The Kraken took what should probably be considered a “good” standings point from the Detroit Red Wings on Monday after getting a tying goal from Jaden Schwartz at 7:25 of the third period to force overtime. But with their current circumstances, Seattle can no longer afford to leave anything table, and this is another game where it feels like the group did just that.
“The point is a real important point,” Hakstol said. “It’s disappointing to lose the point in overtime, but the point that we got is valuable.”
Seattle had the better of the chances on this night afternoon (we’re still confused about exiting Climate Pledge Arena to find daylight), and it had a golden opportunity on the power play with 1:44 left in regulation and then 16 seconds at 4-on-3 in overtime but couldn’t convert.
Remember when the Kraken had a two-goal lead against the St. Louis Blues at home on Jan. 26 and ended up losing 4-3 in overtime? This game had a different script, but it is similar in that the second point was right there for the taking and slipped away. By the way, the Blues are still the team Seattle needs to be targeting, and they lost 4-2 to Toronto on Monday. So, the Kraken gained a point on St. Louis, but again… that second point sure would have been swell.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 4-3 Kraken overtime loss to the Red Wings.
Takeaway #1: Back and forth, Kraken chasing
The Kraken flew out of the gate in this game, but Alex Lyon made some outstanding saves in the early going, robbing Eeli Tolvanen, Andre Burakovsky, and Jordan Eberle to keep the game scoreless. That is, of course, until Moritz Seider one-timed a Patrick Kane pass from the blue line that eluded Joey Daccord.
1-0 Red Wings. Moritz Seider with an absolute bomb from the point.
It was hard to tell if the puck changed angles off Tolvanen, who was partially screening Daccord. It almost looked like Joey was off his angle on the play, which is why we have a feeling it may have taken a deflection.
Either way, eye balls and analytics agree it wasn’t Daccord’s best game of the season. Pucks were bouncing off of him more than usual, and his .875 save percentage was his eighth lowest of the campaign. He was also on the minus side of the “goals saved above expected” stat at a -1.72, according to Natural Stat Trick.
That Seider goal set the tone for the game and put Detroit in the driver’s seat. From there, it was a chase for the Kraken all game long.
Fortunately for the Kraken, Yanni Gourde got Lyon to bite on a beautifully executed fake slap shot during a 6-on-5 delayed penalty situation, and Schwartz was gifted a yawning cage for the equalizer.
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF THE SCHWARTZ! 🚨 #SeaKraken had a 6-on-5 for a delayed penalty. What a pass by Yanni Gourde.
That’s when we started to envision the Kraken coming away with a victory, but as has been the case so many times this season, Seattle just couldn’t get that clutch goal late, even with a power play in the waning minutes.
Once the game got to overtime, and the Red Wings killed the remaining 16 seconds of Olli Maatta’s brutal cross-checking penalty, you just knew a game-winner was coming for Detroit. Sure enough, the Kraken defense had a moment of apparent disinterest, and Ben Chiarot one-timed a Dylan Larkin pass through Daccord’s wickets.
It was a big day for Jared McCann, who had two goals and several solid looks at a potential hat trick in the third period. He extended his point streak to five games (4-2—6) and scored goals No. 23 and 24 on the season.
He’s been playing especially well since getting elevated back onto a line with Jordan Eberle and Matty Beniers, and you can tell he’s really feeling it right now. He wants the puck on his stick to fire off his wicked snap shot as often as possible.
On his power-play goal in the first period, McCann tried for a seam pass that missed Burakovsky on the far side. But Burakovsky recovered the puck off the boards and got it up to Vince Dunn. From there, there was nowhere else that puck was going other than back to McCann. Once he got it, he picked his spot and clanked it off the far post and in behind Lyon.
MCCANN CAN! 🚨
No. 23 on the year for Jared McCann, a power-play snipe over Lyon's glove.
Good retrieval by Burakovsky to keep that play alive.
He followed that up by whacking a Jamie Oleksiak rebound through Lyon’s five hole in the second period to tie the game at 2-2.
McCann now leads the team in goals by a whopping 10 (Tolvanen is second on the team with 14). Assuming good health, McCann is a shoo-in to hit at least 30 goals again this season after potting 40 in 2022-23. Could he reach 35 or more?
