
Still, being this close should bring a small sigh of relief for Kraken fans. With the way the team started its season, this position by Thanksgiving seemed farfetched just a few weeks ago. Things continue to trend in the right direction, even if the results in games continue to be maddening at times.
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.
Good morning from Vancouver, where the Seattle Kraken defeated the Canucks 4-3 for a massive two points on Saturday.
We’ve heard Seattle’s players and head coach talking about the need to find a full 60-minute effort, and they got that from everybody in the lineup, resulting in a signature win for this team.
Author’s note: This edition of Three Takeaways will be quicker than usual because I have limited time this morning and woke up too late to do a more in-depth version. Forgive me.
Let’s get to it!
Takeaway #1: Exactly the type of goal we were talking about
On the last full Sound Of Hockey Podcast episode (Episode 261), we discussed the many things we thought had been plaguing the Kraken through the early stages of the season.
One of the things I identified is that we haven’t seen many of those plays off the rush where a Kraken forward either pulls up and finds a trailer or goes cross-ice to the player on the opposite wing and that guy finds the trailer for a prime opportunity from the slot.
With Vancouver leading 1-0 after a squeaky J.T. Miller goal that barely crossed the line, Jamie Oleksiak got the Kraken on the board with the type of play I was talking about on that episode.
1-1
Jamie Oleksiak starts the play. Jamie Oleksiak finishes the play. Great work supporting the set up by Beniers. #SeaKrakenpic.twitter.com/rBTniqAY3u
In this case, Jordan Eberle passed to Oleksiak at Seattle’s blue line, and the Kraken transitioned to offense quickly. The Big Rig sent a quick-up pass to Matty Beniers who rushed up the boards. Seattle did not have a numerical advantage on this play, as Beniers, Eberle, and Jared McCann faced three retreating Canucks defenders.
But Matty slammed on the breaks and found Oleksiak coming over the line. Oleksiak took a big rip at it and launched it over Thatcher Demko’s shoulder.
This play works, and it is a huge way Seattle generated offense at five-on-five last season. More of this, please!
Takeaway #2: Eberle and Beniers came alive
This was an important night for Eberle and Beniers, who have both been snakebitten for most of the season. They showed real chemistry and got rewarded for their creativity and hard work.
Beniers set up the goal we talked about in Takeaway #1, and Eberle had the second assist. Then Eberle got a fortunate bounce one second after a power play had ended after a high Oliver Bjorkstrand shot bounced off the shaft of his stick, got lost in Demko’s equipment, and eventually trickled over the line.
“Sometimes it’s nice to get some bounces,” Eberle said.
Eberle’s best play proved to be the eventual game winner at 6:48 of the third period. After a puck got tipped deep into Vancouver’s zone, he sprinted in on the forecheck and stripped Tyler Myers. Then in one fell swoop, he swung around and found Beniers streaking down the slot.
Beniers was in a prime scoring position, but he still needed to perfectly place the shot, and he did that, beating Demko to the stick side.
Getting these two players going offensively could be massive for the Kraken.
Takeaway #3: Are the Kraken starting to cook?
If you still had a bad taste in your mouth from Seattle’s 4-3 overtime loss to the Oilers on Wednesday, this game provided the cap of Listerine you needed.
The reality of that loss in Edmonton is that the Kraken played really well for 53 minutes that night, before completely blowing it and only getting one point. But mix that with a hard-fought shootout win the following night over the Islanders and now this very complete effort in Vancouver, and it seems this team could be finding itself.
The Kraken have earned five points out of a possible six in their past three games and have gone 5-3-2 in their past 10. We aren’t ready to say the Kraken are back to last season’s level and are firing on all cylinders, but we’re seeing some very positive signs.
This next week of home games is critical. Seattle will face a mediocre Flames team Monday, a terrible Sharks team on Wednesday, and this same good Vancouver team on Black Friday.
Take care of business.
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.
…And a BIG exhale from the home faithful. The Seattle Kraken badly needed the two points they collected Thursday, getting a rare shootout victory over the New York Islanders for a 4-3 win. The victory snapped a three-game losing streak for Seattle and eased the pain of a devastating overtime loss in Edmonton on Wednesday.
“Coming out of last night, that was a disappointing loss,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “We felt like we did so many really good things there. But you know, true to the group in here, we addressed a couple of things that we felt like we could do better, and then we said, ‘Let’s turn the page.’”
Kailer Yamamoto was the star in this one, scoring the tying goal at 4:50 of the third period, assisting on Matty Beniers’s power-play goal, and scoring the deciding goal in an extended eight-round shootout.
It’s wild to think how thin the margin has been in both games of this back-to-back series against the Oilers and Islanders. A couple bounces in either direction, and the Kraken could have come out with any number of points between zero and four. They will gladly accept three out of four, considering the Wednesday stinger.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 4-3 Kraken win over the Islanders, their first shootout win since April 16, 2022.
Takeaway #1 (Curtis): Yamamoto delivers two “one-point” plays
Yamamoto delivered the team a much-needed two points with two separate key plays late in the game.
