It wasn’t the outcome Kraken fans would have wanted, but the team showed resiliency Thursday by coming back to snag a point from the Winnipeg Jets, the last remaining undefeated team in the NHL.
Despite playing the entire first period on their toes and even having some good looks in the less impressive second, the Kraken found themselves in a 3-1 hole for the second straight game after Nino Niederreiter scored his second goal of the contest at 4:21 of the third, just three seconds after the Jets’ lone power play of the night had expired.
But Matty Beniers, reunited with Jared McCann and Jordan Eberle in this game, got the monkey off his back and racked up three points (two goals, one assist) to help Seattle claw back in.
“You don’t give up until the end,” Beniers said. “They obviously score that third goal in the third, and I thought we did a great job of not letting that get to us, continuing to play our game, and knowing that it was going to come. And it did.”
With a delayed penalty coming, the Jets sent Nikolaj Ehlers out as an extra attacker. Kyle Connor delayed and dished to him in the slot, and Ehlers squeezed a shot under Joey Daccord’s arm to push Winnipeg to 7-0-0.
Here are our Three Takeaways from the Kraken’s 4-3 overtime loss to the Jets.
Takeaway #1: Beniers was cooking
As I wrote about on Wednesday, coach Dan Bylsma threw his lines in a blender this week, and as part of that shuffle, he put Beniers back on the top line with McCann and Eberle. Other than the Beniers line, the rest of the forwards got mixed and matched in the third period, as Bylsma looked for the right matchups and combinations to unlock some late offense.
In the end, McCann, Beniers, and Eberle spent 13:46 on the ice together, almost six minutes more than the second-most common trio, the Eeli Tolvanen, Yanni Gourde, and Oliver Bjorkstrand line.
“You want to stay in the fight the whole game with the lines you start with, and you want to also give them a chance to play well together,” Bylsma said. “You feel like your coach is going to change the lines if you make one mistake in one situation. So you’ve got to let the guys battle out through the good and the bad. But I think, clearly as the game went on, we had certain guys going and needed more opportunities to get on the ice and do it.”
The “certain guys” Bylsma referred to were McCann, Beniers, and Eberle, who connected for all three of Seattle’s goals. The biggest beneficiary of the renewed chemistry between the three players was Beniers, who came into the game struggling to break through offensively.
But in a dominant first period, Beniers got the monkey off his back with an absolute snipe over the right shoulder of Connor Hellebuyck. He later started the play that led to Eberle standing alone in front of Hellebuyck, deking, and lifting a backhander to cut Seattle’s third-period deficit to one.
MATTY MAGIC! 🚨
Beniers gets his first of the year with a SNIPE off the rush over Hellebuyck’s shoulder.
Then, with the Kraken feverishly trying to find an equalizer, it was Matty again who got a piece of a Brandon Montour blast from the point to tie the game 3-3 and send it to overtime.
“I think the defensive side of the game has been there all year for him,” Bylsma said of Beniers. “I think the chances to score have also been there for him in pretty good amounts the last three or four games, but I thought he was at another level tonight.”
Here’s hoping this is the catalyst to get Beniers producing offensively, because the Kraken need him to have a big season.
Takeaway #2: Bad breaks
The Kraken have had some instances of good luck this season, but in this game, the breaks went Winnipeg’s way. I can think of four or five moments that were good fortune for the Jets.
The first one that comes to mind is Niederreiter’s first goal. Joey Daccord had just made what Bylsma called a “miraculous” glove save on Neal Pionk. But seconds later, Kraken legend Mason Appleton took a benign-looking shot from the top of the right circle. Daccord calmly blockered it away with a good pop on the rebound. The puck should have floated harmlessly away, but it hit a crashing Niederreiter in the chest and trickled over the line. Replay showed he didn’t push the puck in with his glove or skate, so it was a good goal.
Wow, bad break there. Joey punches Appleton’s shot away, but it hits Niederreiter and dribbles over the line.