Takeaway #3: Ding dong
You know who looked downright scary for the Red Wings in this game? Former Seattle Kraken winger Daniel Sprong, who surely got some extra joy out of scoring Detroit’s third goal of the game against his old club.
The goal came off a 2-on-1 rush with Christian Fischer, and we saw the blistering shot that helped him score 21 goals in 66 games as a fourth-liner for Seattle last season.
**Author’s note: That’s an egregiously bad caption by the Red Wings social media team. YOU SAY “DING DONG” OR YOU SAY NOTHING!
Anyway, Sprong wasn’t made available for comment after the game, but his coach, Derek Lalonde, has been gushing over him the past couple days.
Here’s what Lalonde said about Sprong on Sunday: “Great [fit], added depth, his scoring is a gamebreaker at times. I think it’s a credit to him. He’s averaging almost one and a half to two minutes more than where he was last year on a playoff team, and I think he’s earned that with him being a little more responsible away from the puck too.”
And here’s what Lalonde said Sunday after the game: “Great on the finish, and that’s what [Sprong] does… He doesn’t need much for offense, and he had some more looks in the third that could have iced the game.”
We’ve said it many times before, but Sprong was one of our favorite players to cover last season, so we’re perhaps a bit biased. But, we think it was a mistake for the Kraken to let him go. They sure could use his scoring right now…
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.
If the Seattle Kraken get hot enough down the stretch to make the playoffs, we will all remember their win against the big bad Boston Bruins in their barn on Feb. 15 as a signature moment of the 2023-24 season. Heck, we all remember the team’s 3-0 win at TD Garden on Jan. 12, 2023, which was then Seattle’s seventh win in a row and Boston’s first home loss of the entire 2022-23 season.
The circumstances of this one are a little different, but it’s a massive victory nonetheless. Seattle is at a stage where it feels like any loss could signal to the front office that it’s time to give up and start selling expiring contracts. But this result over one of the league’s best teams staves off any such decisions for at least a little longer.
The Kraken very much owe this win to their two Boston-area natives, Joey Daccord and Matty Beniers. Here are our Three Takeaways from a 4-1 Kraken win over the Bruins.
Takeaway #1: Joey dazzled
The legend of Joey Daccord continues to grow throughout the Kraken sphere. As a kid, he grew up idolizing Boston sports teams, including the Bruins, and going to games at TD Garden. Thursday marked the first time he had ever played in that building, and with family and friends in attendance, he put together a marvelous performance.
“It was a really special night,” an emotional Daccord said. “I’m just kind of trying to put everything all in perspective. I grew up through and through a Boston sports fan, I was here when the Bruins won the Cup, I went to Game 6. It’s just… yeah it’s been a long road. I’m obviously pretty old for a rookie, and for my first time playing in the Garden, it couldn’t have been more special.”
Like Philipp Grubauer on Tuesday, you could tell early on that Daccord was locked in. The high-flying Bruins peppered him with shots in the first period, racking up 16 in the first 20 minutes. Boston scored its lone goal during that onslaught, but even that came after Daccord had robbed David Pastrnak with what looked like one of his best saves of the season. It took a bad bounce back to Pastrnak, though, and then pinballed around until it ended up in the net.
Joey Daccord getting hung out to dry in the early going here. Unbelievable save on the first opportunity for Pastrnak, but no help on the rebound.
That’s it. That was all that got through the Kraken netminder, other than a few shots that hit posts and stayed out.
“He had lot of work early,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “He had less work as the game went on and in the third period, but maybe his biggest save came in the third period on 88… He’s continued the type of play that he’s provided for us over the past couple of months, and he was a real catalyst for us tonight.”
The third-period save Hakstol was reference was this sprawling glove save on Pastrnak:
In all, Joey stopped 36 of 37 shots, and had a whopping 3.16 goals saved above expected.
Here are more of his highlights from the game, for your viewing enjoyment.
Takeaway #2: Matty magic
Is Matty Beniers back? There have been a lot of questions about the 21-year-old sophomore center’s offensive production this season, which has fallen off a cliff after his Calder Trophy-winning season in 2022-23.