The first play came as Seattle was trailing 3-2 in third period. Yamamoto took the ice with his power play unit, and together they hemmed the Islanders in their zone for over a minute, escalating the pressure on tiring penalty killers. As a result, Jaden Schwartz was quicker to retrieve a deflected shot in the corner, scan the defense, and find Yamamoto open in the slot between defenders.
“Their penalty kill was gassed because we were able to retrieve pucks and keep possession,” Hakstol said. “If you look at the play we scored on, it was a really good play by [Schwartz] getting it back inside on a retrieval with tired penalty killers trying to defend.”
Yamamoto took it from there, showing patience and skill to work to his backhand and elevate the shot past Varlamov.
Yamamoto didn’t get significant power-play time during his tenure with the Oilers given the depth of high-end skill in Edmonton, but we had a suspicion coming into the season that he had some untapped potential to help on the man advantage. That has proven true over Seattle’s first 18 games.
Yamamoto has carved out a crucial special-teams role as a zone-entry player and flexible net-front or bumper presence. When he’s on the ice, Seattle’s power play generates shot quality 22 percent better than league average–in particular creating a large volume of chances net front. When he’s not out there, the net-front play struggles, and Seattle’s power play generates shot quality 34 percent below league average.
This difference is not all attributable to Yamamoto, of course. HockeyViz isolates his personal power play value at approximately 4 percent better than league average. But the shot chart underscores the value he has delivered in stark fashion. In this one, Yamamoto’s score leveled the game and pushed it to overtime, earning Seattle a point.
Yamamoto’s second “one-point” play came in the shootout. As mentioned above, his score in the eighth round was the difference and handed Seattle the win. When asked what his approach was, Yamamoto stressed that he was trying to stay flexible: “I’m looking for anything, whichever way [the goalie is] cheating.”
Yamamoto approached Varlamov from the right and drifted toward the middle of the ice. As he reached the slot, he sensed an opening glove side and shot back across the grain to beat the Islanders goaltender. In doing so, he delivered a huge win a night after perhaps Seattle’s toughest loss.
“Just to be able to contribute to the team and the team’s success, it feels really good,” Yamamoto said.
Where does this game rank in his career? “Pretty high, honestly.”
Takeaway #2 (Darren): A big night for the power play
The Kraken tied a franchise record for power-play goals in a game by converting three times with the manpower advantage Thursday. They also gave up two to New York’s power play, but hey… that’s a plus-one on the night for the special teams!
“I think both units are finding that groove,” said Vince Dunn. “I think we have really good key pieces on [my] unit, and everyone brings a different element.”
Things are definitely clicking for the power play, and a good sign that the Kraken can keep it going is that they’re scoring power-play goals in a variety of ways. Matty Beniers scored the first PPG of the night on a “Jared McCann special,” taking a pass from Dunn at the top of the left circle, rolling toward Varlamov, and ripping it over his shoulder.
Beniers gets rolling down hill and puts it up where mommy hides the cookies.
Power-play goal, Beniers's second goal of the season.
That “Jared McCann special” became way too predictable last season, so it was good to see Wennberg finish off a great pass by Bjorkstrand at the net front, then Schwartz setting up Yamamoto with one of his classic puck retrievals (we’re starting to think we should call goals like that the “Jaden Schwartz special”).
After finishing 18th in the league in power-play percentage last season, the Kraken have climbed to seventh this season, converting 26.8 percent of the time.
Takeaway #3 (Darren): Grubauer’s nice read
It wasn’t a perfect outing by Philipp Grubauer, and at .870, he registered his fourth game in a row with a save percentage below .900. He came up big in the overtime period, though, and stuffed Noah Dobson to close out the shootout in the eighth round.
Interestingly, Grubauer’s best “play” of the night didn’t technically earn him a save. With the Kraken running around like chickens without heads for a lot of the OT period (Hakstol said they may want to “burn the tape” from that extra frame), they appeared to have hung their goalie out to dry around the 1:40 mark.
Mathew Barzal was dancing around in the corner to Grubauer’s left. McCann and Schwartz both drifted toward him, leaving Bjorkstrand as the lone soldier available to cover Sebastian Aho. But Bjorkstrand fell down, leaving Aho all alone in the slot for what looked like a sure goal.
Grubauer read the play perfectly and fired his stick out into the passing lane, breaking up the opportunity before it got to Aho.
We didn't get to tweet it during the game, but how huge was this poke check by Grubi in OT?
“Kudos to Grubi on that,” Hakstol said. “There wasn’t a lot going either way, but they had a couple looks.”
We think Hakstol downplayed that a little. When we watched it live, we saw Aho breaking in, Barzal twirling, and Bjorkstrand falling down, and we started gathering our belongings to head to the exit with another painful defeat in tow.
Instead, it became an innocuous play in the end, and Grubauer held on just long enough to get the second point.
Worth noting, he also got a piece of an Adam Pelech howitzer early in the extra frame and stopped a Bo Horvat breakaway offering in the closing minutes for good measure.