Later in the period, the Kraken executed a beautiful tic-tac-toe passing play off the rush, ending with Adam Larsson teeing up Bjorkstrand to fire the puck into an open net. But as soon as Seattle scored, I wondered if Winnipeg might consider a goalie interference challenge, as Hellebuyck had come into contact with Gourde at the top of the crease. Indeed, Jets coach Scott Arniel challenged, and the goal was disallowed.
Beautiful play to set up an Oliver Bjorkstrand goal, but Winnipeg successfully challenged for goalie interference on Yanni Gourde.
What stunk about that one was that although I think it was the right call, even if Gourde hadn’t been standing with his toe in the crease, I still don’t think Hellebuyck would have made that save.
Then there was the missed Eberle opportunity on the power play in the second period, when Montour hit him with a shot-pass at the netmouth that inexplicably stayed out of the net. Bylsma thought the puck had gone through the blade holder in Eberle’s skate. Even the delayed penalty on Chandler Stephenson in overtime that led to the game-winning goal was just bad luck. Stephenson’s feet tangled with Neal Pionk, and Pionk happened to fall.
Alas, the hockey gods were not smiling on Seattle this time.
Takeaway #3: Similar script as last game
This game followed a similar script to Tuesday’s game, when Seattle came out flying and tilted the ice for much of the first period. In that one, the Kraken somehow managed to go to the dressing room after 20 minutes trailing 1-0. When they came out in the second, the Avalanche shifted momentum the other way.
A similar pattern happened in this game, except this time the Kraken came out of the first with a lead before again easing off the pedal in the second.
“[The games were] very similar, and if you look back to two games ago, it was… Our second-period puck play is critical to having success in the second period, and you can take advantage of it by playing fast and forcing them to have extended shifts in the D zone,” Bylsma said. “But your puck play is critical to you getting out of the D zone. And there’s four or five plays there in the second period where we turned the puck over coming out of the zone at the blue line, and it just built momentum for them in the game. That’s the ebb and flow of the game.”
So, the starts have improved, which is a positive. But much of Seattle’s success early in the season has been thanks to pinning teams in during the second period, when the long change makes line changes harder.
Like the previous game, the Kraken didn’t give up, even when they got down by two goals in the third period. This time, though, they halved the deficit earlier, which allowed them to tie it with 3:22 left.
“They’re a good team,” Beniers said. “I thought we played well throughout the night, and that was some good character coming back there in the end, tying it up, taking it to overtime. Obviously, you want a different outcome, but there’s a lot of positives to build off.”
Bonus Takeaway: Did my goalie eyes deceive me?
I commented (somewhat negatively) on the goaltending after Tuesday’s game, stating that the first Joel Kiviranta goal Philipp Grubauer allowed that night tainted my view of the whole performance. I was somewhat surprised to see that he had a positive goals saved above expected that night, according to MoneyPuck.
I was even more surprised to see that against the Jets, Daccord had a -2.14 goals saved above expected, according to MoneyPuck, and a -2.28 GSAx according to NaturalStatTrick. Perhaps I’m biased between the two goalies (I don’t know why I would be, as I like both goalies very much, and regular readers know I’m a huge goalie apologist), but I thought Daccord was outstanding in this contest.
The goal I saw folks complaining about online was the second one from Niederreiter, which made it 3-1. It did look strange to the naked eye, as Daccord got off balance and way out of the crease after Niederreiter’s fake. That’s all true—he did.
Niederreiter gets his second of the game to make it 3-1.
Oleksiak and Tanev were screening Daccord, so he couldn’t track the fake and dropped down before the shot. The goal came three seconds after a Jets power play ended. pic.twitter.com/RyfAhK3gEk
But look at what is happening on the play. Both Jamie Oleksiak and Brandon Tanev are fully screening Daccord when Niederreiter fakes his first shot. Daccord can’t see the puck and probably can’t even see Niederreiter, as he cuts toward the middle. When this happens, the goalie—as Daccord pointed out a few days ago—is reading the body language of the players in front of him and moving toward where he thinks the shot might be going. It’s an educated guess in terms of timing and positioning.