But since a rough game in New Jersey on Monday, in which he turned the puck over to Erik Haula and then watched Jack Hughes score an elite goal for the Devils, Beniers has four points in two games. He had Seattle’s only goal against the Islanders on Tuesday and notched three points (1-2—3) Thursday in his hometown.
Asked if these couple games could help him get going offensively, Beniers laughed and said, “I hope so… I think I’ve just been playing the right way and been able to get some points and everything you guys see. As long as we’re winning, I’m happy.”
It’s no coincidence, though, that two of Beniers’ better games of the season have led to Seattle getting two important wins. He is a key piece of this team, and it needs him producing. So, seeing him potting a couple and creating opportunities lately has been promising.
The way he produced Thursday also indicated that he is starting to feel it. On the 3-on-1 with Eeli Tolvanen and Oliver Bjorkstrand, his give-and-go return pass to Tolvanen was executed perfectly and placed right in Tolvanen’s wheelhouse. Swayman had no chance of stopping it, thanks to the way that Beniers quickly got the pass back in a spot where Tolvanen could unload for his 14th goal of the season.
EELI GOALVANEN! 🚨
Off a 3-on-1 rush with Matty Beniers and Oliver Bjorkstrand, Tolvanen runs a give-and-go with Beniers, and Bjorkstrand drives to the net.
And Beniers’ goal was a thing of beauty. Alex Wennberg came up with a daring shot block, then found Matty behind Boston’s first layer of defense. Before he shot, he made a hard cut to his right to improve his shooting angle and sniped it past Swayman to effectively put the nail in Boston’s coffin at 8:36 of the third period.
MATTY MAGIC! 🚨
HUGE block by Alex Wennberg, who then finds Beniers in the neutral zone. Matty with a great finish in his hometown.
“It’s nice to see the offensive production,” Hakstol said. “You can feel good about that. And again, that play is at the right time… But I liked his 200-foot game tonight, and that’s what we really value within his abilities.”
Can Matty get on a roll now? And will that spark the rest of the team to also get on a roll?
Takeaway #3: An important win
This was a big one. The ice was tilted in Boston’s favor for much of this game, but the way you beat good teams is by getting outstanding goaltending and taking advantage of offensive opportunities when they present themselves.
The Kraken did just that, with a power-play goal off a rush by Jordan Eberle in the first period, then the 3-on-1 goal by Tolvanen and the quick-strike goal by Beniers in the third. For their efforts, the Kraken got to fly home in good spirits after salvaging four of eight points on a trip that started off in miserable fashion.
“It was a really good win,” Beniers said. “Great to come into Boston and beat one of the best games in the league right now. So it’s obviously a confidence booster and a testament that we can play the right way and win games like that.”
The two points were a big help in the standings for the Kraken, who continued their steep uphill climb to try to get back into the playoff picture.
“It was really important in terms of the road trip itself,” Hakstol said. “We finished the road trip [2-2-0], and just for our group to continue to— I feel like we’re building momentum.”
The Kings and Blues—the two teams in the last two wild card spots—each won Thursday, so no ground was gained on those clubs, and the Kraken remained four points back. But the Predators and Flames, who also were ahead of the Kraken entering play on Thursday, each lost (Nashville was embarrassed 9-2 at home by Dallas, and Calgary lost 6-3 at home to lowly San Jose). What that means is that the Kraken jumped over Calgary and are now tied with Nashville.
An NHL season is such a roller coaster. Two games ago, we were ready to throw in the towel and call it a season. Now, we’re starting to believe again that this team can make the playoffs.
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.
What a difference a day can make. After an abysmal performance Monday in New Jersey, the Seattle Kraken looked like a different team against the New York Islanders on Tuesday and earned a 2-1 shootout win to snap a three-game skid.
With the Los Angeles Kings, St. Louis Blues, and Nashville Predators all losing on this night, the win remarkably pushed Seattle right back to within four points of either of the two wild card spots. So, for as much as we thought it might be time to throw in the towel on Monday, suddenly this team has life again.
“It’s a heck of a road game,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “That’s the way you have to play it. You’re playing teams that are in a fight for a playoff spot every single night, or fighting for playoff positioning every single night. And this is the type of game that you have to play.”
