by Darren Brown | Mar 27, 2024 | Three takeaways
Well, that was a lot more fun than any of the home Seattle Kraken games we’ve experienced in a while. The Kraken dominated the lowly Anaheim Ducks, finally snapping their second miserable eight-game skid of the season, and giving their fans reason to cheer at Climate Pledge Arena for the first time since Feb. 29.
Unsurprisingly, the mood in the dressing room after the game was better than it has felt in a long… long time.
“That’s what winning does, right?” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “There’s only one way to get to that feeling, and you have to do the work. You’ve got to grind through. I mean, it’s been a long haul here over the last… seven to 10 days.”
Joey Daccord wasn’t worked too hard, but he stopped all 12 (yes, just 12) of the shots he faced and earned his third career shutout. Plus, he actually got some run support at the other end of the ice.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 4-0 Kraken win over the Ducks.
Takeaway #1: Something to cheer about
It’s been a tough campaign for Kraken fans, who came in with high hopes that Seattle could build off its trip to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season. But 2023-24 got off to a rocky start, and despite some positive stretches here and there, things slowly went sideways before the group started nosediving into the abyss after they lost to Vegas on March 12.
Since then, the group’s effort—particularly at home—has been putrid. But the Kraken looked good on this night, coming out with jump, taking advantage of all the time and space a terrible Ducks team was giving them, and finding the back of the net four times behind John Gibson.
“We had great life,” Hakstol said. “We came out, we played very well right from the start of the game, scoring the first couple goals.”
Watching this team play at home has been tough lately. Yet the home fans have continued to show up and root on their squad, and this night was no different. This was a meaningless contest between two teams going nowhere on a Tuesday night in late March, and the home club was on a 0-6-2 skid. Still, when the Kraken took the ice before the game, you would have thought they were on the verge of winning the Pacific Division with the pop they got from the home crowd.
“We’re in Year 3, and we have one of the greatest fanbases in the National Hockey League,” Hakstol said. “So, these last couple nights before tonight have been difficult here at home.”
They have, indeed, Dave. They have, indeed. It was nice to see and hear CPA truly alive again on Tuesday.
Takeaway #2: Kraken get some offense
In the six previous games, the Kraken potted a whopping seven total goals, scoring just once in every game except the 6-2 loss to Buffalo, when… they scored two (in case that wasn’t clear from the 6-2 final).
On this night, Seattle tilted the ice consistently and outshot the ugly Ducklings by a 3-1 margin.
Leading the way offensively were Matty Beniers and Eeli Tolvanen, who showed some real chemistry on their recently assembled line with Oliver Bjorkstrand. Beniers set up Tolvanen in the slot to make it 1-0 at 7:50 of the first period, and Tolvanen returned the favor off a 3-on-1 rush at 15:55 to stretch the lead to 4-0.
“He’s just a really smart player,” Beniers said of Tolvanen. “So he does a really good job of reading the play and reading off me and Ollie and being in good spots. And you saw tonight, he makes that play back to me, and he’s got the brains for that.”
The duo also combined to create Bjorkstrand’s goal that made it 3-0, giving them each a goal and two assists on the night.
“He’s an unbelievable player,” Tolvanen gushed back at Beniers. “Every time he touches the puck, you have to get open… It’s not a coincidence he won the Calder last year.”
It has been a tough season statistically for Beniers, but it would be nice to see him heat up before the end of this season and head into 2024-25 on a high note.
Takeaway #3: The kids were… pretty good
After Seattle called up Ryan Winterton and Logan Morrison, we were curious to see how Hakstol would utilize them and who he would scratch from the lineup to make room. Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and Kailer Yamamoto both went out (unsurprising, since they each have spent plenty of time in the press box this season), but Tomas Tatar was also scratched for the first time since being acquired from Colorado.
In went Coachella Valley roommates Morrison and Winterton for their first and fourth NHL games respectively.
“It was a pretty special experience,” Morrison said. “Before [the game], I expected a lot, and it definitely exceeded that. The fans were unbelievable, it’s such a nice rink, and I had a great time.”
Morrison had three shots on goal in 14:21 of ice time, including 3:46 on the power play. He had a couple great looks with the manpower advantage and appeared poised with the puck, especially as the game went on.
