It is time for another edition of 10‑for‑10, where we identify 10 metrics that tell the story of the Seattle Kraken’s last 10 games and how they relate to their current position in the standings. The Kraken remain in the mix for a Pacific Division or wild card playoff spot, but they didn’t do themselves any favors over the last 10 games, going 3‑5‑2 in that span. They also dropped two critical matchups to teams in a similar position, while every other playoff contender in the Pacific Division outperformed them. That leads us to our first data point.
Data point 1: Losing ground
From a points‑percentage standpoint, the Kraken have only outperformed the Vancouver Canucks in the Pacific Division, while every other team either gained ground or created separation.
When this 10‑game stretch started on Dec. 6, the Kraken were third in the Pacific and within one point of the division‑leading Vegas Golden Knights. As of Sunday, Jan. 25, the Kraken are now sixth in the Pacific and nine points back of the Golden Knights. That doesn’t even account for the Utah Mammoth jumping them in the wild card race, or the Nashville Predators surging to just one point behind the Kraken.
Data point 2: Goals for and against, minus empty‑net goals
Some positive news: the Kraken scored more goals, excluding empty‑netters, over the last 10 games than they did in any prior 10‑game segment. The negative: they also allowed the most goals against in that same window.
I don’t think it’s totally sincere to look at the increase in goal scoring and assume this is all good, because some of it might be a byproduct of playing from behind. We’ve talked about it all season: this team is comfortable playing tight games, and when holding a lead, they prioritize preventing offense over generating it. That suppresses their scoring. When they’re chasing, they don’t have that luxury.
Data point 3: Game time spent by goal differential
The last 10 games featured the highest percentage of time the Kraken have spent playing from behind. They were down 2‑0 in five of the 10 games. They clawed back in several of them, but allowing the first two goals is a recipe for disaster, and it showed in the results.
And in order to be down 2‑0, you first have to be down 1‑0.
Data point 4: Trailing first
The Kraken have a .700 points percentage when scoring the first goal and a .360 points percentage when allowing the first goal. They allowed the first goal in eight of the last 10 games, the most in any 10‑game segment this season.
In six of those eight games, they allowed the opening goal within the first five minutes. That kind of behavior can be demoralizing, and at home, it can suck the energy right out of the building.
Data point 5: Special teams
One positive area for the Kraken has been their special teams. Since Jan. 6, when this 10‑game segment started, they have the second‑best power‑play conversion rate in the league and a slightly better‑than‑league‑average penalty kill.
The power play has been good all season, ranked ninth in the league as of Sunday morning, and they’re whipping the puck around like I’ve never seen in their brief franchise history. Special teams have been fun to watch lately, apart from one particular issue that keeps popping up…
Data point 6: Short-handed goals against
One of the ugliest parts of the last 10 games has been the Kraken allowing short-handed goals in four of the last five games. All four came at critical times, and they went on to lose all four of those games. Each one seemed to happen in its own unique, maddening way.
Let’s talk about something a little more fun, shall we?
Data point 7: Berkly Catton shot attempts and goals
It was early in this 10‑game segment, but Berkly Catton scored his first four goals of his career in this span and has also been generating more shot attempts per game. He’s playing with confidence and seems to showcase more of his skill with every outing.
Data point 8: Shot attempts on target
A theme that has crept into my mind lately is the feeling that this team has been a bit unlucky shooting the puck. There have been several moments where the Kraken hit the post or crossbar at a critical juncture. I always tend to think these things even out over time and that no team is truly lucky or unlucky over a full season… but the timing can be critical.
There’s no official stat for posts or crossbars, but one potential proxy is “shots on target.” The formula is simple: (goals + shots on goal) / total shot attempts. The theory is that they’re shooting plenty but not putting enough on net. The NHL classifies posts and crossbars as missed shots, not shots on goal.
A lot more research would need to go into this, but the Kraken are not hitting the target at the same rate they were during their little run back into the playoff picture.
Sidenote, the Kraken are 28th in the league in shot attempts per game.
Data point 9: The often‑overlooked contributions from Ben Meyers
I’ve talked about him on the Sound Of Hockey Podcast but haven’t mentioned him here, so I want to shout out Ben Meyers for everything he’s brought this season.
Meyers bounced up and down between Coachella Valley in the first couple months of the year but was a permanent fixture from Dec. 9 until his recent injury.
