Never a doubt! The Seattle Kraken rode a four-goal second period and cruised to an easy win and barely held on when the Philadelphia Flyers rallied back and threatened to overcome a three-goal deficit in the third period. But when things started to go sideways, Oliver Bjorkstrand scored a timely insurance goal at 14:52 of the third period to make it 6-4 and put things back on the rails.
“It’s a 60-minute game. It’s always about the next play,” Kraken coach Dan Bylsma said. “Things are going to happen, and bumps are going to happen, and you’ve just got to keep focused on the next play.”
Seattle did that, and although there were some hairy moments coming down the stretch, the Kraken deserved the win and ultimately got it, 6-4, over the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday. Here are our Three Takeaways.
Takeaway #1: Second-period team?
The Kraken went off in the second period Thursday, scoring four unanswered goals to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 5-2 lead in just 20 minutes. Jared McCann got things started with a power-play goal, his third goal of the season and first PPG, ripping it through Ivan Fedotov’s gigantic wickets from his office at the top of the left circle.
“[Fedotov] is a monster,” McCann said. “You don’t see much mesh with that guy in net, so I feel like sometimes you’ve just got to get it off as quickly as you can, and I was able to find one tonight.”
Then Eeli Tolvanen cleaned up an Andre Burakovsky rebound, Jordan Eberle scored an easy tap-in off a nice feed from McCann, and Shane Wright got his first of the season, scoring just eight seconds after Eberle.
“[Eberle’s] been chirping me a lot, because apparently I don’t pass to him enough,” McCann joked. “But, yeah, he likes to drive the net, so I just tried to pull up there and find him.”
This is a pattern so far this season. The Kraken have had slow starts, and I think it’s fair to call the first period a “slow start” again on Thursday. The Kraken got outshot 11-9, had just 33 percent of the shot quality, and also didn’t get particularly great goaltending to bail them out in that opening frame. (I didn’t like either goal against from Grubauer in the first period, but like in the Dallas game, he ended up making some huge saves later on… He did end the night with -1.42 goals saved above expected, though.)
But the Kraken do also tend to tilt the ice in their favor in the second period, as we’ve seen in each of their wins (and one could argue they turned things around against Dallas, although they didn’t get that much going offensively that night).
“I don’t think any of us liked how the first had gone,” Bylsma said. “Yeah, they scored at the end of the period to go up 2-1, but I thought that was a huge kind of wake-up call to get us back in the game.
“That was probably our best second period of the year so far, playing fast, playing north, a great couple plays on the quick up… A lot of speed, a lot of energy back the other way, and when you do that, it allows players to play with skill.”
Takeaway #2: Lots of goal scorers (again)
For the second game in a row, the Kraken netted multiple goals from different players, continuing their well-rounded offense, and again, I was reminded of how the team won games two seasons ago. In Nashville on Tuesday, seven different players scored, and Thursday against Philadelphia, six different players tickled the twine.
It’s up and down the lineup, too, with veteran scorers like McCann, Eberle, and Bjorkstrand leading the way, but the secondary and tertiary scorers like Eeli Tolvanen, Shane Wright, and Montour also chipped in on this night.
“I think when you have everybody going like we did tonight, the last couple nights here have been good, and we’ve just got to be consistent with it,” McCann said. “We know we’re not going to score six, seven goals every game, but I think we could do a little better job at just focusing on keeping the puck in the other end.”
By the way, Ryker Evans only found the scoresheet with one assist, but it’s worth noting that he was plus-5 on the night.
Takeaway #3: Winning in different ways
The Kraken now have three wins on the season, which they didn’t accomplish until Oct. 30 last season, in what was their 10th game of the campaign (so, it took them half as many games to earn their third victory this season).
Each of the three has been very different, with the first being a come-from-behind shootout win in Minnesota, the second being a fairly convincing top-to-bottom win over Nashville, and this one being a classic, run of the mill, fall behind but then jump out to a big lead but then almost fumble it away win.
But the point is that the team is showing in the early stages of the season that it can win regardless of how the game is playing out.
“It’s critical,” Bylsma said. “Building a good team, a winning team, you’ve got to win games in different ways. They’re not always going to go to script, they’re not always going to go positive the whole way along. You’ve got to dig in, you’ve got to paddle, you’ve got to compete the whole 60 minutes to get a win.
“And sometimes, that means you’re coming back in a game, sometimes that means you’ve got to learn to play with a lead and play with a 5-2 lead going into the third period.”
This is another encouraging sign for this club, because if you think back to last season, there were so many times when the Kraken would get down in a game, and it just felt like there was no chance they’d come back. Or, they’d get a lead and give up a couple painful goals, and all of a sudden you knew they were going to fritter it away.