“I thought maybe [I was going to get one],” Morrison said. “The one in the third where I came out and just hit the goalie’s glove there, I thought maybe, and then I heard the fans screaming. I don’t know if that was for me or just in general, but that was pretty cool… I had my looks, and I’m pretty happy with that.”
Although they were making up the fourth line, it was a fun way for Hakstol to deploy the two newcomers, grouping them into a trio with fellow rookie and former Firebird Tye Kartye. Again, it was against a very bad Ducks team, but we thought the “kids” line looked solid.
“They’re doing it under the bright lights here, and I’m sure there’s some excitement, some nerves, all of that,” Hakstol said. “I didn’t really see a ton of it. If there was some, which I’m sure there was, they worked through it really quick.”
Bonus Takeaway: My other ride is the Zamboni
Huge shoutout to the Kraken Game Ops department for letting me ride the Zamboni to deliver an intermission “Zamboni and Talk.” Also, congrats to Doug, who was also making his NHL debut driving the resurfacer. He called it “surreal.”
That was an absolute blast.
by Darren Brown | Mar 22, 2024 | Three takeaways
They lost the game 3-1, but the Seattle Kraken were downright watchable against the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday. Being “watchable” doesn’t sound like much, but it is a significant improvement over how Seattle performed in its three prior outings, all of which they lost on home ice by a combined score of 12-4. Still, this one brought the same result and extended the team’s losing streak to six games (5-0-1).
Unlike in the three previous contests, there were some things to like about this game, from Philipp Grubauer’s 34-save showing that put him back over a .900 save percentage for the season, to Jaden Schwartz returning to the lineup and contributing with a tying goal.
“We battled really hard all night, fought back to tie the game up, and stayed with it on the power play in order to do that,” coach Dave Hakstol said.
It’s never fun to lose to the Vegas Golden Knights, though, and damaging their playoff hopes would have been nice.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 3-1 Kraken loss to the Golden Knights.
Takeaway #1: The power of the Schwartz
Schwartz returned after a four-game injury hiatus and had a solid outing. He tipped in a Ryker Evans shot from the point for a power-play goal that tied the game 1-1 at 13:29 of the third, so that was his biggest play, but he did seem to have some nice jump in this game in general.
“I mean, obviously, you want to come back and help the team out as much as you can,” Schwartz said. “I thought overall it was a back-and-forth game. Both goalies played good, and it could have gone either way. It would have been nice to take that into overtime.”
From our vantage point, it seemed to be a relatively quick ramp up to game action this time for Schwartz, who we only saw skate with the team in practice on Wednesday. Usually, when a player is returning from injury, he eases back in with a couple of sessions with the team and often doesn’t fully participate the first and/or second time out. But Schwartz was fully involved at Wednesday’s practice, taking regular line rushes and full contact, and then got into the game Thursday.
By contrast, Vince Dunn seemed to be working his way back more slowly, first skating on his own, then participating in a couple of practices with the main group. But he left midway through Sunday’s practice after a half-effort on a drill, and he hasn’t skated with the team since. Hakstol confirmed to reporters at morning skate Thursday that he was not on the trip. We wonder if there was a setback in Dunn’s recovery.
Back to Schwartz, he is one of those players that doesn’t always stand out in an individual game. But when he comes back from an absence, you do notice him because of his tenacious forechecking and willingness to go right to the front of the net.
It was good to have him back in there. Now, if only the Kraken can get Dunn back…
Takeaway #2: Close call on the winning goal
This was one of those “bend but don’t break” games for the Kraken, and it looked for a few minutes like they were on their way to a rope-a-dope victory. They withstood body blow after body blow, thanks in large part to Grubauer standing tall, but Brett Howden drove hard to the net with a minute left in the game, and Keegan Kolesar cleaned up the rebound.
Hakstol tried an offside challenge, and replay showed that it was about as close to being offside as it could possibly be. But there wasn’t an angle that showed 100-percent certainty that it was offside, so the play stood.
“That was my judgment call on it,” Hakstol said. “It’s extremely close. I believe it is offside. Obviously, it’s a really close, tight play at the line, and I feel the responsibility [to make the call] because of how hard our guys fought.”
With the way Howden ran into Grubauer in the crease, we thought there could have also been a challenge for goalie interference on this one, thought whether that would have succeeded is anyone’s guess.