He has been a critical piece of that fourth line and a key part of the penalty‑kill turnaround. His numbers are modest, but he has posted career highs across all scoring categories and was on pace to surpass his most games played in a single season before landing on injured reserve Friday morning.
His last 10 games have been his most impactful stretch for the Kraken, and likely of his entire career.
Meyers being listed on injured reserve as week‑to‑week is concerning and likely means he’s out until after the Olympic break.
Data point 10: Center depth
Including Meyers, the Kraken have six players on the roster they’ve deployed at center this season, and all have shown they can handle the position regularly, not just out of necessity.
To be clear, this does include Catton, who has been used primarily as a winger lately but did play center for six games earlier in the season. It also doesn’t include Oscar Fisker Mølgaard or John Hayden, both of whom the Kraken have used at center at various points. It’s an area of depth for the team, and one that could come into play at the trade deadline.
Wrapping it up
When you zoom out on these 10 games, the picture is pretty clear: the Kraken are still very much in the hunt, but they’ve made the climb steeper than it needed to be. Slow starts, shorthanded stumbles, and a little bad puck luck have all chipped away at the margin for error, even as bright spots like Catton’s emergence, Meyers’ reliability, and the power play’s contributions offer reasons to stay invested. With the standings tightening, the next 10 games will be critical to figuring out their approach to the trade deadline.
After Lane Lambert was blunt in his assessment of the Seattle Kraken’s performance against the Anaheim Ducks on Friday—calling it, “The worst 40 minutes we played all year,”—I was curious to see what kind of tone Seattle’s practice would take Saturday, as the team prepared for a 12 p.m. game against the New Jersey Devils on Sunday.
After all, Lambert used some of his strongest language to date in describing how his team played, so would they get the bag-skate treatment? Would Lambert scream at them and come down with a heavy hand?
In this case, not exactly. In front of a surprisingly large crowd for the open-to-the-public skate, the practice was a focused, up-tempo session that revolved around transitions, rushes, and special teams. But it wasn’t of the “skate until you puke” variety.
I asked Lambert how he addresses the group the day after a game like the one it played on Friday: does he come at it from an instructional angle, or react heavy-handedly?
“It depends where you’re at in the season,” Lambert said. “It depends where you’re at in the schedule. There’s all kinds of different sorts of scenarios that go into it, and there’s different ways to approach it, just like you said.”
My thought is that if the schedule weren’t compressed the way it has been because of the upcoming Olympics, we may have seen a more reprimanding approach employed by Lambert on Saturday. But with another game just 24 hours away, Lambert clearly felt the on-ice portion needed to be more tactical than punitive.
Lambert shared that the team had a morning meeting, and the messaging was, “Just whatever you have to do, from a preparation standpoint, as an individual, you’ve got to do it. We talked about our starts this morning, so it’s clearly an issue, and we just have to be better in that area.”
Following up on the Shane Wright situation
Nothing has changed in the last… oh, 12 hours since I asked Shane Wright how he’s dealing with the “outside noise” of trade rumors about him, and he said, “I don’t really care too much about that. It’s no offense to you guys, reporters, at the end of the day, you can’t really trust too much what they say. And at the end of day, it’s just rumors. I’m not too worried about that.”
Lambert said Friday that the team has been working on a few areas of Shane’s game and that he’s seeing improvement from the 22-year-old center. So I also asked Lambert Saturday to elaborate on what those areas are.
“I think he’s way better in the defensive zone right now,” Lambert said. “I think his positioning, his understanding of his positioning when he comes into the defensive zone, is miles ahead of where it was 20, 25, 30 games ago, and I think that his ability and his confidence—and we’ve talked about this before—to hold onto pucks and make plays has improved throughout the year. And I think all of those things coupled together are making him and will make him a better hockey player.”
Something tells me there are fans who won’t like the next part of what Lambert said, especially in the context that Cutter Gauthier—drafted one spot behind Wright at No. 5 in the 2022 NHL Draft—burned around Vince Dunn on Friday and scored his 23rd goal of the season.
“I think [Wright] is doing a really good job of embracing what we’re coaching into him, and sometimes players—in order to play the right way—sometimes they have to play for the team type of thing. I’m not saying he wasn’t before, but sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit of your personal statistics in order to embrace the way to play, in order for the team to have success. I think he’s done an amazing job with that, I really do.”