Welp… Wednesday’s 4-3 Kraken overtime loss to the Oilers had Nov. 6, 2021 vibes to it. If you’re not sure what happened on Nov. 6, 2021, that was the night when the Seattle Kraken—in their inaugural campaign—limped into Gila River Arena with their season veering in a miserable direction. They desperately needed a victory against a still winless Arizona team. The Kraken tied that game 4-4 with 1:18 left on a Mark Giordano shot from the point, but then they handed the game winner to Lawson Crouse just 13 seconds later.
That was arguably the lowest low point of 2021-22, a season filled with low points.
Wednesday’s game played out in a very different manner, and the Kraken did take a standings point. But with Seattle again badly needing a win, blowing a 3-1 lead late in the third is going to sting players, coaches, and fans alike.
“Giving up that second [goal] obviously gives them a little bit of juice and a little bit of momentum,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “It comes down to the tying goal. Our centerman gets bulldogged on that, so we’re not able to pressure that on the half wall, and that puts us a little bit in the soup down low. So it’s disappointing, no question, because of how hard our players worked.”
Here are our Three Takeaways from a painful 4-3 Kraken OT loss to the Oilers.
Takeaway #1: They had it
The Kraken played about 53 very good minutes of hockey on Wednesday. They didn’t score in the first period, but they had the better of the play and the looks, with 63 percent of the shot quality in the frame. Brandon Tanev even slid one behind Stuart Skinner, through the crease, and out the other side. The chances were there.
OH! Turbo sweeps one behind Skinner, through the blue paint, and out the other side. pic.twitter.com/h6Z2xnqJGa
They conceded the first goal of the game when Adam Larsson tried to force a Leon Draisaitl turnover at the blue line, but Draisaitl made an elite play to get the puck to Connor McDavid. Forgetting about McDavid is generally not recommended and unsurprisingly resulted in a goal, but Seattle bounced back from the gaffe.
Jared McCann, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, and Alex Wennberg each scored in that middle frame, and Seattle went to the dressing room in complete control after the second.
Things were still going fine for most of the third period, and the Oilers were even showing signs of frustration. But Evander Kane redirected an Evan Bouchard pass by Joey Daccord at 13:28, and suddenly Edmonton had life.
That thud you heard with 46 seconds left was the sound of every Kraken fan on the planet slumping to the ground when Kane scored again to tie it and send it to overtime. The whimpering you heard at 2:57 of the extra frame was Kraken fans gently weeping after Kane completed the hat trick to give Edmonton the win.
“We played a great road game for 56 minutes, and even in the last five, six minutes, I didn’t think we played poorly,” Daccord said. “They just found a way to score. It’s frustrating, but it is what it is. You know, at the end of the day, I think we probably deserved to win tonight, but it just didn’t go our way.”
It was a miserable, miserable night.
Takeaway #2: Another two-goal lead wasted
During Seattle’s road trip to Detroit, Carolina, Florida, and Tampa Bay earlier this season, the team blew two-goal leads in all four games but managed to come home with a 2-1-1 record. We talked to several players after that trip about why two-goal leads are so hard to keep, so give that a read if you’re perplexed.
We hoped it was just a phase this team was going through, but the two-goal struggle keeps rearing its ugly head, and it did so in the ugliest fashion Wednesday.
There is just something about that two-goal lead where the opponent finds one and then starts getting momentum. As the team that’s leading, you can’t help but sit back and try to play defense, and then all of a sudden, you’ve blown the lead.
Still, what’s been happening with this Kraken team this season isn’t normal. They have to start closing out games when they have the opportunity.
Takeaway #3: Where do they go from here?
When a team is struggling, we look for little positives that indicate it’s getting close to re-entering the win column. If this game hadn’t played out in the manner that it did, with the late tying goal and subsequent overtime loss, we would have been able to take a whole bunch of positives from it.
Here are a few positives we could have taken: Tanev has been awesome since his return from injury, and his line with Jaden Schwartz and Wennberg is clicking. Joey Daccord had another solid night in net. Wennberg scored his first goal of the season. McCann scored for the first time since Nov. 2, and we know he tends to score in bunches once he gets going.
Those could have been some positives to take away, but instead, we’re left feeling like this team will never win again. Of course, that’s an overreaction, but for as well as Seattle played for most of this game, there’s still a sense that it was yet another step in the wrong direction.
“Obviously, it’s a tough way to end it,” Wennberg said. “And there’s a lot of good things out there, but I mean we just can’t lose this game. This is one of those games you’ve just got to fight through and just find a way to win. But, unfortunately, we didn’t today.”
What the team needs to do is look at how it played for the first 53 minutes and—somehow, someway, for the love of Joey—figure out how to extend that effort for a full 60 minutes.
Sometimes, it’s good to not have much time to dwell on a painful loss, and the Kraken will need to quickly shake this off to get ready for a home tilt against the Islanders on Thursday.
The Kraken have lost three in a row and five of their last six. They need a win.
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.