Here are our Three Takeaways from a critical 2-1 Kraken shootout win over the Islanders.
Takeaway #1: A nice return for Philipp Grubauer
It was oddly unfamiliar to see Philipp Grubauer between the pipes for the Kraken on Tuesday. Though the German Gentleman was activated off long-term injured reserve way back on Jan. 23, Joey Daccord continued to hold down the goal crease for the next six consecutive games. Hakstol stuck with the guy that had helped get his team back into the race, even as we thought—on several occasions—that surely he’d turn to Grubauer and give Daccord a break.
Finally, Grubauer got the nod Tuesday for the first time since suffering an injury in Seattle’s loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Dec. 9, and he looked good in his return.
One thing that has plagued Grubauer through his tenure with the Kraken has been when games start with few or no shots on goal. When a shot finally comes, it tends to be off a doozy of a rush or takes a weird deflection, and suddenly he’s off on the wrong foot.
Grubauer seems to like getting into a rhythm with a few early shots to let him feel the puck, and he really didn’t get much work at the beginning of the game Tuesday. But when he did—and things picked up toward the end of the opening frame when Andre Burakovsky took a bad-luck four-minute penalty—you could tell he was tracking the puck well, despite facing only a couple offerings in the first half of the opening period. Shots were hitting him and either sticking to him or getting steered into the corners.
“In practice you can only work on so many game situations, but once you get out there, it’s a totally different story,” Grubauer said. “There’s a lot of positives you can draw out of [missing time], and you see the game from a different perspective and you can slow it down a little. But obviously it takes a little bit of time to get back into it, and I was saying to the guys, there’s no better way than killing off a four-minute power player there to get back into it.”
We especially liked this play where he read the pass and got his paddle down to deflect it, then reacted in time to make a pad save on a quick shot from a prime scoring position.
“Really solid tonight,” Hakstol said. “He did a nice job being real settled and calm in net, and I mean, our guys did a really good job in front of him.”
Grubauer stopped 26 of 27 shots on the night for a .963 save percentage, his highest of the season. Two of those shots came in overtime, and he also stopped all three of Oliver Wahlstrom, Bo Horvat, and Mathew Barzal in the shootout to seal the deal. For his trouble, he earned first star honors and the Davy Jones Hat.
While Daccord was awesome in his long stretch of play since Grubi went on the shelf, we all knew the Kraken would need both goalies at some point. The question was how the team’s No. 1 goalie (is he still No. 1?) would play when he returned to the net.
One game is a small sample size, but that was a very positive outing for Grubauer. If this team is going to make the playoffs, it will need Grubauer to get hot down the stretch.
Takeaway #2: Bounce back for Matty
After a tough outing for Matty Beniers on Monday against the Devils—he rode the pine for 11 minutes following a terrible turnover that led to a goal—the forward had one of his best games of the season Tuesday.
He scored Seattle’s only regulation goal, and it came mere seconds after he got thrown awkwardly into the end boards and briefly appeared injured. But Beniers dusted himself off and retreated to the neutral zone in time to receive a stretch pass from Jared McCann just outside the Islanders blue line.
Matty cruised in and fired it off Ilya Sorokin’s blocker and in, giving Seattle a 1-0 lead at 5:27 of the first.
MATTY MAGIC! 🚨
That's one way to respond after a tough turnover last game.
Beniers goes HARD into the boards after a collision with Pulock, but seconds later, he scores his seventh goal of the season.
“It definitely hurt,” Beniers said. “I was trying to just get off the ice, and then I saw the opportunity, and I was like, ‘I’m not that hurt.’ It didn’t feel good, but plays will happen like that in hockey. And [Ryan Pulock] just kind of got me off balance, I went into the boards pretty hard. Canner made a nice play, and I was just fortunate to be there.”
This season has not gone according to plan for Beniers, and the Kraken desperately need him to find his game. Perhaps Tuesday was a step in the right direction for the reigning Calder Trophy winner.