Asked if that’s a straightforward conversation to have with a young player, Lambert said:
“It is. It’s a conversation that, because at the end of the day, you’re young, and you haven’t had all this experience and stuff like that. You’ve been used to getting points and things like that, and I’m not saying we don’t want him to, I’m just saying we want him to learn how to play the right way, and I think he’s doing a great job of that. I just… there’s a certain way to play for an entire hockey team in order to win in the playoffs, and that’s what I’m building towards.”
One thing Lambert didn’t touch on is Wright’s performance in the face-off circle, something that is clearly valued by the Kraken coach. Face-offs are a flawed stat, but after finishing last season at 44.5 percent in the circle in 79 games, Wright has regressed to just 37.5 percent this year. I do believe this is a big reason his starts are almost exclusively in the offensive zone, and also a big reason why Lambert hasn’t yet placed his wholehearted trust in Wright.
Odds and ends
• It looked like the Kraken will go with the same lineup Sunday against the Devils, with Ryan Lindgren being the only question mark (and I’d guess Joey Daccord gets the start). Lindgren did not participate Saturday, but Lambert said it was just a maintenance day. Cale Fleury took Lindgren’s spot in line rushes next to Ryker Evans.
• Philipp Grubauer was breaking in his Team Germany pads at practice. Joey Daccord also donned a brand-new set of pads, though they are the exact same design as the ones he’s been wearing—just with fewer puck marks.
• Ryker Evans, who took a friendly fire high stick from Ben Meyers two games ago and now has a nasty zipper on his lip, played Friday’s game with a visor plus a lower face shield. At practice, he ditched the lower face shield.
• Meyers, week to week with a lower-body injury, was apparently injured blocking a shot in the second period against the New York Islanders on Wednesday. Jacob Melanson replaced him in the lineup Friday, and it appears Melanson will remain in the lineup on Sunday.
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.
Kraken coach Lane Lambert was on fire in his press conference following an uninspiring 4-2 loss to the Anaheim Ducks on Friday, in a critical “four-point” game against a team that entered the night two points ahead of Seattle in the standings.
The whole presser is worth a watch, but here were a few highlights:
“Terrible, terrible hockey game for our team. Terrible first 40 minutes. We had a push at the end, but I don’t have a logical explanation for an illogical event. That was the worst 40 minutes we played all year.”
“Well, you always hesitate to say, ’It can’t get any worse,’ but at that point in time [after the second period], there was only one way to go, and that was up for us.”
“When you leave it up to chance, and you play 20 minutes in a 60-minute hockey game, you’re not going to have success very often. So, one word can describe the game for me, it’s ‘disappointment.’ Friday night, big game, division opponent, four-point game in front of our fans, I’m actually dumbfounded.”
Here are Three Takeaways from a 4-2 Kraken loss to the Ducks.
Takeaway 1: Just a dreadful start
I really thought this team had figured out how to start games this season. But it has become a major problem again over the past month, a continuation of four previous years of periodic struggles in first periods. And Friday’s opening 20 minutes were especially ugly.
The issues began about a minute into the contest. Eeli Tolvanen tried to force a pass to Berkly Catton, which was easily cut off by Pavel Mintyukov at the Anaheim blue line. The Ducks transitioned quickly, with Jeffrey Viel then finding Cutter Gauthier at the Seattle blue line. Gauthier recognized that Vince Dunn was completely flat-footed, turned on the jets to burn around the defenseman with ease, and snapped a shot into the gaping opening that Philipp Grubauer—too deep in his net on the play—was giving him on the far side.
The early goals are getting ridiculous.
Cutter Gauthier burns around Vince Dunn, and Grubi gives him way too much net.
The goal came on the first shot of the game at 1:02 of the first period, extending Seattle’s streak of surrendering a goal in the first six minutes to nine straight games.
“We didn’t start in the first two periods,” Jordan Eberle said. “In my opinion, we were getting out-battled. We were kind of all over the place early on, our systems were disconnected. In the third, we made a push, but at the end of the day, you’re down two, and it’s a tough way to come back. We can’t keep doing this to ourselves.”