When Niederreiter fakes, Tanev fully sells out to block it, and Oleksiak flinches. That’s what makes Daccord drop down, and once he does, he’s dead to rights. His momentum is moving forward, so when he lunges in desperation, he just goes farther out of position. Perhaps I’m defending Daccord too much here, but from my perspective, it’s an almost impossible read.
What made me even more surprised about the GSAx number is that there were a couple of sure goals in this game that Joey robbed. I figured those would have pushed his analytics in a more positive direction, but apparently those saves didn’t do as much as I thought.
Here’s what Bylsma said about Daccord’s game: “I thought [his game] was really good. I thought [there were] two or three outstanding saves, red bell saves. The first one in the second period, the glove save on the rush, was crazy good. It’s in the back of the net, but somehow Joey miraculously comes up with a save.
“I think he kept the momentum for us in the second with the saves that he made, and he came up big for us. Once the game got [to where] we were behind, he had a couple big saves that kept the game tight, kept it close, so we had a chance of coming back.”
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.
The Seattle Kraken went right back to work Wednesday at Kraken Community Iceplex, roughly 14 hours after their 3-2 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday. But things looked quite different for Seattle at the skate, where coach Dan Bylsma had shuffled his forward lines and defense pairings. With this lineup jumble, Bylsma was seeking a bigger offensive punch for when the Kraken return to game action Thursday against the Winnipeg Jets, the NHL’s last remaining undefeated team.
“I think it’s still a search,” Bylsma said. “We don’t want to take away from how we played in the first period [Tuesday], but I think there are still things we can do better from both a team and individual standpoint.”
Here’s how the Kraken lines looked Wednesday:
Jared McCann // Matty Beniers // Jordan Eberle Jaden Schwartz // Chandler Stephenson // Brandon Tanev Eeli Tolvanen // Yanni Gourde // Oliver Bjorkstrand Andre Burakovsky // Shane Wright // Tye Kartye
Meanwhile, the defense pairs were also tweaked, with Ryker Evans moving back up to play with Adam Larsson and Josh Mahura back down to skate with Will Borgen.
What I found interesting about the new Kraken forward lines is that they don’t clearly signal second, third, and fourth lines. McCann, Beniers, and Eberle are somewhat obviously the team’s top line, but you could argue that any of the other lines could be Seattle’s second or third.
Do Burakovsky and Wright belong on the fourth line? No, but that’s the makeup of this Kraken roster. Somebody has to play there, and Gourde, Tanev, and Kartye proved during the first seven games that even the fourth line can impact games and still play relatively big minutes.
“I don’t really decipher one through four,” Bylsma said. (Interestingly, this was something we heard Dave Hakstol say last year as well.) “If you’ve paid attention to that, you might question why I’m starting Gourde and Tanev and Karts for the start of the game. But they’ve been the line that—in the beginning of the game—was getting us good shifts, good offensive-zone shifts, playing with a lot of speed and pace. So I don’t really look at them as a fourth line.”
Although Gourde was technically still the fourth-line center on Tuesday, he played more than 17 minutes, while Tanev and Kartye had more typical fourth-line ice time at 12:51 and 9:59, respectively.
By the way, Bylsma has mentioned before that his line construction is based more on pairs of players rather than trios. He looks for two players that have good chemistry together, then rotates the third player. Based on the previous lineup and what Seattle appears to be deploying now, it’s safe to say that the “pairs” are McCann and Eberle, Schwartz and Stephenson, and Tolvanen and Bjorkstrand. None of the new “fourth” line of Burakovsky, Wright, and Kartye played together in the previous iteration of Kraken lines.
Line shuffling is nothing new
Line shuffling is a normal part of hockey. If a head coach doesn’t like an aspect of the team’s game, a new lineup at the next practice is never a surprise. Players are used to it as well.