Takeaway #3: The Golden Knights get ’em again
With the Kraken firmly out of the playoff picture, our expectations when watching these games have changed. Winning just isn’t as big of a deal anymore, and realistically, losing more often than not will be beneficial to the club in the long run.
Even so, when Schwartz tied the game with 6:31 left—a goal you could see coming from a mile away with the way Seattle was sticking in the game—we became ignorantly hopeful the Kraken were going to pull out a rare victory in Vegas.
Instead, the Golden Knights landed yet another demoralizing blow to Seattle, which is now 2-9-1 all time against Vegas. And this one came on the heels of the 5-4 overtime loss that effectively ended the Seattle’s season on March 12. The Kraken got the win in the Winter Classic, but man, these guys just own Seattle and continuously find ways to inflict pain
How did we manage to let ourselves get disappointed by a game that means nothing to the Kraken? Ugh. Alas, in a season full of skids, the current one is the second longest of the season.
“We’ve got to stick together and climb out of this together and try get some momentum going our way,” Schwartz said.
Indeed. The Kraken now head into a string of four very winnable games against Arizona, Montreal, and Anaheim twice. How about they rack up a few W’s for the psyche of the fanbase?
by Darren Brown | Mar 19, 2024 | Three takeaways
The last month of this Seattle Kraken season could be loooooooooong. Because after Monday’s 6-2 embarrassment at the hands of the Buffalo Sabres, this team looks like it’s prepared to march to the end of the campaign losing every game. There’s no bite, no jam, no pushback, no… whatever word you want to use to describe what the Kraken are lackin’ (rhyme intended) right now, it’s not there.
Post-game media scrums have begun feeling akin to the pressers the players used to do in the inaugural season, when some combination of Jordan Eberle, Yanni Gourde, and/or Mark Giordano would be sent to a podium (we weren’t allowed in the dressing room that season because of COVID) almost every night, and they would talk about the group’s deficiencies and how they could be better in the next meaningless game.
Heck, Eberle even harkened back to that first season in his press scrum on Monday. “I said it two years ago, the line between winning and losing is so thin, and right now we’re on the other side of it.”
This is different than that 2021-22 season, though. Argue all you want about whether this current group ever had the talent and the depth to make the playoffs, but that first-year team never stopped trying despite those many deficiencies. Even in their ugliest losses that year, no matter how overmatched they were, the Kraken always did something to give their fans reasons to cheer. For as bad as they were, they were still an easy team to root for because of the tenacity they showed every single game.
These last few outings, we simply haven’t seen that from the Kraken. It’s like they give up a goal, and that’s all it takes to completely deflate them and remove any desire to battle back into the game.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a painful-to-watch 6-2 Kraken loss to the Sabres.
Takeaway #1: Skinner and Thompson torch Kraken
Part of us thought coming into this game that perhaps Buffalo, which had never beaten the Kraken in five previous chances, could be the remedy to at least get some positive feelings going again. The Sabres are a pretty good team this season, but they’ve been a great matchup for Seattle over its first three campaigns (Buffalo was the last team in the NHL that had never beaten Seattle).
And after Eberle scored 26 seconds into the game on a nice feed from Tolvanen, that theory briefly seemed like it might be proven out over the course of the night. But that belief lasted all of 25 seconds, because Tage Thompson ripped a snap shot under the bar to tie the game before it hit the 1:00 mark, and Jeff Skinner and Alex Tuch followed that up with goals of their own within five minutes of Thompson.
“You score first shift, and then they score right after, that kills you,” Eberle said. “But that being said, I mean, we should be resilient… They get one, and you should be like, ‘Alright, we’re fine.’”
Coach Dave Hakstol admitted there was frustration on the bench.
“I’ll be blunt and honest,” Hakstol said. “This is the first time that I’ve seen frustration come onto our bench… That’s the first time I’ve seen that. We had the day of practice yesterday, and obviously, we weren’t able to flush [the frustration] out, and it affected us today.”
Skinner took advantage of the frustrated team and added two more tallies on the night for his seventh career hat trick.
Takeaway #2: A hard night for Joey
That was about as tough of a night as you can get for a goaltender. Joey Daccord was yanked from the game after allowing three goals in the first 5:41. When he exited, the scoreboard showed that he had faced seven shots on goal, but after the game, the official stats were adjusted down to just four. So, Daccord was credited with one save on four shots, a .250 save percentage, before he was pulled for the second time in his career (previous was Feb. 29 against Minnesota).