Things got worse before they got better, with another strange and ugly trend rearing its head once again: short-handed goals against. In the offensive zone, Matty Beniers and Eberle both lunged for a loose puck but were beaten by Ian Moore, who chipped it out of the zone to spring Ryan Poehling on a breakaway. Poehling deposited it behind Grubauer to make it 2-0.
…And now, a fourth short-handed goal against in five games.
That was the fourth short-handed goal the Kraken have allowed in their last five games.
Those two trends—early goals against and short-handed goals—are killing this team right now and have contributed heavily to its 2-5-2 record over the last nine games. Like Lane Lambert, I too am “dumbfounded” about how these two things keep happening.
Meanwhile, Seattle managed just three shots on goal in the first period and 11 through two before finally turning things on and doubling that total in the third.
Takeaway 2: Believe it or not, they almost tied that game
For as bad as the Kraken were through the first two periods, Jared McCann did get them on the board with a classic Beniers-to-Eberle-to-McCann snipe at 1:55 of the second. They gave that goal right back, though, via a Chris Kreider power-play marker just 2:05 later, and continued to sleepwalk through the middle frame.
But in the third period, they finally woke up after the “It can’t get any worse” conversation Lambert alluded to, pulling within a goal and creating several bona fide scoring chances that made it feel like they were about to tie the game.
In fact, Chandler Stephenson appeared to have the equalizer after an insane touch pass from Berkly Catton in the neutral zone sprung his billet dad on a breakaway. Stephenson made a nice move, hitting the brakes and getting Lukas Dostal to slide the wrong way, but as he deked back to his left, the puck rolled off his stick.
WHOOP! What a pass by Berkly Catton. 😱
Chandler Stephenson had Dostal dead to rights but lost the handle on it. That would have been a goal of the year candidate. #SeaKrakenpic.twitter.com/sXv0g25cp1
If there’s one silver lining from this otherwise miserable game, it’s that the Kraken reminded us in the third period that they are capable of playing on their toes.
Takeaway 3: The Shane Wright situation
Shane Wright did contribute in this game, setting up Jaden Schwartz for an easy tap-in goal that pulled Seattle back within 3-2.
The larger story surrounding Wright lately, though, has been his name popping up in trade rumors. Multiple national reporters have surmised that the Kraken would be willing to move the 22-year-old center.
We gave our takes on the situation on the latestSound Of Hockey Podcast, so give that a listen. My general belief is that Wright could be traded if the right offer comes along—just like almost any player in the Kraken organization—but I don’t believe Seattle is actively “shopping” him, per se. Rather, they’re looking to upgrade offensively, and Wright is a young player who could bring back significant value, so of course they should be listening.
That said, I asked Wright how he’s been handling the “outside noise,” and he responded: “I don’t really care too much about that. It’s no offense to you guys, reporters, at the end of the day, you can’t really trust too much what they say. And at the end of day, it’s just rumors. I’m not too worried about that.”
I also asked Lambert what he thought of Wright’s game and how he prevents trade chatter from becoming a distraction for his young center.
“I thought his game was good. It was really good tonight,” Lambert said. “I think his game’s been good for a while. I think there’s areas of Shane’s game that we’re working on that he’s improved on a lot since the beginning of the year. The outside noise is outside noise. The speculation is speculation. I have no idea [about any of that], but my job is to make sure that he’s ready to play, and I think he’s playing well. And I thought he played well tonight.”
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.
Welcome to “Down on the Farm,” your weekly Seattle Kraken prospects update. This week, we’ll pass along some Kraken-related takeaways from our preliminary 2026 NHL Draft work, along with a couple notable injury updates. Beyond that, we’ll have other news, weekly and season-to-date data updates, all-shifts videos, the Sound Of Hockey Prospect of the Week, and a preview of the week ahead, as always.
If you have a Seattle Kraken prospect–related question you’d like to see featured in a future column, drop us a note below or on X or BlueSky at @deepseahockey or @sound_hockey.
Way-too-early 2026 NHL Draft thoughts
Yesterday, we posted the mid-season Sound Of Hockey Big Board, which ranked 411 draft prospects based on nine public draft analyst and scouting sources. Personally, I’m still deep in the weeds sorting through the early-round candidates in an effort to form comparative thoughts. I’d say I’m about halfway there, hoping to complete enough viewings by the end of the CHL season, when we at Sound Of Hockey tend to publish our final “Data Score” watchlist. (You can find the preseason version here.)