Takeaway #3: The Kraken showed life
One thing we found interesting from that Davy Jones Hat presentation video in Takeaway #1 was Hakstol joking that the team had heard enough from him during the day. Clearly, there was a lot of conversation had amongst the team in the lead-up to this game, and the players and staff were not happy with how things had been going since the All-Star break and bye week ended.
Whatever was said worked. Since Seattle’s nine-game win streak ended on Jan. 15, this group had not looked right but finally put together a cohesive performance against the Isles.
“It was awesome, I think, all night from the whole team,” Beniers said. “I don’t think our battle level and compete was there the last two nights, and that’s kind of been our identity since the beginning. So that was the big emphasis on tonight was we’re not going to get outworked, we’re not going to get out-battled.”
Indeed, the Kraken came out of the gates fast Tuesday and managed to overcome a couple penalty-related stumbles. And even as the game wore on, and they dealt with the fatigue of a back-to-back, the Kraken stayed on the gas and pushed for a go-ahead goal.
“We worked hard defensively, we did a lot of really good things, we had some saves when we needed to, our penalty kill did a really nice job tonight,” Hakstol said. “And I really liked our third period.”
Now, had the shootout gone the other way, we probably would again be writing that the sky is falling. But the Kraken earned two points in this game and truly deserved them. Can this be a spark to get the Kraken going again?
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.
If you were looking for an inspiring performance from the Seattle Kraken on Monday to reinvigorate your belief that they could make the playoffs, well… you didn’t get that. The Kraken laid an egg for the first 40ish minutes of this game against the New Jersey Devils, ultimately lost 3-1, and dropped themselves farther out of the race.
The first period looked messy, and the second period was even worse. It seemed like the team sort of found its game in the third period, but not until the point when overcoming a three-goal deficit would have been bordering on miraculous. And after a stinker in Philadelphia on Saturday, Seattle’s first game back from the break, you can’t blame this one on rust.
“No, we’re not resting on that crutch tonight,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “Game 2 [since the All-Star break and bye week]. That’s on utter readiness, compete, [being] ready to go… For the first 35 minutes of this hockey game, we weren’t at a level that’s acceptable, and that takes us out of the game.”
It’s not looking good, folks. Here are our Three Takeaways from a 3-1 Kraken loss to the Devils.
Takeaway #1: Costly mistakes from young players
It was a tough night for a couple of Seattle’s younger players. Matty Beniers and Ryker Evans each played starring roles on New Jersey goals, and even Hakstol—always reluctant to call out his players directly—made it clear Beniers had blown it on Jack Hughes’s second-period marker that ended up as the game winner.
After Seattle had broken up a rush, Beniers found himself with the puck on his stick and a clear lane ahead of him to either hit the gas and skate it out of the zone or make an outlet pass into the neutral zone. Instead, he came to an almost dead stop, allowing Erik Haula to catch up to him and strip him of the puck.
The Devils quickly transitioned back to offense, and Hughes eventually made an elite play to bank the puck in off Joey Daccord’s mask 48 seconds into the period.
Lackadaisical play by Matty Beniers, who gets stripped by Erik Haula. Jack Hughes with an elite shot, banking it in off Joey Daccord from the goal line. #SeaKrakenpic.twitter.com/2286bTx90P
“The turnover came off of his tape, and ultimately… that’s his responsibility,” Hakstol said. “But there’s five guys on the ice that have to be in the right spots in order to move that puck and get it going and look organized.”
Ok, so Hakstol sort of spread around the blame, but that miscue is on Matty. It’s just a lack of awareness for where the opponents are on the ice and the wrong decision to not immediately get his feet moving.
Evans followed that up four minutes later by getting burned up the wall by Timo Meier. Beaten on the play and trying to recover, Evans did well to avoid taking a penalty and actually got a piece of Meier’s shot to slow it down. That may have fooled Daccord, though, because he kicked the rebound on the off-speed pitch right into the slot for Dawson Mercer.
We should also point out that Evans didn’t get much help on the play, and Jamie Oleksiak missed an opportunity to lift Mercer’s stick. Still, it’s a bad read and a slightly too aggressive angle that created the rush.
Mistakes like these will happen for young players, and Evans and Beniers were certainly not alone in committing errors on this night. They have to keep playing, though, and learn from those moments.