The more they experience these ups and downs and still come away with two points, the more comfortable they will be in these different scenarios as the season wears on.
“I think it’s one of those things where you’ve just got to keep battling no matter what the score is,” Brandon Montour said. “A good thing that we had in the past in Florida, especially, was it didn’t matter what the score was, we finished right to the end. And you bring that mentality wherever you are. I like how the guys have come together here.”
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.
From well before Dan Bylsma was promoted from the Coachella Valley Firebirds of the American Hockey League to head coach of the Seattle Kraken, it was publicly known that he has a comedic side. This became common knowledge across the hockey world during his time as coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins, which coincided with the filming of HBO’s hit series, 24/7 Penguins/Capitals: Road to the NHL Winter Classic.
In that series, some of Bylsma’s mood-lightening antics were revealed. Penguins players who lost contests in practice were “punished” by doing things like running to the top of what was then called Heinz Field in full hockey gear, which Jordan Staal did in one of the episodes. (Bylsma later lamented to us in his first interview with the Sound Of Hockey Podcastthat Staal cheated at his punishment by hitching a ride on a golf cart to the other side of the Pittsburgh Steelers stadium.)
In another segment of the 24/7 series, filmed during the first practice of December when players get to shave their “Movember” mustaches, Bylsma held a shootout competition to determine who would be “Mustache Boy.” The loser, defenseman Paul Martin, had to keep his mustache for a second month.
During the aforementioned SOH Podcast interview, recorded with Bylsma in October 2022, Bylsma shared one of his favorite “punishment” stories from back in his Pittsburgh days. In this one, Bylsma included himself as a potential loser of the contest. He said defenseman Jay McKee had a “Semi-rig truck with a pickup truck bed on the back. It was a special-looking machine. We did a shootout to wash his truck, and I lost that one.”
And so, there was Penguins coach Dan Bylsma, in the bowels of Mellon Arena, scrubbing down McKee’s oversized vehicle.
As Bylsma’s career progressed, the antics evolved, but they certainly didn’t stop. On another more recent episode of the SOH Podcast, we asked Kraken goalie Joey Daccord about his favorite memory of playing for Bylsma in the AHL. He recalled a story from his days playing for the Charlotte Checkers in Seattle’s inaugural season, when the Firebirds were not yet in existence, and Bylsma was serving as assistant coach for the temporary AHL affiliate of the Kraken. The Checkers were on the road to face the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, where Bylsma had also coached before getting promoted to the Penguins in 2009.
“[We were staying at] like a little Holiday Inn in the middle of nowhere, and I think there was a wedding in the hotel,” Daccord said. “We were in Wilkes-Barre, where he coached, and he obviously coached and won the Cup in Pittsburgh, so not far away. And he was doing video on his laptop, cutting clips of the game from the night before in the lobby of the hotel with a hockey helmet on. No cage, just a hockey helmet on.
“So this older couple goes up to him and is like, ‘Oh, my God! Dan Bylsma! We’re huge fans, we’re big Pens fans, can we have a picture?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, sure, no problem!’ He stands up, takes the picture with the hockey helmet on.”
Daccord’s story made it clear that the legend of Bylsma has already grown in Seattle, even within the relatively young Kraken organization. At this point, every player that spent time in Coachella Valley has a favorite “Disco Dan” moment. But when Sound Of Hockey asked Bylsma what the goofiest thing he’s done to motivate his team was, he said, “That’s not for you to hear.”
Thankfully, his players were a bit more forthcoming.
Building trust
When defenseman Ryker Evans finished his 20-year-old season with the Regina Pats of the WHL, he signed his entry-level contract with the Kraken and reported to Charlotte to begin his pro hockey career. It didn’t take him long to learn that Bylsma’s approach to coaching was a bit different from what he had encountered previously.
“When I first went to Charlotte, [it was] my first week there,” Evans recalled. “[Bylsma] comes up to me, and he’s like, ‘I want to trust you.’ So he stood in front of the net while I was shooting pucks.”
Standing in front of the net while a player practices shooting is not the most absurd thing. Players do that for one another all the time to practice tipping shots and screening the goalie. But they wear padding from head to toe. Bylsma was not wearing any padding at the time.
“The goalie’s playing net, and he’s standing in front of the net. Just standing there… I thought that was crazy. [I was] just a guy coming out of junior. I’ve never seen a coach do that,” Evans said with a laugh.