A complicating factor this early is that there is still significant uncertainty about where Seattle will be drafting. By the time you read this, Seattle’s first-round pick could sit anywhere between No. 8 and No. 18 in a hypothetical draft order (without even considering the added variable of the draft lottery). And it’s not outlandish to think that the pick could be outside this range when all is said and done. We can be a bit more confident with the Tampa Bay first-round pick Seattle holds due to the Yanni Gourde/Oliver Bjorkstrand trade. That pick will very likely fall in the 26-to-32 range.
In attempting to project the pick, there is yet one further variable: The Seattle Kraken shuffled responsibilities among their assistant general managers after hiring Ryan Jankowski. Alexandra Mandrycky, who has more of an analytics bent, moved to the pro scouting side, and Jankowski, who is a bit more of a traditional scout and player-development executive, took over the top spot in managing the amateur side. Of course, the Kraken still have Jason Botterill (and Ron Francis) at the top. It’s hard to know how much this management change will matter, if at all, when it comes to the players considered and selected in June. But it’s a point to track.
With all of that said, here are the top 35 on the mid-season Big Board:
At first blush, this draft presents Seattle with a prime opportunity to select a “Grade A” top-four defenseman. I’d put Keaton Verhoeff (No. 3), Chase Reid (No. 4), Carson Carels (No. 7), Daxon Rudolph (No. 12), and Alberts Smits (No. 6) in this category. Each is worthy of a high first-round pick and would justify departing from my general inclination toward drafting forwards high. I’d put Xavier Villeneuve (No. 9) and Ryan Lin (No. 16) in a second tier as intriguing smaller, offense-forward options as well.
The last time we had a defense-heavy top of the draft (2024), we saw a few of those players fall down the board a bit as teams prioritized big forwards and centers in particular. If history were to repeat here, it is not difficult to imagine one or more of Ethan Belchetz, Caleb Malholtra, or Oliver Suvanto getting drafted before Reid or Carels, for example.
My way-too-early thought is that Reid or Carels at a pick like No. 8, or Rudolph at a pick like No. 17, would be a solid win for the Kraken. When it comes to Tampa Bay’s pick, I’d just be spitballing at this point, but assuming you go back to the forward ranks, Pierce Mbuyi is a junior scorer who should stack up well both based on the data and the tape at that point in the draft. (Plus, his last name is pronounced like “Buoy,” so…) Ryan Roobroeck could be a worthy second-pick, high-risk flier. Nikita Klepov is an easy player to like if he were still on the board. (More on him below.)
In reality, all I can say with conviction given Seattle’s track record is that we should keep tabs on goalies playing junior hockey in Finland, including Frantisek Poletin (No. 99 on the Big Board) and Juuso Ainasto (No. 81). After taking a year off from the goalie market in 2025, they’re “due” to return to the Finnish well in 2026.
Notes on four Kraken prospects
Alexis Bernier | D | Chicoutimi Saguenéens (QMJHL)
Alexis Bernier has been taking part in on-ice activities with the Chicoutimi Saguenéens, his new QMJHL team, for a couple of weeks now, and it appears his return to play is imminent following offseason ACL reconstruction surgery. Local reports indicate he should be in the lineup Friday, Jan. 23, when the Saguenéens drop the puck at 4:00 pm PT against the Val-d’Or Foreurs. Coming into the season, I was uncertain Bernier would see significant time, but now he has a couple dozen regular-season games, as well as a probable playoff run, to make an impact before the 2025-26 season concludes.
Jake O’Brien | F | Brantford Bulldogs (OHL)
In other good injury news, top prospect Jake O’Brien returned to the ice last Sunday. He missed almost a month following a lower-body injury that was initially deemed minor. O’Brien got back to his point-producing ways in a hurry, scoring three goals and adding an assist in two games last week. It put him in the running for Prospect of the Week, but he came up just a bit short compared with the next two players we’ll mention.
Carson Rehkopf | F | Coachella Valley Firebirds (AHL)
Carson Rehkopf has spent the majority of this season on the Firebirds’ fourth line, seeing relatively little ice time. The lesson—that Rehkopf needs to round out his game and grind his way up from the bottom—is a valuable one, but there have been long stretches of negligible impact for the skilled forward. Personally, I reached a nadir in my view of his development while watching last Sunday’s game against Abbotsford. He was scoreless and did not accomplish much at all that night.