“It’s typical throughout the season that you’re not going to stay with the same line every game,” Jaden Schwartz said. “We’ve had a couple tweaks so far already, and maybe we get a little bit more offense or different looks. Every situation is different, whether it’s matchups or trying to get a couple guys more looks on net or shake things up.”
The goal of this particular lineup change seems to be creating more offense and improving play across all Kraken lines. A set of tweaks like this can sometimes create an offensive spark, but as Schwartz notes, it doesn’t always go according to plan.
“It doesn’t always work out that way,” Schwartz said. “I mean, that’s your goal, right? But we have guys who can play in different spots—left wing, right wing, different situations. And some guys have played with each other more through the last few years, so they might have more chemistry.”
Getting the band(s) back together
Two of these Kraken lines look especially familiar, with Beniers rejoining McCann and Eberle, and Gourde reuniting with Tolvanen and Bjorkstrand. The Gourde line has seen periods of tremendous success together over the past couple of seasons.
“I think, two seasons ago, they were one of the best third lines in the game, if you want to label them one, two, three, four,” Bylsma said with a smirk, acknowledging he had labeled them as the third line moments after saying he didn’t think of lines that way. “I thought about playing the song for them today.”
To be clear, Bylsma was referencing the 1978 hit “Reunited” by Peaches and Herb.
Kraken players had a spooky gathering
Over the past couple of days, we’ve had some good laughs with the players discussing the team’s Halloween party, which Schwartz hosted at his house on Sunday night. Although there haven’t been too many publicly shared photos of the players’ costumes, we’ve heard that several had solid outfits, from Schwartz as Harry Potter and Tanev as Professor Snape to Josh Mahura as Alfalfa and the “young bucks” going as the Flint Tropics from Semi-Pro.
Jared McCann and his wife Val went as Jack Skellington and Sally at the #SeaKraken Halloween party. Jared said she did his makeup. Pretty good! 🎃 pic.twitter.com/Uv45BjcLOl
“It was good to get everyone together,” Schwartz said. “We did it a little early because it was our only time to really do it, but it was fun to see everyone dressed up and having fun together. You don’t get too many chances throughout the year to have a big team gathering, so it’s always fun when we can get one.”
Of course, the highlight of the week was when Burakovsky addressed the media on Monday with some lingering face and neck tattoos. “I tried to get it off, but it’s pretty sticky there,” Burakovsky said.
Burakovsky said he tried to get the temporary tattoos off, but “They were a little sticky.” 😂
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.
As the elderly version of Rose in Titanic said, “It’s been 84 years…”
Well, not actually, but if it’s felt like a long time since the first-place Everett Silvertips have been home, that’s because it very much has. Nearly a month has passed since the Silvertips last touched the ice during a game at Angel of the Winds Arena, as they recently embarked on their seven-game road trip across central Canada, as well as a lone stop in Portland, their longest road trip of the season.
How did they do? Well to put it simply, they flourished.
The road trip
The cross-conference trip is usually the biggest obstacle of the year for WHL teams scheduling-wise, as it takes nearly two weeks to complete, spanning thousands of miles in bus travel, a different city night after night, and with (almost) no friendly fans, it’s no one but you, your teammates and coaches to guide the way through it.
Fortunately for some of the Silvertips’ families, the road trip meant getting to see their players in action; a total of six players on the current roster are from Saskatchewan and Manitoba. One of those players was defenseman Tarin Smith, who had a convoy of family and friends that gathered in Prince Albert to celebrate his homecoming.
As for the actual hockey played, the Silvertips were cruising to begin the trip. They won four straight games to start off, outscoring their opponents 17-8. The first two games of the trip in Prince Albert and Saskatoon proved they could win in tight games, with Everett winning both in overtime.
The Silvertips then went to Brandon and Regina, where they utterly dominated both games, 4-1 and 5-1 respectively, also receiving big-time performances from Landon DuPont, with three goals and two assists across both nights.