This tracks with what we’ve seen from Bylsma in training camp and practices. He loves sliding around on the ice in his tracksuit, acting like a defenseman trying to break up shots and passes, and making players chip pucks over him during drills. When we asked Bylsma in training camp about his willingness to put his body in harm’s way, he joked that the puck is “just rubber.”
Thankfully, Evans didn’t hit his new coach with any shots in Charlotte, but he admitted he may not have been firing the pucks with 100 percent effort. “I probably wasn’t shooting that hard. It was scary. It was really scary.”
Pre-game escapades
A consistent theme we picked up from chatting with players who spent time in Coachella Valley under Bylsma is that his antics can really ratchet up just before the players hit the ice for a game. Those moments are some of the tensest in sports, and Bylsma uses schtick to lighten the mood.
Former Firebirds like Tye Kartye and Shane Wright have seen Bylsma dig deep into his bag of tricks, especially when announcing the starting lineup.
“One that I liked was when… I think it was in the playoffs in Coachella, or maybe it was the end of the regular season,” Kartye said. “But he came in with the Firebird head on. Like, the mascot.”
Yes, we are talking about the actual head of Fuego, the Firebirds’ mascot. Dan Bylsma entered the dressing room before a game wearing the mascot’s head.
But the best part?
“He was just talking normal,” Kartye said. “And everyone was obviously a little thrown off by that. So that, I enjoyed. That one was pretty funny.”
Kartye said Bylsma—from inside Fuego’s head—announced the starting lineup and told the team what play to run off the opening face-off, but that particular message may not have landed. “I don’t know if anyone got the play because everyone was laughing at the hat.”
We could not find photographic evidence of Bylsma wearing the Fuego head, but here he is “surfing” on an equipment cart after a Firebirds win in Bakersfield. (Photo/Evan Pivnick)
Wright confirmed that this event did happen as Kartye remembered it, but it wasn’t the only outlandish bit Bylsma pulled during his time in Coachella.
“He did do that,” Wright said, chuckling. “He would also draw stuff on his face. He would have the Firebirds logo drawn on his face pre-game, and then just be deadpan. Like, no emotion, no reaction, just [acting] like nothing was wrong.
“We’re all cracking up, trying not to laugh while he’s talking to us, but he just does those things to keep it light, keep the guys loose before the game, and I love it. I love when he does that.”
Even some veteran Kraken players who have never played full-time for Bylsma before have already seen Bylsma’s pre-game magic. Jared McCann saw him in action at Seattle’s first-ever preseason game against the Vancouver Canucks in Spokane. For context, this was when Bylsma was helping to run training camp with the Kraken, but his role for that season was as an assistant coach with the Charlotte Checkers, the temporary AHL affiliate. He wasn’t even the AHL head coach yet.
“He came into the room with some kind of marker on his face. And I was just like, ‘Oh, Dan, you’ve got some stuff on your face,’” McCann remembered. “And I didn’t know if he realized, but I didn’t realize myself that he was kind of playing a joke. And he goes over—he’s fully… suit on, tie, everything—and he dunks his head in the cold tub and just starts yelling.”
There is a method to the madness (and yes, it is madness). Bylsma knows these are nerve-racking moments. He wants his players to feel as comfortable as possible when the puck drops, so he digs into his magic hat to ease the stress of the moment.
“I think that’s exactly why he does it,” Wright said. “Just to keep it light, keep it loose, keep the guys relaxed, and to remind us to have a little fun out there as well.”
McCann added: “He’s a laid-back guy, but when he has to be serious, you can tell. He’s got that good dynamic of both. He’s a guy you can go talk to, but he also expects a lot out of his team. There’s not going to be any favoritism on this team, so it’s good.”
Hockey isn’t brain surgery
Sometimes losses in the NHL can feel devastating. As we saw last season, the mood around a struggling team can get tense and downtrodden, because in the top hockey league in the world, winning really is everything. But Bylsma is one of those coaches who can recognize that, although it is a results-based business, it’s still a game. It’s still meant to be played with an element of fun.
“I think anything you do in life, and anything you want to do in life, you should do it with some energy and passion and joy, and not head down, brow beating,” Bylsma said.
The veteran coach harkened back to his youth and playing days, when he spent 11 summers doing manual labor.
“I have a vision of my landscaping days when I had to shovel rocks and dig a ditch and shovel more rocks. That’s hard work to me,” Bylsma said. “Playing hockey and getting better at it and enjoying it and competing at it is an enjoyable thing. And I think it always should be done that way. It should be with a smile, but also with a sneer at times.”
It was a heartfelt answer to our question about his approach to mixing humor and seriousness to motivate his players. But with any serious answer, Bylsma always likes to mix in some levity.