Then came Wednesday’s game against San Jose, and he flipped the script. Rehkopf scored on all three of his shots on goal, registering his first professional hat trick. The skill is there, and hopefully a performance like this allows him to unlock it with a bit more frequency moving forward.
🧢 CARSON REHKOPF WITH HIS FIRST PRO HAT TRICK!!!!! 🧢 4-2 FIIIIREEEEBIRDDSSSSS! pic.twitter.com/pIktElzQdC
Victor Ostman | G | Coachella Valley Firebirds (AHL)
With top goalie prospect Nikke Kokko out week to week, there was concern that the Firebirds could be in for a rough stretch. The opposite has happened. The Firebirds have rattled off six straight wins, and that is due in large part to the strong play of goalie Victor Ostman, who has stepped into the “starter” role with Kokko out. In Ostman’s two starts this past week, he posted a .950 save percentage and earned two wins, one via shutout. That effort earned him Sound Of Hockey Prospect of the Week status.
Kraken prospects data update
Logan Morrison’s season has flown under the radar a bit, but he has quietly led the offensive attack for the Firebirds. He reached the 20-goal plateau for the first time in his professional career last week. Morrison, 23, is currently on pace to amass 38 goals and 30 assists in 72 AHL games this year.
AHL All-Star Tyson Jugnauth, 21, is third among all AHL defensemen in scoring.
Kim Saarinen, 19, continues to post strong numbers back in Finland’s top professional league after the WJC break. As of Friday, his .917 save percentage is tied for the best mark in Liiga.
Though not included in these updates typically because he is on an AHL deal, goalie Jack LaFontaine’s performance to date warrants some mention. He’s (an almost ludicrous) 17-2-1 in the ECHL this season, with a .921 save percentage and a 2.21 goals-against average. In his two AHL starts since Nikke Kokko’s injury, he has two wins, a .945 save percentage, and a shutout. Terrific stuff.
Bernier’s projected return to the ice is our Deep Sea Hockey Game of the Week. The matchup with the Val-d’Or Foreurs is available to stream for those with a FloHockey subscription.
Tracking 2026 NHL Draft prospects: Nikita Klepov
Nikita Klepov is a high-pace, physically engaged, and defensive-minded winger. He has offensive skill to dream on too, even if it’s a rung below the truly elite players in the draft. The 6-foot forward has 59 points in 43 OHL games, which is third in the OHL and most among undrafted players. He is also a relatively young draft-eligible player. There’s a lot to like in this profile.
Curtis is a Sound Of Hockey contributor and member of the Kraken press corps. Curtis is an attorney by day, and he has read the NHL collective bargaining agreement and bylaws so you don’t have to. He can be found analyzing the Kraken, NHL Draft, and other hockey topics on Twitter and Bluesky @deepseahockey.
The Kraken didn’t make it easy on themselves, taking seven penalties in the game and giving up a goal in the first six minutes for the eighth consecutive contest. But they rode an impressive night from their penalty kill and another strong performance by Philipp Grubauer to a desperately needed 4-1 win over the Islanders.
Vince Dunn and Jared McCann were especially impressive on the offensive end of the ice, and the fourth line chipped in yet again to help coach Lane Lambert defeat the team that fired him almost exactly two years ago to the day.
“It’s been two years. So, I mean, I have a lot of good memories from being in the New York Islanders organization,” Lambert said. “We had a lot of success in that organization when I was there. There’s not that many players left, I guess, that were there; there’s eight or nine, I guess. But certainly, those guys, we went through a lot of battles together. It was nice to see some of them pregame a little bit, just to say ‘hi,’ but when the game starts… it did feel good to beat them, there’s no question about it, but it felt better just to get a win. We need to get on track.”
Here are Three Takeaways from a 4-1 Kraken win over the Islanders.
Takeaway 1: A BIG night for the penalty kill
Penalties were the name of this game, with Seattle finding itself shorthanded for six of the first eight minutes of the contest and then four more times over the course of the night. After conceding an Anthony Duclair marker on the first penalty just 2:38 into the game, Seattle’s penalty killers recovered and put together a remarkable showing the rest of the way.
Despite the early goal against, Seattle padded its PK stats in this one, finishing at an 86 percent success rate and nudging the season-long number up slightly to 72.6 percent—still good for just 30th in the NHL.