All three goals were good, hard shots into perfect spots, but we noticed on the first Skinner goal that made it 2-1, Daccord seemed to be reacting as if the shot was going to his left, when it actually was going to his right. He clearly wasn’t tracking the puck well, and it was the right call for Hakstol to get him out of the game when he did.
“Those are quality shots,” Hakstol said. “The first goal against, with Thompson, I mean that’s just a [heck] of a shot, right? But you get to a point where, even though they’re from pretty good areas, the second and the third ones are still pucks that I know, when Joey’s on, he stops. He sees those and he makes those saves.”
Indeed, all three were unscreened shots that Daccord would normally stop. For his sake, we hope this outing doesn’t hurt his confidence too much.
Takeaway #3: Where do they go from here?
With the season on the line, the Kraken spent almost two weeks laying a giant egg and went 0-4-1 on a crucial five-game homestand. After the third-period collapse and subsequent overtime loss to Vegas, the group played three straight games in which it looked fully ready to hit the golf course.
But the Kraken have 15 games and almost a month of hockey left. The fans deserve better than what they just watched on that homestand.
“This league is about winning,” Eberle said. “And not just that, but playing well, feeling good about your effort, feeling good about— I mean, you may lose, you may win, but you want to feel good about a 60-minute effort where we went out there and put everything on the line. It’s been kind of inconsistent throughout the whole year, and that’s kind of been frustrating. And we need to find a way to just [play hard] the last 15 games here every night. I mean, it’s a privilege to be in this league.”
On the plus side, Seattle’s draft position is getting better with every passing miserable loss, so perhaps the organization is comfortable with letting things get more and more uncomfortable over this final month. But tanking is traditionally done by having a bunch of young players in the lineup, mixed with journeyman veterans that help reach the salary cap floor. That’s not what this roster is. Is the front office really ok with this roster of proud veterans just losing by playing terrible hockey?
We’re fine with losing at this point, and the more losing Seattle does for the rest of the season, the better it will be for the long-term future of the franchise. But in the spirit of what Eberle said, watching the team lose in this uninspired, beaten-down fashion is tough.
by Darren Brown | Mar 13, 2024 | Three takeaways
That may have officially (but really unofficially) cooked the season. In brutal fashion, the Seattle Kraken frittered away a late two-goal lead and fell 5-4 in overtime to the Vegas Golden Knights, the team that currently holds the last wild card spot in the Western Conference.
After Oliver Bjorkstrand scored what should have been the dagger with 8:30 left in the game, the Kraken allowed the dreaded response goal to William Karlsson, and suddenly the Golden Knights had life.
We’ll talk more about what happened next in the actual Takeaways themselves, but… spoiler alert… it wasn’t good for Seattle fans, who left Jordan Eberle’s 1000th NHL game with a bitter taste in their mouths and a realization that their team’s chances of making the playoffs are all but gone.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a brutal 5-4 Kraken overtime loss to the Golden Knights.
Takeaway #1: The response goal was a killer
Response goals haven’t been as big of a thing for the Kraken this season as they seemed to be the last couple years, but man, the Karlsson one Tuesday was a doozy. Bjorkstrand had just scored Seattle’s third straight goal to make it 4-2, and we were sure that would be enough to let the Kraken cruise to a win.
But the Golden Knights had other ideas. Before Chet Buchanan could even finish announcing Bjorkstrand’s goal, Brayden McNabb faked a shot from the left circle and slid it across to Karlsson at the top of the right circle. Karlsson one-timed it by Grubauer, and in just 53 seconds, the Golden Knights went from dead in the water to alive and looking dangerous.
“A big part [of the loss] is giving up the goal right after going up by two,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “There’s a couple opportunities there to take care of a puck. One is actually in the offensive zone, just to get a little bit of grind time, and there’s another opportunity to take care of the puck [to get] out of the zone. That obviously changes the complexion of the last six, seven minutes.”
Indeed, both Brian Dumoulin and Yanni Gourde briefly had the puck touch their respective stick blades, but neither player controlled it enough to get it out of harm’s way. In a flash, it was in the back of Seattle’s net.