Off to an insanely hot start to his WHL career, DuPont has looked poised, comfortable, and has eased into the league cohesively. He has 13 points in 10 games played thus far and leads all WHL rookies, along with defensemen, in shots on goal with 43 and plus-minus at plus-12. Aside from a lone down game in Moose Jaw near the end of the road trip, he’s recorded a point in every game this season.
The lone loss of the trip came to the defending WHL champion Warriors, 4-2, but the Tips followed that up with a win over fellow Eastern Conference finalists in Swift Current, 6-3, to end the swing.
After making their trip across central Canada, the Silvertips took a week off before making a brief stop in Portland last Saturday night, a game that saw them win their first game in nearly three calendar years (1,068 days to be exact) at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, thanks to a 3-0 shutout victory over the Winterhawks. The Silvertips concluded the road trip at 6-1-0-0, completing a stretch where a lot of teams would even feel lucky to squeak out three or four wins.
Now, with all the adversarial travel and grind-it-out first month in the books, the Silvertips return home with not only the best winning percentage in the league at .800, but also the second-best among all teams in the CHL, just behind the Windsor Spitfires of the OHL at .850.
With this stretch of play in the rearview mirror, it was good enough for them to crack into the last two weeks of CHL Top 10’s.
A lot of the question marks that were prevalent during this offseason for the Silvertips seem to have been answered. A main concern was how the offense would look with new coach Steve Hamilton at the helm. So far, so good. The team is currently third in the league in total goals for, with 45. Tyler MacKenzie and Carter Bear are leading the way as offensive playmakers, with 15 and 14 points respectively, and the team is getting contributions from all around.
Meanwhile, dealing with a whole new tandem in net can be tricky, but once goaltender Jesse Sanche got settled in, he’s been really tough to beat. With a 5-2-0-0 record thus far, he leads the league in goals against average at 1.93 and is second in the league in save percentage at .929.
From the scoring to the saves, there’s a lot to look forward to as this Silvertips team returns home—well, for now, that is.
Some strange parts about the schedule for the team are that they are currently embarking on a stretch where, between Sept. 29 and Nov. 20, a total of 52 days, they will play 12 road games and just five, often bunched together, home games. For a team that prides itself on its home-ice advantage, Everett doesn’t get a lot of opportunities to show that off in the early season.
There are definitely questions as to how the Silvertips will be able to sustain rhythm and flow through the long time away. But if this current stretch of winning is any indication, they’re more than equipped to survive the madness.
Silvertips make a few other announcements
Taking the rivalry up another notch, the Silvertips announced that they’ll be playing at Climate Pledge Arena for this year’s rendition of the ‘Battle of the Sound,’ hosted by the Seattle Thunderbirds on Dec. 27. These two teams met in the first ever event of this kind in February, 2022, when Everett hung four goals on the T-Birds in a 4-0 shutout.
This game will be highly anticipated, as Kraken prospects Julius Miettinen and Kaden Hammell could be on full display at their potential future home NHL barn. Not to mention DuPont getting the chance to play his first semi-pro game in an NHL arena.
JUST ANNOUNCED: The @SeattleTbirds take on the @WHLsilvertips when Battle of the Sound returns to Climate Pledge Arena on December 27!
Venue presale starts October 23 at 10 AM with code: PLEDGE. General on sale starts October 24 at 10 AM.
In more upcoming events, this weekend the team will break out this year’s breast cancer awareness jerseys for ‘Pink the Rink’ night on Saturday against the Wenatchee Wild.
The team will wear the limited-edition hot pink sweaters, then will auction them off after the game with Providence Health and Services, with proceeds going towards breast cancer patients in the Everett/Snohomish County area.
The Silvertips are back home for the week, with a whole lot of Wenatchee coming up. Three of the next five come against the Wild, with matchups at Angel of the Winds Arena set for Wednesday and Saturday. They will also welcome in the Edmonton Oil Kings on Friday night.