“If you need any [landscaping] work around your house, give me a call.”
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 had told me coming into the season that the Kraken would come home with four out of six possible points on their tough three-game road trip through Minnesota, Dallas, and Nashville, I would have been quite pleased with that. Indeed, they headed home Tuesday with a stolen shootout win over the Wild on Saturday and a convincing 7-3 victory over the Nashville Predators on Tuesday.
There were a few shaky moments in this one, like when Seattle coughed up a two-goal lead in the first period, or when Brady Skjei tied the game a second time at 17:17 of the second, sending it to the third period tied 3-3.
But every time the Predators pulled level with the Kraken, Seattle found a way to get right back in the driver’s seat. At the end of the night, the Kraken pulled away with four third-period goals and an impressive ‘W.’
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 7-3 Kraken win over the Predators.
Takeaway #1: Seven unique goal scorers
With every passing game, I find myself trying to decide if this new version of the Kraken is more similar to the successful playoff team from 2022-23 or more like last season’s disappointing squad that took itself out of contention by mid-March.
Last season, the Kraken got off to an abysmal start, losing their first four games (one of which came in a shootout against the Blues) and totaling just three goals across those contests. They were shut out Sunday in Dallas, but even so, Seattle has racked up 14 goals across its first four games this season.
On that front, Tuesday brought an offensive outburst in which seven different players registered goals, and six different players notched two points. Now that sounds like a 2022-23 stat.
They scored in a variety of ways, including point shots, odd-man rushes, hard forechecking plays, and dazzling individual efforts.
Our two favorite goals of the night were Jaden Schwartz’s eventual game-winner at 1:19 of the third period and Jared McCann’s cleanup goal after Matty Beniers stickhandled through the entire Nashville defense.
The Schwartz goal started below the Kraken goal line when Adam Larsson won a board battle and sent a breakout pass to Chandler Stephenson at the blue line. Stephenson tapped it to Oliver Bjorkstrand, who touched it to Schwartz, who had speed coming into the neutral zone. Schwartz ran a simple give-and-go with Bjorkstrand, but Bjorkstrand’s cheeky pass between the legs of superstar defenseman Roman Josi and Schwartz’s forehand-backhand finish made this goal memorable.
The McCann goal started similarly with Jamie Oleksiak passing from Seattle’s goal line up to McCann at the blue line. He one-touched it to Beniers, who immediately dangled around Ryan O’Reilly and kept going over the red line, over the blue line, and between four converging defenders before shoveling it to McCann at the goalmouth. Even McCann’s finish on the play was impressive, as he initially didn’t make clean contact but spun around, found the puck, and chipped it up and over Saros.
That was a fun game to watch.
Takeaway #2: Joey Daccord was excellent
On the eve of the regular season, coach Dan Bylsma said he thought the goaltending tandem of Philipp Grubauer and Joey Daccord could be a strength for the Kraken this season. Both netminders have shown some positive flashes in these first few games, and I thought Daccord’s outing Tuesday was very impressive (worth noting, his 0.11 goals saved above expected was lower than Grubauer’s 0.77 goals saved above expected on Sunday in Dallas, according to MoneyPuck).
Daccord stopped 30 of 33 shots Tuesday and looked mostly in control throughout the night. The three goals he allowed all came in somewhat similar fashion, off shots into traffic from the point, followed by rebounds either off Daccord or off the scrum in front.*Editor’s Note: I got called out in the comments for the previous explanation of the three goals, so I’m changing my wording here.* The three goals Joey allowed all came off cross-slot passes and/or from pucks bouncing off traffic in front of him, requiring lateral movement and looking around bodies. Nothing beat him cleanly on this night.
In the few moments when the game started to feel like things were going sideways, Daccord stood tall and calmed things down for the Kraken.
“He’s got a next-play mindset about his career,” Bylsma said of Daccord. “And when he’s in net, he doesn’t need to stop all 33 shots for it to go well for him. Sometimes they do go in the back of the net, and it’s always the next play, and I think he shows a great deal of competitiveness with how he plays the position.”
His best save of the night came late in the second period, when the Kraken were trying to kill a 4-on-3 Nashville power play. Josi saw an open lane to Filip Forsberg and rifled a pass right into the forward’s wheelhouse. Forsberg got full wood on the shot, but Daccord got a strong push off his left skate, slid across with full extension, and solidly rejected what looked like a sure goal.
The play wasn’t over, though. Forsberg then tried to bank it in off Daccord’s body, which Daccord managed to keep out by swinging his right foot under him. When Steven Stamkos launched the follow-up shot off the glass, Daccord tracked it, caught it, and got a desperately needed whistle.