“I thought our structure was good,” Lambert said. “And so for them, they were looking for some passing lanes, some seams and things like that, and we were taking those situations away, which stopped them from shooting at times. The other thing is that I thought we had some great commitment. We did block some shots in that situation, so you have to have that if you’re going to have success on the penalty kill.”
What was especially important, though, was that after Seattle gave up the Duclair goal, it killed off two more penalties in quick succession to avoid going into a deeper hole. Then the power play capitalized on a 5-on-3 opportunity at the other end to tie the game 1-1.
Early in that 5-on-3 advantage, the Islanders got a clear and sent the puck the length of the ice. What I loved was that McCann sprinted all the way down to retrieve it but—recognizing the situation and the numerical advantage the Kraken had—didn’t wait for his teammates to regroup for a controlled breakout. Instead, he flew straight through the neutral zone and re-gained the offensive zone, and then it felt like just a matter of time before Seattle scored.
Sure enough, a McCann shot was blocked but skipped to Dunn at the top of the circle, who fired it back toward Ilya Sorokin. Dunn’s shot hit Matty Beniers in front and found its way in at 10:40 of the first period.
MATTY MAGIC! 🚨
On a 5-on-3, McCann's shot got blocked, but it caromed right to Vince Dunn, who got a deflection off Beniers and in.
“I thought even just in zone, we were just attacking and being a threat when we could,” Dunn said. “Jared was shooting a lot of pucks, and sometimes you get guys out of position when you’re shooting pucks, maybe they go down to block it, and it bounces somewhere a little funny, and then you get a better look from there.”
Added Lambert: “We clearly have to stay out of the box. We can’t take that many penalties. I don’t necessarily know if they were all penalties, but they were called, and having given up the first goal early on, I thought our power play did a great job of capitalizing on that 5-on-3 when we really needed them to, so it was a great job by them. And then for the rest of the night, after that first power play that they had, I think we did an outstanding job. And I thought our goaltender was great.”
Takeaway 2: Another strong Grubi night
It’s becoming a broken record, but stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Philipp Grubauer had a great game, stopping 24 of 25 shots and improving to a .919 save percentage in 19 appearances, with a 10-4-3 record and a 2.37 goals-against average.
“I think just the way we play, all together,” Grubauer said of what’s been helping him find success. “It’s not like one guy. Obviously it helps when guys get in the lane and box guys out, make it easy for us back there. So, yeah, it’s just one save at a time, one TV timeout at a time, and that’s it.”
The first of my two favorite stops of the night came midway through the second period, when a floating wrister through traffic by Tony DeAngelo created a rebound for Emil Heineman, who took two whacks at it right at the top of the crease. Grubauer extended his right pad and kicked both away. The second came in the third period on Casey Cizikas off a partial breakaway. Cizikas deked to his backhand and tried to slip it through the five-hole, but Grubauer clamped it down and then batted the puck out of the air to clear it from harm’s way.
Grubauer picked up his first point of the season with the second assist on McCann’s empty-net goal.
“What I thought of his play is what I think of his play here for the whole year,” Lambert said. “He’s played well, he looks dialed in, he’s focused, he’s tight. He’s not getting out of position, sliding out of position. He seems in a good place. And yeah, it’s nice to see him get a point, for sure.”
When I jokingly asked Grubauer if he was trying to create some offense at the end of the game, he said, “No, I’m not going for [the empty net], if that’s what you’re asking. No, I’d rather have one of our guys make the play up the boards or shoot it. So, yeah, got the apple, but most importantly, we got the goal, and I don’t really care about the point there. It’s more about the win.”
Takeaway 3: Ben Meyers appreciation
Just a quick note to say that Ben Meyers deserves all the praise in the world for the way he has performed for the Kraken this season. He has taken the fourth-line center role and run with it, helping to make that Seattle’s most consistent line, regardless of who his linemates have been on any given night.
In this one, he came up with a massive (and painful) shot block in the second period, was a key piece of the penalty kill that was so critical, and teamed up with Ryan Winterton to create this beauty of a Vince Dunn goal:
This win stopped the bleeding for the Kraken, who had spiraled to 1-4-2 in their previous seven games. It also got them back into the final wild card spot by the hair on their chinny chin chins. The race remains incredibly tight.