Tuesday’s Seattle Kraken loss to the Colorado Avalanche showcased what happens when early opportunities aren’t seized. Seattle dominated most of the opening frame, even getting an open net for what seemed like a sure Yanni Gourde goal just nine seconds into the game.
However, the Kraken failed to convert on that and their other chances in the opening frame, leaving them chasing by the time the first horn sounded.
“It was maybe our best first period of the year, the way we came out, the way we played,” Kraken coach Dan Bylsma said. “We had a number of chances to get a goal in that period, but it capped off by their late goal at the end of the first that forced it into a response game from us.”
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 3-2 Kraken loss to the Colorado Avalanche (that was really a 3-1 game, but Seattle got one with three seconds left to make it a one-goal difference in the end).
Takeaway #1: Missed opportunities early
You knew the Avalanche were going to score late in that first period, didn’t you? With 1:28 left, after Seattle had tilted the ice for most of the period, Joel Kiviranta cruised across the blue line, sniping one off the post and in behind Philipp Grubauer.
#SeaKraken largely dominated the first period, but Joel Kiviranta sniped one off the post with 1:28 left.
SEA hit two posts and had a couple other near misses, but nothing doing.
I’ll talk more about that one in Takeaway No. 3, but it certainly sapped the momentum that the Kraken had built en route to a 12-5 shots-on-goal advantage in the first 20 minutes.
The Kraken haven’t been strong in most first periods this season, typically improving in the second. That script flipped Tuesday, and after the Avalanche took a 1-0 lead to the dressing room, they came out and tilted things the other direction with a whopping 17-5 shots-on-goal advantage of their own in the middle frame.
Aside from Gourde hitting the post on a clear-cut 2-on-1 right after the game’s opening face-off, Tye Kartye also hit the post in the first, and several other players had near misses that made Justus Annunen’s stat sheet look better than it really was.
“It was a tough pill to swallow,” Jared McCann said. “I thought we played well in the beginning there. And we’ve just got to find a full 60 consistent minutes.”
Takeaway #2: Penalties proved costly
For as much as the Kraken had momentum in the first period, they somehow didn’t draw any power plays until the final two minutes of the game. Ryker Evans did get the Kraken within one on said power play, but not until there was just :03 left in the game.
On the other end, the Avalanche got three chances, with two of those coming in the second period. It wasn’t an outrageous number of infractions, but the penalties in the second helped turn the tide of the game.
“They have good players, and they can be a handful in the offensive zone, which their power play allowed them to be,” Bylsma said. “And [there were] a couple shifts there in the second that turned the momentum in their favor.”
Nathan MacKinnon scored a beauty of a power-play goal in the closing seconds of the frame, dangling across the tops of the circles and firing it against the grain behind Grubauer.
Yuck. 🤢
MacKinnon made that look so easy, although Colton may have gotten a piece of it. Either way, PPG, 3-1 #GoAvsGo, as we head to the 3rd period. #SeaKraken got outshot 17-5 that frame. pic.twitter.com/hkwQaqHJq0
It was a backbreaker, too. McCann had tied it with his 100th goal as a Kraken at 11:57, but after Kiviranta got his second of the game at 14:56 to regain the lead, MacKinnon gave Colorado insurance with just :08 left in the second.
Going to the dressing room seconds after taking a two-goal deficit almost always spells defeat, and then—facing a big final-period mountain—Seattle came out for the third, and Jamie Oleksiak took another penalty just 29 seconds in and made things even harder.
Those penalties really put the nail in the Kraken’s coffin on this night.
Takeaway #3: Should we talk about the goaltending?
I’ve been a little gun-shy to talk about goaltending in Three Takeaways so far this season, because it’s often been hard to say definitively if the goalies have played well or not. If you look at the games holistically, I think it would generally be fair to say that the goalies have been mostly good, but not lights out, and on several occasions, there have been specific goals allowed that have tainted my view of the performances.