Man, what a sequence.
Takeaway #3: Are the Kraken finding chemistry?
The forward lines have certainly not been set in stone so far, as Bylsma has shaken things up in search of the right mix. For a few games now, I’ve thought the fourth line of Tye Kartye, Yanni Gourde, and Brandon Tanev has been the most consistent. Those three were impactful again Tuesday, combining for a goal and a solid chunk of ice time (Gourde led the trio with 15:59, good for third among all Kraken forwards).
It seemed like Bylsma may have found a spark Tuesday by putting Schwartz and Bjorkstrand with Chandler Stephenson and Beniers with Andre Burakovsky and Eeli Tolvanen, while keeping Jared McCann with Shane Wright and Jordan Eberle. Throughout the game, we saw what Bylsma might call “connected” hockey, something he’s been striving for.
“I think maybe we think alike out there,” Bjorkstrand said of his new line, first assembled Sunday in Dallas. “[We were] able to get some good chemistry. We had [a couple] periods together last game, so got familiar with each other. And then today, I think, naturally, we just kind of clicked.”
Indeed, Bylsma did use the word “connected” when talking about how his team played. “We talked about our execution and cohesion and playing connected, and it’s evident in the first goal,” Bylsma said, though he was referring to the team’s second goal, scored by Bjorkstrand off a 2-on-1 with Stephenson.
While Bylsma says the team is still a “work in progress,” there was a lot to like in this game. Have the Kraken found a winning formula?
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 Kraken capped off the first week of the season with a 0-2 loss to the Dallas Stars on Sunday night. In their first three games of the regular season, they managed just two out of a possible six points in the standings. Despite this, I am encouraged by these early games. In their matchup against the St. Louis Blues, the Kraken looked like the better team for 55 minutes, with only a few defensive lapses that directly led to two of the three goals the Blues scored.
The Kraken showed resilience in the Minnesota game, coming back three times to force and eventually winning in a shootout. They also came back from a two-goal deficit to win, something they didn’t manage all of last season. The team seems more capable now, with a stronger belief in their ability to get back into games. Goals were hard to come by last season, and the challenge of coming back from a two-goal deficit might have seemed insurmountable. Now that they’ve done it, it should give them more confidence moving forward. I felt that same resilience show in the Dallas game, where the Kraken tried to come back from a two-goal deficit again. It’s obviously not a habit you want to fall into, but it’s nice to know the game isn’t over when the other team builds a two-goal lead.
Goaltending has been fine
I’m not suggesting that the goaltending has been outstanding, but it has been solid, and I wouldn’t pin either of the two losses on Grubauer. Joey Daccord’s performance, despite what the advanced analytics might say, was good. According to evolving-hockey.com, Daccord’s expected goals against was 2.98, but he allowed 3.83 (per 60 minutes). I don’t take issue with Evolving-Hockey’s numbers, but this is one of the challenges with public metrics—they don’t have passing data to factor in the difficulty of shot attempts that come off dangerous passes. More on this in a bit, but the goals from Ryan Hartman and Mats Zuccarello came from passes behind the net, which are extremely hard for goalies to track. I’m sure some Grubauer critics are ready to grind their axes, but relax—it’s early.
Areas of oppportunity
I’m sure the coaches are already doing some root cause analysis, but I see three areas that could be addressed in the coming weeks.
Penalty kill
The Kraken are currently 24th in the league in penalty kill percentage. However, they killed all three penalties against Dallas on Sunday, so the improvement might already be happening. In the St. Louis and Minnesota games, though, it felt like the Kraken were often out of position on the penalty kill, chasing the puck rather than holding their formation. Ironically, neither of the two power-play goals scored against them came directly from those instances, but the disorganization is something that needs to be cleaned up to avoid future struggles.
Power play
The Kraken are now 1-for-7 on the power play this season after going 0-for-4 against Dallas on Sunday. Once set up, the power play has looked more threatening than last season, but they’ve struggled to get set up. On Sunday, they managed six shot attempts in eight minutes of power play time, compared to seven shot attempts in three minutes on Saturday. This suggests some progress, but on Sunday they had trouble getting into their setup. This could be due to Dallas’s aggressive penalty kill or early-season adjustments as players learn each other’s tendencies.
One issue I noticed on the power play, and the data supports this, is that the Kraken are struggling to gain possession after faceoffs. While not a perfect proxy for possession, faceoff wins are a leading indicator. The Kraken have won only 31% of their power-play faceoffs, well below the league average of 54%. With an extra skater on the ice, this number should be higher. It’s something to keep an eye on over the next few games.