Takeaway #2: They still had it… and then they didn’t
Even with Karlsson’s goal at 12:23 of the third, the Kraken still very much had the game within their grasp. Vegas pulled Adin Hill for an extra skater, and the Golden Knights went to work in the offensive zone, getting Seattle to run around a bit in the closing minute.
Still, there wasn’t anything particularly dangerous coming toward Philipp Grubauer, until Jamie Oleksiak tried to rim it out of the zone but didn’t hit it hard enough to get it past Jack Eichel at the point. Eichel wristed it toward the slot, but instead of tipping it on goal, Chandler Stephenson made a crafty little drag play to pull it into the left circle toward Jonathan Marchessault. Marchessault was left all alone and beat a diving Grubauer for the tying goal with just 16 seconds left in the game.
That was Marchessault’s second goal of the night and FIFTH in two games. Once that happened, you knew Vegas was going to get the game-winner in overtime.
The teams played three minutes of 3-on-3, back-and-forth, fire-wagon hockey before Bjorkstrand, Adam Larsson, and Andre Burakovsky all went in on a rush that Alex Pietrangelo broke up with a brilliant poke check.
Pietrangelo flipped it high into the neutral zone and landed it in front of Eichel, who beat a gassed Bjorkstrand in a footrace. Eichel went in alone and ended it.
Bjorkstrand slamming his stick in the foreground while Eichel celebrated tells you everything you need to know about how Kraken players felt after this one.
“There’s good chances up and down the rink, and probably on both sides, you’ve got some tired bodies,” Hakstol said. “But in a perfect world you’d say, ‘You know what? We’d love to just get a line change and live for the next day,’ but we’ve got a scoring chance also. We don’t capitalize on a couple of real good opportunities, and that opens up the opportunity going the other direction.”
Takeaway #3: That’s it, right?
There have been so many moments this season that have felt like the nail in the coffin for the Kraken, who haven’t risen to the occasion enough times in the games they’ve had to win. In terms of how it feels, our immediate reaction to that game is that there’s no recovering from that one.
Seattle had it in the bag against the team is its current primary target in the standings. But the Kraken made enough mistakes down the stretch against a skilled club to let the opposing superstars take over and widen Vegas’ lead in the standings to a whopping nine points.
Believe it or not, MoneyPuck somehow still has the Kraken at a 13.4-percent chance of making the playoffs, but with 18 games left and three teams to jump, this deficit feels too big to overcome. Still, Hakstol isn’t ready to throw in the towel.
“We don’t need fire, we don’t need confidence, we’ve got that,” Hakstol said. “We’re disappointed we didn’t close the game out, but I’ve said it all the way along, no matter the result, we need everybody to walk out tonight, clear the deck, and come back. There’s no time for anything but [that], so we’ll get back to work tomorrow.”
by Darren Brown | Mar 6, 2024 | Three takeaways
The Seattle Kraken continued to confound Tuesday by defeating an impressive Winnipeg Jets team 4-3 in their barn, despite being on the second of back-to-backs with travel, and despite being without top defenseman Vince Dunn (injured by Martin Prospisil’s dirty hit on Monday) and Alex Wennberg (held out the last two games due to “trade-related reasons”).
“Really, we just played good hockey,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “I mean, we’ve been playing really good hockey over the last few weeks. We came into this road trip disappointed coming off of a loss to Edmonton [on Saturday], but the reality is we played really well that night and just carried that through into the road trip.”
The latest win brought Seattle to 7-2-1 in its last 10, including these two wins in Calgary and Winnipeg on consecutive nights.
Meanwhile, the Nashville Predators finally showed some signs of cracking by losing in overtime to the Montreal Canadiens, breaking their eight-game win streak and allowing the Kraken to finally gain one standings point of ground.
From the other direction, the Vegas Golden Knights have entered the wild card chat by struggling tremendously and are now level in points with the Predators and Los Angeles Kings. So, Seattle sits six points behind three different clubs, all of which are currently inside the playoff bubble. The two wins rocketed the Kraken’s playoff chances from 10 percent all the way up to 31 percent, according to MoneyPuck.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a big 4-3 Kraken win over the Jets.
Takeaway #1: Joey is back!