**Editor’s note: Plus, it’s a divisive topic, and every time I bring up the goalies, somebody yells at me in the comment section.
Here’s what I’ll say about this particular night, though, and then I’ll turn it over to Bylsma to give his thoughts.
There were parallels in this game to the one Seattle lost 2-0 to the Dallas Stars on Oct. 13. There was a goal in that game by Wyatt Johnston in which Grubauer got beaten cleanly off a rush on an unscreened shot that hit the far post and went in. The goal scored Tuesday by Kiviranta to make it 1-0 and sap the momentum out of the Kraken had a similar look to it.
In both games, I thought Grubauer bounced back and made some great saves as the game went on, but the context of getting beaten cleanly by those two shots impacted how I viewed the performances on the whole. The opening goal against the Avalanche on Tuesday and the goal by Johnston in Dallas were stingers for Grubauer to allow. Yet in both games, more scoring from Seattle would have also swept those under the rug, and on both of those goals, the Kraken could have been better defensively.
So, I find myself feeling oddly conflicted about this game as well.
Worth noting, against the Avs, Grubauer stopped 25 of 28 shots and had a positive night in terms of analytics, saving .24 goals above expected, according to MoneyPuck. I think that aligns with how I see the performance too. It was… mostly good, and he made some tough stops, as indicated by that positive number.
But if we could just erase that one goal against…
Ok, now here’s what Bylsma said about Grubauer’s outing on Tuesday: “I think we’ve probably given up the most chances tonight of any game that we’ve played to this point. A lot of those came on the power play, but he made the breakaway save, he made a couple east-west saves that were really big for us, gave us a chance. And when it was 2-1, two big saves to keep us in the match, keep us in it. And we need to come up with a little more run support for Grubi.”
I also asked Bylsma before the game about his goalie usage and what might have to happen for him to lean on one or the other, and here’s what he said to that: “I think we started this off believing that we have two good goaltenders that can get the job done for us. And I think they’ve each had some success in the start of the season. Joey had won two games early on, but Grubi’s numbers were better. And through those first four games, they each played two. I think Grubi was able to get the win in his last start and have the ‘W’ column success in that game.
“Joey probably played his best game against Nashville. I think really after the 5-on-3, really starting there was when Joey probably got to his best goaltending so far this year. And the number of games that are coming and the frequency of them kind of sets up for each guy getting an opportunity to be in the net. But their play will also dictate the kind of rotation we have going forward.”
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.
Who knew a boring, low-event game could be so exciting? That’s the beauty of hockey, though. Even in a game where neither team surpassed 23 shots on goal, the tension in the building was palpable as the game went down to the wire. In the end, it was the Seattle Kraken celebrating victoriously after Jordan Eberle came through in the clutch, firing home the game-winner to blow the roof off Climate Pledge Arena.
Heck, even goalie Joey Daccord was over-the-moon excited—so much so that when he tried to jump on the pile, he missed and went tumbling to the ice in a hilarious heap.
“I got the zoomies,” Daccord joked after the game.
I can’t stop watching this. It gets better and better with every angle I see.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a thrilling 2-1 Kraken overtime win over the previously undefeated Calgary Flames.
Takeaway #1: Jordan Eberle is on fire
Things have been going well for Eberle since he was named captain of the team. Eberle’s OT game-winner was his third as a Kraken, the most in team history. It was also his fifth tally of the season, putting him in fourth place in the entire NHL for goals.
“I’m getting opportunities, and they’re going in,” Eberle said, deadpan. “I know, obviously, how it works. You’re going to have hot streaks, and you’ll have slow streaks. But it’s been good to see the puck go in early. It always gives you some confidence.”
The goal itself was a thing of beauty. The Kraken had won the center-ice face-off to start the overtime period and maintained control for the better part of a minute. Rasmus Andersson made a good defensive play to pinch off Brandon Montour behind the net and take the puck away.