Unchallenged shots allowed from the slot
Whether it’s early-season rust or too many Jucy Lucys at Shamrocks the night before, the goals the Kraken allowed on Saturday were just too easy. Mats Zuccarello and Ryan Hartman both scored off passes from behind the goal line, which are difficult for goalies to defend. Kirill Kaprizov had an easy path to the top of the crease to tip in a pass from the point, and Matt Boldy’s goal, while on the power play, came from having far too much time and space to get an unchallenged shot. This issue only popped up in the Minnesota game, but it was concerning. You don’t often see unchallenged shots from high-danger areas that aren’t part of a rush. The Kraken battled back but were lucky to get a win given the defensive breakdowns that led to goals.
Again, it’s only three games, but there’s a lot to be encouraged by—especially when compared to the first six games of last season, where they managed just two points. I’m not suggesting this is a playoff team yet, but they’re better than last season’s team.
Other musings
I audibly groaned when I found out Marc-André Fleury would be the starter for the Wild against the Kraken on Saturday. Going into that game, Fleury was 5-2-1 with a save percentage of .930 against the Kraken. He owned them.
Despite the public sentiment, the Kraken were decent in shootouts last season, winning three out of seven games that went to a shootout.
The Kraken never led in Saturday night’s win against the Wild—a feat they only accomplished once last season when they beat the Flyers in overtime at the end of December.
The boys were shut out on Sunday, but they’ve scored six goals in three games so far. That’s not a lot, but last year they only had two goals in their first three games. We still haven’t seen any goals from Oliver Bjorkstrand, Andre Burakovsky, Eeli Tolvanen, or Matty Beniers yet.
Shane Wright looks good, but not great. He seems to be building on each game and will probably be due for a couple of goals by the end of next week.
The Kraken Hockey Network’s studio is beautiful.
It was mentioned on the broadcast last night, but it’s nice to see the reconstruction of a fourth line that can create chances. Yanni Gourde, Brandon Tanev, and Tye Kartye are looking very good relative to their roles.
I saw that Nikita Kucherov had a hat trick over the weekend. Two of his goals were empty-netters, which I found mildly amusing.
After starting their WHL season 1-4-1, the Seattle Thunderbirds have won their last three games, including a big 6-5 win over the Portland Winterhawks. I’m not blaming the slow start on the goalie, but since returning from Buffalo Sabres training camp, goaltender Scott Ratzlaff is 3-0-0.
Do yourself a favor—make an effort to see Landon DuPont play for the Everett Silvertips this season. The exceptional-status defenseman has 12 points in nine games already, and he’s only 15 years old.
Player performances
Dylan Guenther – The former Seattle Thunderbird has five goals in three games this season, including the first goal in Utah Hockey Club’s history. Andrei Loshko – The 4th-round pick for the Seattle Kraken in the 2023 NHL Draft had five points in two games for the Niagara IceDogs in the OHL. He has 12 points in six games this season. Justin Kirkland – The 28-year-old has played 11 NHL games in his career and scored his first NHL goal over the weekend. I love stories like these.
Jared McCann scored his first of the season when he jumped on the ice as the extra skater during a delayed penalty. It was a huge goal for the Kraken and likely played a key role in their victory.
The Kraken came back from a two-goal deficit on Saturday, something they didn’t do at all last season. They also lost after being up by two goals when they allowed St. Louis to come back and win in the season opener. Last season, the Kraken won 82% of the games in which they took a two-goal lead at any point. Here are the % of wins based on a goal differential reached within their games.
The week ahead
The Kraken have one more road game against the Nashville Predators on Tuesday before returning home for a five-game homestand. They will face the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday, and on Saturday they host the currently undefeated Calgary Flames. It’s a low bar, but I feel the team needs at least three out of a possible six points to feel good about the start of the season. Five points or more would be ideal and would put them back on a decent pace. It’s too early to overemphasize any set of games, but after last season’s slow start, it would be nice to not spend the whole year playing catch-up in the standings.
How is everyone feeling out there? Any of you starting to hit the panic button?
For the second night in a row, the Kraken looked sluggish out of the gate and found themselves in a 2-0 hole, this time against the Dallas Stars. They did battle back to tilt the ice more in their favor for good portions of the second and third periods, but they couldn’t any of their 25 shots past Dallas backup goalie Casey DeSmith.
The slow start, combined with a disjointed 13-second stretch, gave the Stars all the scoring they needed to slide past Seattle.
“We make two critical errors, really,” Kraken coach Dan Bylsma said. “The game is full of mistakes, but we make two critical errors, and they end up in the back of our net and got us fighting back for half the game.”