Takeaway #2: Another poor offensive showing
Against Philadelphia, the Kraken had a sloppy start to the first period but were playing with decent pace. As the game went on, they got worse at creating offensive opportunities and only took two shots at Cal Petersen in the third period.
Monday’s game had a different script. The first 40 minutes were downright painful to watch, before the Kraken finally woke up in the third when it was extremely unlikely they would get back in the game.
“Really our compete, our execution just took us out of this hockey game for the first 35 minutes,” Hakstol said. “That’s really what led to most of our issues.”
Pepper in a couple ill-timed penalties, including a too-many-men call when two Kraken players jumped over the boards at once, and you have yourself another ugly loss.
“We came apart a little bit in the second period, and that’s something that can happen when things aren’t going well and things don’t look good,” Hakstol said. “You have to find a way to work out of it together, and that’s what the third period looked like to a certain degree, not to our level. But that was the positive of it.”
For the second game since the break, Seattle just wasn’t generating much of anything. Through those first two periods, there was such little push that goalie Nico Daws—a 23-year-old with a 3.12 goals-against average and .896 save percentage in 34 career games—looked completely untested.
Takeaway #3: They look like sellers
We’ve held out optimism that this team would find its game again after the break and get itself right back in the playoff bubble with a win streak. But after these two games against the Flyers and the Devils, the outlook is bleaker than ever.
It’s hard not to wonder at what point general manager Ron Francis starts pulling the trigger on selling off his expiring contracts. In theory, he may get better value for veterans like Alex Wennberg and Justin Schultz if he moves them now, when there’s an extra month of service time left in the season that they can provide to their future teams (Schultz may be more important to the Kraken now, though, if Brian Dumoulin’s lower-body injury causes him to miss significant time).
As of the writing of this story, the Kraken had dropped to six points out of the last wild card spot, with three teams to jump over in order to get back into the picture. How far do they need to sink for Francis to make moves?
“I think, regardless of where the standings are, I think we just have to focus on our game,” Oleksiak said. “It’s a test for us, in terms of adversity and character, how we respond to it. And I think it’s a good opportunity for us [to play again Tuesday against the New York Islanders]. So we’ve just got to focus on one game at a time and take it from there.”
There’s still a chance they can turn this thing around, but man, that was not a strong performance. If the Kraken players want to send the message to Francis and his staff that they intend to make the playoffs and should be kept together, they better do it in one of the next two games on this road trip. The longer they wait to deliver that information, the more likely it is that players get traded away. Once that happens, the towel will have been thrown in on the season.
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.
It’s easy to pin a loss like the one the Seattle Kraken took Saturday on rust, with the Philadelphia Flyers looking sharper and more structured throughout. But now that Seattle is finally back from its long break, the time is nigh to start racking up points.
Sure, there are still 32 31 games remaining in the season, but general manager Ron Francis is down to 11 contests before he will need to make his final decisions on whether this team is a trade deadline seller. Every loss at this point pushes Francis and his staff closer to that end of the “stand pat or sell” seesaw.
Seattle didn’t get an easy draw for its first game back, facing a good Flyers team that had jumped out to two impressive wins over Florida and Winnipeg since returning to action on Tuesday. Still, this game felt significant for the Kraken, who needed to get off on the right tentacle. Instead, they stumbled out of the break and missed another opportunity at valuable points.
Here are our Three Takeaways from an uninspiring 3-2 Kraken loss to the Flyers.
Takeaway #1: A rotten night for the power play
Not only did the Seattle power play fail to score in three opportunities on this night, it also gave up a short-handed goal at an ill-chosen moment. Tomas Tatar had just tied the game 1-1 at 17:09 of the first period, taking a pass from Vince Dunn in the slot, turning and wristing it through Cal Petersen.
Replay showed that when Seattle entered the zone, Tatar—at that point not involved in the play and crossing the blue line on the opposite side of the ice from the puck—was within an eye-lash length of being offside. Flyers coach John Tortorella challenged and lost, earning his team a delay-of-game penalty.
This should have been the big turning point in the game for Seattle, but the opposite happened. Chasing the puck in the offensive zone, the Kraken got too aggressive and left only Dunn back to defend after Garnet Hathaway pitched it down the ice. Ryan Poehling got to the puck first, drifted toward Joey Daccord, and fired it through the wickets to regain a 2-1 lead.