In his first game since getting torched for four goals on 13 shots and pulled in a Feb. 24 loss to the Minnesota Wild, Joey Daccord returned to the net Tuesday and had a solid, winning effort between the pipes. With 30 stops on the night, Daccord earned a victory over all-world netminder, Connor Hellebuyck, who faltered for just 20 saves on 24 shots at the other end.
Even though the Jets have apparently been dealing with a nasty flu bug, they came out… flying (Jets puns are impossible to avoid sometimes)… in the first period, while the Kraken were struggling to find their tentacles after an emotional game the night prior. Daccord made several saves on Grade-A chances, 14 total stops in the opening frame, and Hellebuyck let a stinker through his five hole to give Seattle a 1-0 lead.
Later, with the game on the line in the closing seconds and Winnipeg feverishly (flu-related pun intended this time) pushing for an equalizer, Daccord scrambled to secure the victory. After getting his stick ripped out of his hands by Mark Scheifele, Daccord sprawled to his right and chested away what looked like a sure goal for Neal Pionk with just five ticks left to tock.
The only thing better than that game-saving stop was the fist pump Daccord threw after the horn sounded.
Philipp Grubauer has had a run of outstanding play since returning from injury on Feb. 22 and had seized the net back from Daccord. But now that Joey delivered this performance against Winnipeg, the goaltending decisions moving forward could become a bit more difficult in the best way.
If the Kraken really are going to stay in this race, despite potentially trading away a key player or two, they will need huge performances down the stretch from both goalies.
Takeaway #2: Burky gets off the schneid
Andre Burakovsky picked a great time to break out of his insane goal-scoring slump, rifling a wrist shot from the right circle over Hellebuyck for the game-winner at 17:21 of the third period. On a power play, Ryker Evans—playing his first game since Feb. 13—fired a shot that got blocked and stung former Kraken Mason Appleton.
With Appleton hobbling around, and the Jets effectively down to three and a half penalty killers, Evans got the puck back and slid it to Burakovsky, who dusted it off and ripped it.
The goal was Burakovsky’s first since Jan. 4 and just his second in 29 games played this season.
“It felt very good,” Burakovsky said. “It’s been a battle with all the injuries and all the missed time, and I think I’ve been playing some really good hockey lately, creating a lot and skating a lot… It was nice to finally see one go in. I almost forgot what it feels like.”
Burakovsky, who had just missed two more games with a lower-body injury before returning to the lineup Monday, had been back to playing his confident style for a while, dangling around defenders and often looking fast and dangerous. We knew it was only a matter of time before he broke through.
“It’s nice to see him get that one,” Hakstol said. “I know that’ll make him feel good, but I can tell you inside of our dressing room, nobody really cares whose name is on the scoresheet right now.”
Takeaway #3: Another solid, team effort
For the second night in a row, the Kraken got four goals from four different players, with only Jared McCann overlapping with goals on both nights, both with short-handed breakaways. So, in 2022-23 style, the Kraken got tallies from seven different skaters over the brief road trip.
They’ve had several guys—Yanni Gourde, Tomas Tatar, Adam Larsson, Justin Schultz, and Burakovsky—break goal-scoring droughts lately, and they’re suddenly bringing that “anyone can score” approach that became so reliable last season.
*Author’s note: Tatar’s game-tying tip on Matty Beniers’ shot that was five feet off the net was so sick.
“You make plays at the right time and get some contributions from everybody in every part of your lineup,” Hakstol said. “And we were able to do that both nights on this trip.”
This is exactly how this team will need to compete moving forward, assuming Wennberg does get moved before Friday’s trade deadline.
Can you imagine if this team sells off an asset or two and still rallies to make the playoffs? Man, that’d be neat.
by Darren Brown | Mar 4, 2024 | Three takeaways
That game got spicy! On a day when rumors were swirling wildly around Alex Wennberg, who was held out of the lineup for “trade-related issues,” Monday’s tilt between the Seattle Kraken and the Calgary Flames almost felt like an afterthought.
But the Kraken players not named Wennberg came out and played a solid game, winning both on the scoreboard and in the court of public opinion (more on that in a bit).
Seattle dominated the first period and got a goal from Yanni Gourde, his first in 19 games. The group eased off in the second, but still held serve and went to the third period up 2-1. Then Adam Larsson scored just 21 seconds into the third, and Jared McCann threw the dagger with a short-handed goal 12 minutes later.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a solid 4-2 Kraken win over the Flames.