It looked like the Flames were heading on the offensive, but Eberle tracked back and picked Nazem Kadri’s pocket. At that point, the Flames were in complete disarray, with all three players headed north and scrambling to get back on defense. Brandon Montour got a great look but was stopped by Dan Vladar, recovered his own rebound, and then had the presence of mind not to force it back into Vladar. Instead, he found Eberle streaking down the slot, and Eberle sniped it home.
“Great play [by Montour],” Eberle said. “He just kind of fed it, put it on a tee for me, and I didn’t really have to do too much.”
Coach Dan Bylsma was gushing about his captain after the game. “I don’t even know how old he is right now, but he just looks like a young Jordan Eberle,” Bylsma said (Eberle is 34, by the way). “He’s skating well, he’s competing well, he’s got a sneaky skill to his game, a sneaky compete to his game… With him being named captain six games ago, I think it’s awesome to see him also lead the way on the scoresheet.”
Eberle did not get off to this kind of start last season. As we later learned, he broke his hand in a fight with Colorado’s Logan O’Connor in the fourth game of the season and played through it, so that surely hampered him. But do you know when Eberle scored his fifth goal of the season in 2023-24?
JANUARY 13TH!
It took Eberle 38 games to score five goals last season. This season, it took him just six.
Takeaway #2: Another new way to win
The Flames got off to a great start this season, and with the way they were rolling, this was always going to be a tough matchup for Seattle. Calgary prides itself on rolling four effective lines, using similar tactics to what the Kraken deploy in terms of personnel.
The recipe was there for a tight-checking, close game, and that’s exactly what we got.
“It’s a bit of a slog of a game, and you have to be determined to stay with it and not give them anything,” Bylsma said. “Continue to be determined to get back the other way. That’s what this game presented, and that’s what Calgary presents.”
I wrote about this after the win Thursday over Philadelphia, but the Kraken keep finding new ways to win, quite different from last season when they seemed to constantly find new ways to lose.
“That’s what we’re trying to develop,” Bylsma said. “Games come in a lot of different ways. This game was by far the lowest-event game that we’ve played at this point in time.”
Takeaway #3: Kraken convert on critical 5-on-3
After Joey Daccord fumbled a puck on Calgary’s power play late in the first period, and it wound up in the back of Seattle’s net a couple of touches later, the Kraken needed to find a way to level the score. They kept getting power play chances in the second, and when Jonathan Huberdeau slashed Matty Beniers to give the Kraken 47 seconds of 5-on-3 time, it was easy to sense that a turning point was coming in the game, one way or another.
The Kraken called timeout, and assistant coach Jess Campbell drew up a play on her whiteboard. It took a while for the Kraken to break through, but with the first of the two penalties ticking down, Chandler Stephenson and Jared McCann executed a give-and-go across the tops of the circles. As Jaden Schwartz set a screen in front of Vladar, Stephenson leaned into a one-timer and ripped it past the Calgary netminder.
THE CHAN CHAN MAN! 🚨
On the 5-on-3, McCann tees it up, and Schwartz provides the screen for Stephenson’s first goal as a #SeaKraken.
“That was kind of what we wanted to open up, Ebs to be able to find Canner or myself,” Stephenson said. “That’s what I think you want to try to do on a 5-on-3—shoot the puck. It seems like any team that shoots it, it usually goes in, rather than teams that try to make the perfect play.”
One has to imagine that if Seattle failed to score on that 5-on-3, the game might have gone the other way.
“5-on-3’s always feel like a pivotal point,” Bylsma said. “What’s the success rate historically on a 5-on-3? It’s not 100 percent. It’s not close to 100 percent, but it feels like you should score. And I think when you don’t, it’s a big drawback. But we got the 5-on-3, we were able to find a goal there, and it’s Chandler’s first one. I think he’s done a lot of good things the last couple games for our team, but getting him on the scoresheet is, I think, really important for our group.”
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.