The Kraken PK was ok in this one, allowing the game’s opening goal but also getting some important kills. But it was also forced into action at problematic points in the third period. Will Borgen launched a puck over the glass at 5:39 of the third, just nine seconds after Sean Couturier’s eventual winning goal, and Jamie Oleksiak hauled down Travis Konecny at 9:10.
Philadelphia didn’t score on either of those chances, but those penalties cost the Kraken four precious minutes at a point in the game when they could not afford to be down a man.
Takeaway #2: Face-offs do matter sometimes
There have been some healthy debates around the Sound Of Hockey community in the last month about whether face-offs matter. Our best friend, Alison Lukan, eventually convinced John Barr that face-offs, in fact, do not matter. Speaking about the face-off percentage statistic, that is likely true. The team that wins more face-offs doesn’t necessarily win the game, and one could argue it really has no bearing on the outcome.
HOWEVER… And this is where the trusty eye-ball test comes into play…
There are moments in a game where you look at the situation and think, Man, these guys need a face-off win here. Every time we thought that on Saturday, the Kraken lost the draw, with a few key losses coming in the waning minutes of the game when Daccord was off for an extra skater.
And then, of course, there’s the case of the game-winning goal. With 14:32 left in a tie game, Matty Beniers lost a defensive-zone draw to Couturier, who pulled it straight back to Konecny. Konecny nudged it to Travis Sanheim, who blasted it toward the net for Courturier, who was able to get a piece of it and deflect it by Daccord.
The Kraken could have used a face-off win there, too.
Takeaway #3: TWO LOUSY SHOTS?!
No issue in this game was more glaring than how ineffective Seattle was at getting pucks through to Petersen. The team got worse at this as the game went along, and Tortorella’s well-coached skaters clogged up shooting lanes and built a bunker around their goalie.
But what we’re about to tell you is jarring. Jared McCann scored 36 seconds into the third period, getting a good bounce off a Philadelphia defender. He also took Seattle’s next and only other shot on goal, 19:04 later. Two shots by McCann in the third period, more than 19 minutes apart. That was it. No other Kraken player got a puck on net while the team was chasing in a one-goal game.
Meanwhile, Daccord got peppered with 38 Philadelphia offerings and did everything he could to keep his mates in the game, despite a 70-30 split in shot quality. Joey deserved better. The Kraken did not.
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We’re getting into must-win territory here. The Kraken have lost seven of their last nine since their nine-game win streak ended on Jan. 13. If they lose a few more before they can get going in the right direction, their veterans on expiring contracts will be out the door.
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.
Phew! The Kraken made that one harder than they needed to, but they escaped with a 4-2 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Sunday and got themselves back within two points of a playoff spot with one game left before the All-Star break.
“We were disappointed to lose the point the other night [against St. Louis], but we came back and got the two points tonight that were critical,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “Anything less, we’d be walking out of this building tonight not feeling very good about ourselves.”
Thanks to two goals and an assist by Jordan Eberle and a goal and an assist by Jared McCann in the first period, Seattle was able to squeak through a nerve-wracking third.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 4-2 Kraken win over the Blue Jackets.
Takeaway #1: Nice night for the top-line players
Since Matty Beniers got hurt the last time these two teams met, Jared McCann has been centering the top line between Tomas Tatar and Jordan Eberle and continues to do so now that Beniers is back.
That trio connected for the second goal of the game Sunday, after Tatar took advantage of a pinching Damon Severson at the defensive blue line, then hit Eberle with a stretch pass to create a 2-on-1.
MCCANN CAN! 🚨
It started with a steal inside the D-zone blue line by Tomas Tatar, who hit Jordan Eberle with a stretch pass to spring the 2-on-1. Jared McCann with a great finish.
McCann had two goals last time these teams played each other.
Tatar and Eberle have been great together ever since Tatar’s acquisition from Colorado, and Hakstol seems to really be liking the combination with McCann in the middle.
“They’re continuing to produce, especially on the offensive side,” Hakstol said. “They’ve done a pretty good job defensively, so we’ve liked the line and stayed with the line.”