Takeaway #1: “Garbage” from Martin Pospisil
The contest started with Martin Pospisil immediately taking a questionable run at Larsson and dumping him head-first into the boards. It was from the side, so Pospisil got away with it, and Larsson thankfully did not get hurt on the play.
Nonetheless, the Kraken players didn’t like it, and rookie Tye Kartye stepped up to ask Pospisil—also a rookie—to answer for his actions.
What did Pospisil do when Kartye came calling? He turtled and got whaled on, landing Kartye with two extra minutes of penalty time, during which Andrei Kuzmenko scored his first of two goals on the night.
There was a moment of brief concern that this could be a turning point in the game, but Oliver Bjorkstrand quashed those fears by scoring his third goal in four games four minutes later.
Of course, Pospisil’s shining moment came at 13:41 of the third period. Vince Dunn had his back fully turned to Pospisil, who had all the time in the world to look at Dunn’s numbers and think, I shouldn’t hit this guy right now.
Instead, Pospisil went full-steam into Dunn’s back and sent him headlong into the dasher board. A brouhaha ensued, led by (of all people) Matty Beniers, who jumped right in to defend Dunn.
Here’s what coach Dave Hakstol had to say on the matter: “Garbage. Not a whole lot different than the first hit six, seven seconds into the game. If you’re going to run around like that, you probably need to answer when somebody comes at you man to man. And that didn’t happen either… From there, I’ll leave it to the league.”
To the Kraken’s credit, they did everything they were supposed to do on this night. They won the game, they stuck up for each other, and they came out looking like the good guys. Meanwhile Pospisil earned a five-minute major, a game misconduct, and surely a meeting with the Department of Player Safety.
Worth noting, Dunn left the game and did not return. Hakstol did not give an update on him after the game, but that’s par for the course. Seattle can’t survive long without Dunn, so keep your fingers crossed that he’ll be ok.
Takeaway #2: Ignoring the distractions for win No. 100
Sometimes you wonder how a team will respond to distracting situations happening off the ice, and the Wennberg trade rumors (and him being held out of the game) would certainly qualify as one of those situations. But the Kraken flew out of the gate on this night and dominated the first period from start to finish. And whenever there was any pushback from the Flames, the Kraken quelled it by scoring at the other end of the ice, earning their 100th win in franchise history.
We were especially impressed by the play McCann made while the Kraken were shorthanded, and Calgary was pressing for a tying goal midway through the third. Seconds after a missed offensive opportunity, McCann hustled back to get into a defensive posture. He saw another chance brewing, with Rasmus Andersson struggling to handle the puck at the blue line. So he pounced and created a breakaway for himself, then cruised in and sniped it past Jacob Markstrom.
“I was pretty gassed, so I just tried to kind of get the shot off quick,” McCann said. “I like to go over the blocker, but I decided to change that at the last second.”
It was an outstanding individual effort, one of many impressive individual performances in the game. It was also a fitting way for the Kraken to earn win No. 100 in franchise history, a nice milestone for everyone involved.
“It’s amazing, we’re all so thankful for the opportunity we’ve been given, and a lot of guys on other teams weren’t given the same chance,” McCann said. “To get that, it’s huge for the organization, and there’s hopefully many more to come.”
Takeaway #3: Wennberg chatter
When news broke that Wennberg would be held out of this game, we figured a trade could be coming on Monday. That didn’t happen, but teams don’t just hold players out of the lineup unless there is something very real in the works.
So, have we seen the last of Wennberg in deep sea blue?
We’ve loved watching and dealing with Alex Wennberg during his nearly three seasons in Seattle. He’s a true pro, and he has been a pivotal piece of this team during his tenure. But the writing has been on the wall for a while, and now that we’ve come to grips with the idea of him moving on, it’s becoming painfully clear that trading Wennberg is the right thing for the organization to do.
In theory, the Kraken can still compete for an outside chance at a playoff spot, even if they do move Wennberg along. And the way he is being talked about right now shows us the Kraken can likely get a solid return for him. If they don’t think they can bring him back next season, it makes all the sense in the world to move him and get back what they can, even if that stings their still-dwindling chances of reaching the postseason for the second year in a row.
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