Here are our Three Takeaways from the Kraken’s 2-0 loss to the Stars.
Takeaway #1: 13 ugly seconds
In Seattle’s season-opening loss to the St. Louis Blues last Tuesday, the Kraken were the better team for most of the game. But a two-minute lapse in the second period was enough to give the Blues three goals and an eventual 3-2 victory. A goal against happens—handle it right, and it’s no big deal. But if you let it compound into two or three goals, it becomes a much bigger problem.
This game was a little different from the one last Tuesday. In that game, the three goals came sandwiched between good stretches of Kraken play. But in this one, the two first-period goals from Sam Steel and Wyatt Johnston came during a horrendous opening frame where Seattle was outshot 13-6 and didn’t look ready to face one of the best teams in the NHL. It felt like the dam was bound to break—it was just a matter of time before Dallas broke through.
The first goal came when Will Borgen and Josh Mahura—temporarily paired together with Vince Dunn out of the lineup—got crossed up in coverage. Mahura ended up on the right side, and Borgen found himself shading that way too. He realized the left side was open and started shifting back, but he couldn’t recover in time to take Sam Steel’s stick away at the far post. He tried to deflect the puck, but short king and former Kraken forward Colin Blackwell somehow threaded the needle between Mahura, Borgen, and Philipp Grubauer, and Steel got an easy tap-in.
Just 13 seconds later, the Stars struck again. Off the center-ice face-off, Jamie Benn carried the puck over the blue line, dropped it to Johnston, and drifted toward the net, tying up both Ryker Evans and Adam Larsson in the process. Chandler Stephenson was taking away the cross-slot pass, and Jaden Schwartz was a step too slow in tracking back on Johnston. The result was Johnston having all the time and space he needed to rip a shot off the far post and past Grubauer. More on that in Takeaway #2.
Takeaway #2: Grubauer took heat, but he had a good game
It doesn’t take much for the Grubauer haterz to come out. I understand he’s had ups and downs with the Kraken, and yes, in the context of the game, making a stop on Johnston would have been preferred, especially since it was an unscreened shot from the right dot.
Playing devil’s advocate (and from a goalie’s perspective), Johnston was moving fast, had all the time in the world to pick his spot, and fired a perfect shot. The more concerning issue was the defensive breakdown immediately after the team had just given up a goal. The coverage was, frankly, nonexistent.
If Grubauer “wanted that shot back,” as the saying goes, then he did a great job recovering and keeping Seattle in the game. With the Kraken pressing to create offense in the third, he came up huge with consecutive breakaway saves on Tyler Seguin and Mason Marchment.
In total, Grubauer stopped 22 of 24 shots for a .917 save percentage and 0.77 goals saved above expected, according to MoneyPuck. Meanwhile, his team couldn’t muster any offense at the other end. Despite the Johnston goal, I would call this a positive outing for the netminder.
“I thought Grubi played really well,” Bylsma said. “A couple of times in the first period, there were barrages around the net, and he stood strong. And in the third period, he made those two big breakaway saves that kept us in the game and gave us a chance.”
I’m curious to hear what the comment section thinks about Grubauer’s performance. What say you, folks? Any haterz?
Takeaway #3: Really liking the fourth line
With the promotion of Shane Wright to full-time NHL center and the acquisition of Chandler Stephenson, it seemed throughout the summer that Yanni Gourde was destined for a fourth-line center role. Indeed, he seems to be settling in nicely between Tye Kartye and Brandon Tanev.
Two seasons ago, when the Kraken racked up 100 points and came within one goal of the Western Conference Finals (falling to these same Dallas Stars in seven games), a huge part of their success was the fourth line pushing the pace every night. When the top three lines struggled to generate offense, the fourth line consistently stepped up and gave the team a spark.
In the last two games, I’ve seen signs that something similar could happen this season. Kartye scored a crucial goal Saturday to get the Kraken level with the Wild, and while the fourth line didn’t score against Dallas, one could argue it helped turn the tide in the second period. When they were on the ice, the trio dominated possession, registering 70 percent of attempted shots and 76 percent of the shot quality, according to Natural Stat Trick.
There’s been plenty of talk about Tanev being a trade target because of his relatively high salary for a fourth-liner and the team’s cap situation. But mayyyyyyyybe Seattle should hang on to him, at least until they start stringing together some wins.
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 was a fun night at Xcel Energy Center, where the Seattle Kraken jumped on the coattails of captain Jordan Eberle and rode his two goals, plus the deciding shootout tally, to their first win of the season—a 5-4 victory over the Minnesota Wild.