In their last six games together (they’ve played seven in total, but we’re excluding that miserable 3-0 loss in Pittsburgh on Jan. 15), Eberle and McCann each have four goals and five assists, and Tatar has four points (2-2—4).
Now, with his hot streak continuing, McCann again has 20 goals on the season after scoring 27 in 2021-22 and 40 last season. Remember, the most he had ever scored in his career prior to arriving in Seattle was 19, so he has now topped that in all three seasons with the Kraken. It’s amazing what opportunity can do for a skilled NHL player.
“[Goals] come and they go, right?” McCann said. “You’re going to be hot one minute, and the next, you’re not. I’m just trying to be as consistent as possible, whether it be… do something defensively, or… it’s not always about scoring goals.”
As for Eberle, he too has heated up nicely after a dismal start to the season in which he notched just three points in his first 12 games. The veteran forward has been producing in spurts since then and has found the scoresheet more frequently of late.
“We need that offensive spark and production that he’s providing for us,” Hakstol said. “We would have loved to have it a couple of months ago, but we’re real happy to have it right now from him.”
Takeaway #2: Things got hairy
Here’s how the game played out:
First period, Kraken are in control.
Second period, Kraken are getting a little lackadaisical, but whatever, it’s still 3-0.
Third period, Kraken are no longer in control, and oh my God, what are they doing? They’re going to give this away, aren’t they?
Thankfully for Kraken fans, that last bullet didn’t quite play out in full, but there was an uncomfortable familiarity to this game after Yegor Chinakhov scored his second goal of the third period at 15:58 and pulled Columbus back within one goal.
“We kind of let the game slip away a bit,” McCann said. “We got on our heels and kind of let them take control of the game, and we can’t do that.”
Of course, this was one game after the Kraken dominated most of the second period against St. Louis and grabbed a 3-1 lead, only to fritter it away and ultimately lose 4-3 in overtime. So, alarm bells were ringing when the Blue Jackets got it to 3-2.
“I just thought we got a little sloppy,” Eberle said. “We started to give them pucks in the middle, and they started transitioning on us with great speed. That’s a good hockey team over there. I know that obviously everyone looks at the record, but they’ve got some healthy guys who’ve had injury problems all year. And they got some guys back and they’re rolling, and we gave them an opportunity to get back in this game.”
Indeed, there were mistakes made that led to the goals, like Vince Dunn sending a stretch pass onto the tape of Severson, which eventually gave Chinakhov his first goal (comically, we could hear Dunn yell, “F***!” after he turned it over). On his second, the Kraken won a neutral-zone face-off, but then Alex Wennberg and Jamie Oleksiak seemed to both think the other was going to pick up the loose puck, and instead, Chinakhov took it, cruised to the slot, and sniped.
Seattle got away with the letdown in the end, but Eberle was right that things needed to be tighter down the stretch of this game.
Takeaway #3: Holding on for dear life
The last few minutes of a one-goal hockey game are always so beautifully dramatic. In this one, Daniil Tarasov went off to give Columbus an extra skater with 2:26 remaining, and the next 2:13—until Brandon Tanev hit an empty-net goal to seal it—were hold-onto-your-butt intense.
With the 5-on-6 disadvantage, the Kraken did well to keep any shooting opportunities to the outside, despite Adam Larsson breaking his stick. And with the game on the line, Yanni Gourde came up with a massive, loud block on Severson.
“Yanni made a great play, obviously, to block that shot, and he’s been doing that for a long time,” McCann said. “So, yeah, he does the little things right.”
Added Hakstol on how the team closed the game, “We did a good job in that sense… 30 minutes before that, you’d like to affect the game so you don’t have to put yourself in that situation. But when push comes to shove, at the end of the day, the two groups that we used in the situation at 5-on-6… they did a good job. They did the things that we needed to have done.”
Now, with the All-Star break dancing in the heads of the players, the Kraken will head to San Jose for a game they simply have to win.
“The reality is we have one game left before a long break,” Hakstol said. “So we have to get our heads completely focused on that job, make sure that we’re ready to go for a real competitive 60 minutes.”
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.