The Kraken trailed by two, erased that deficit, and then trailed by one twice more but continually fought back.
“I don’t think you want to get into the habit of having to do that,” said head coach Dan Bylsma, who also earned his first victory as Kraken head coach. “But it was the story of the game. We got it back 2-2, they got another one, we got a great goal by the [Tye Kartye] line, and then they scored again, and we had to come up with one late to claw back into it.”
Indeed, it was a resilient performance by Seattle, which did not always look like the better team on this night but found a way to earn two points in the end.
Here are our Three Takeaways from Seattle’s 5-4 shootout win over the Wild.
Takeaway #1: A big night for Captain Ebs
Seattle was fortunate to reach the first intermission trailing just 1-0 after the Wild appeared to score a power-play goal at the horn. However, the green light (indicating 0.0) appeared behind the net just before the puck crossed the line, and the Kraken briefly avoided that two-goal deficit. With plenty of penalty time left, Minnesota’s potent power play went right back to work at the start of the second, and Matt Boldy struck to officially make it 2-0.
At this point, it felt like things were heading in the wrong direction for the Kraken, but Eberle sprang into action. Just 40 seconds after Boldy’s goal, Eberle went hard to the net and kept pounding away until the puck snuck through a sprawled Marc-Andre Fleury and trickled over the line to make it 2-1.
“It’s getting to the blue paint and having a presence in the blue paint,” Bylsma said. “It took two or three whacks to get it in the back of the net, but Jordan Eberle gets his 300th career goal right where it should be, right in the blue paint.”
Then, six minutes later, the Kraken power play connected on its first opportunity of the night. After hitting multiple posts and keeping Minnesota on the ropes for a bit, Andre Burakovsky sent a hard shot-pass toward Eberle at the far post, and the puck caromed in off his skate.
Boom. Two-goal deficit erased.
“We were kind of snapping it around, which was great,” Eberle said. “The power play, in my opinion, is all about momentum and confidence, and hopefully we can continue that.”
As if the two goals weren’t enough, Eberle followed Oliver Bjorkstrand’s beautiful equalizer in the shootout with a well-placed snapshot of his own, the eventual shootout winner after Boldy fired his attempt wide of Joey Daccord.
Before the season, I hypothesized that Kartye could be ready for a bigger role and more production. He has a huge shot and was a prolific scorer at the AHL level, so with almost a full season of NHL experience under his belt, my theory was that he would find more ways to put his shot to work. He did that Saturday to give Seattle another response goal just 1:06 after Kirill Kaprizov made it 3-2.
With linemates Brandon Tanev and Yanni Gourde battling in the corner, Kartye went to the left circle and did well to find just a little area of quiet space. The Wild defenders were puck watching, and by the time they realized Kartye was unmarked, the puck was on and off his stick and into the back of Minnesota’s net to tie the game 3-3.
Not to be outdone, Jared McCann notched another equalizer for the Kraken at 16:34 of the third. Eberle (who else?) had gone hard to the net and drawn a penalty. On the delayed call, McCann slid down the wall, took a pass in his wheelhouse from Ryker Evans, and launched a heat-seeking missile that whistled past Fleury’s ear and under the bar.
“It’s just Jared McCann being Jared McCann on a great shot there,” Bylsma said. “It allowed us to get to overtime and allowed us to get to the shootout, and it’s great to claw out a win that way.”
Takeaway #3: Vince Dunn injured?
One negative from this game was Vince Dunn taking a heavy hit into the endboards from Marcus Foligno near the end of the third period and heading to the bench hunched over and furious. He stayed on the bench for a bit in visible distress before trying a “test-it-out” twirl at the last stoppage of the game. After just a couple seconds on the ice, Dunn went down the tunnel and did not return for the overtime period.
When asked if Dunn would play Sunday in the Kraken’s back-to-back game against the Dallas Stars, Bylsma said, “That’s a wait and see. We’ll see. He was smiling after the game, so we’ll see what it is for tomorrow.”
The fact that Dunn is being considered for Sunday is a good sign, but I’ve been fooled by these kinds of signs before. Dunn missed significant time last season and is one of the cornerstones of this team, so Kraken fans will be holding their breath to see if he emerges with the team in Dallas.
Another angle here is that Seattle is cap-strapped and only has space for one extra player, Josh Mahura, who is on the trip. If he gets pressed into action, the decision to keep Mahura (a defenseman) over John Hayden or Ryan Winterton will prove to be a good one. However, if Dunn misses time, and then another player has to leave the lineup for any reason, things could get very interesting.
For now, just keep your fingers crossed that Dunn is okay.
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.
