It’s a fun episode this week with a fun guest. On Episode 193, the Sound Of Hockey Podcast welcomes Dave Tomlinson, radio color commentator for the Seattle Kraken. Dave is fresh off of grinding out 30 games in 14 days at the IIHF World Championship, so John, Andy, and Darren ask about that experience before diving into Dave’s long and winding road as a professional player and eventually a broadcaster.
Aside from the interview with Dave, the guys also discuss the news that Dan Bylsma was hired as the first coach of the Coachella Valley Firebirds and share some additional Kraken-related tidbits before updating you on the Stanley Cup Final.
After the interview with Dave, the guys shift to segments, which this week include Let’s Get Quizzical, Weekly One-Timers, and Tweets of the Week.
General manager Ron Francis has made it clear that the goal of the Seattle Kraken is to make the playoffs in 2022-23, which might seem like a stretch goal coming from a team that just finished fourth from last place in the NHL standings. The team will need to be aggressive this offseason to even be taken seriously in its quest to contend.
To explore what it will take to get into contention next year, we will be putting together a three-part series on how that could happen. The scenarios presented will be full of assumptions with imperfect data and incomplete analysis, but at its core, this will be a thought exercise that will help evaluate the offseason moves needed to make the Kraken a potential playoff team.
Evaluating the gap
The NHL’s point system, with one point awarded for overtime and shootout losses, makes things a little complicated, but effectively, teams must win more than they lose to make the playoffs. To do that, they need to score more goals than their opponents. Therefore, we will be using goals as our primary metric here, rather than standings points.
One challenge to consider when using goals, in NHL team statistics, a shootout win or loss will add a goal for or against respectively. Along with empty-net goals, these would overstate or understate a team’s goals with respect to this analysis, so keep that in mind. We were able to adjust the totals to remove empty-net and shootout goals, but those bonus goals awarded for shootout wins will remain.
To set the stage, let us look at the last 10 full seasons’ adjusted goals for and adjusted goals against to see how teams fared.
In the chart, the diagonal line represents when the goals for equals the goals against. This would be a goal differential (goals for minus goals against) of zero. If the team’s goal differential is positive (above the line), then the team has good chance of making the playoffs.
The picture is clearer if we just focus on the teams that qualify for the playoffs and those that do not, based on goal differential “buckets.”
Based on the data, a negative five goal differential is where teams have roughly a 50/50 chance of making the playoffs.
Kraken goal differential gap for contending in 2022-23
During the 2021-22 season the Kraken had a negative 59 adjusted goal differential. Assuming the negative five goal differential is the target for putting themselves in a solid position to qualify for the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs, then they will need to eliminate a 54-goal gap. There are many ways this can be accomplished, but for this exercise we are going to keep it simple and focus on goaltending and goal scoring.
Goaltending must be better
According to Evolving-Hockey.com, the Kraken goaltending had a “Goals Saved Above Expected” (GSAx) of negative 41.3.
The math behind these numbers can be a bit complicated, but let’s put it in simple terms: If the Kraken received just average goaltending from their goaltenders, they would have allowed 41 fewer goals in the 2021-22 season. Expecting exeptional goaltending next season might be wishful thinking, but the goaltending tandem of Philipp Grubauer and Chris Driedger gave us reason for optimism by both playing their best hockey of the season down the stretch.
Expecting a major improvement to goaltending took a hit when the team announced that Driedger underwent surgery for a torn ACL with an expected timeline to return of seven-to-nine months. For now, we are going to assume a reasonable 10 GSAx improvement to next year’s goaltending.
Part two
This gives you the framework of the analysis that we intend to do here. In the next installment in the series, we will focus on goal scoring projections for the current Seattle Kraken players and where the team might be able to add personnel to address gaps in becoming a contender.
Eyebrows were raised around the hockey world when the Seattle Kraken announced in Aug., 2021, that Dan Bylsma was joining the organization and would serve as assistant coach for the Charlotte Checkers. The news immediately got some wheels turning—at least here at Sound Of Hockey—that perhaps Bylsma could be putting himself in line to become the first head coach of the Coachella Valley Firebirds.
Lo and behold, some 10 months later, the Firebirds and Kraken officially announced on Tuesday that Bylsma will be handed the reins.
The Coachella Valley @Firebirds have named Dan Bylsma as the first-ever Head Coach in franchise history!
At the time he joined Charlotte, it was a bit surprising that Bylsma, who won a Stanley Cup as the head coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2008-09, would take an AHL assistant role. It seemed like a step back for the former NHL coach, but in retrospect, it was plain to see how he was positioning himself.
“Talking to [Kraken general manager Ron Francis] last season about the opportunity to coach in Charlotte, [Coachella Valley] was on my mind,” Bylsma said Tuesday. “We needed a coach for the development of players in Charlotte last season, but I knew down the road that we’d be going to Coachella, and that would be there.”
Bylsma’s foresight and gamble on himself paid off.
An impressive coaching resume
Bylsma boasts an impressive resume. After a 12-year pro playing career that included 429 NHL games with the Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Mighty Ducks, he went right into coaching as an assistant for the AHL’s Cincinnati Mighty Ducks. During the 2008-09 season, Bylsma was promoted mid-season from head coach of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins to head coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins, replacing the fired Michel Therrien. The NHL Penguins responded well to Bylsma, and he led them to their first Stanley Cup since 1992.
The Grand Haven, Mich., native won the Jack Adams Award in 2010-11, coached Team USA at the Sochi Olympics in 2014, and was the fastest coach ever to reach 250 career NHL wins.
In June, 2014, he was relieved of his duties by the Penguins and eventually signed on as the head coach of the Buffalo Sabres starting in 2015. He lasted two seasons there before returning to his hometown Detroit Red Wings, where he was an assistant coach for three seasons before joining the Kraken organization.
Coachella Valley Firebirds coach Bylsma will focus on development
Now back in the AHL, Bylsma knows the focus is on helping young players reach their potential. “A huge responsibility in the organization for the Seattle Kraken is the development of the players and development of the young players coming into the organization,” he said. “Getting an opportunity to do that as a head coach in the American Hockey League is something I take a great deal of pride in, and I’m excited about that opportunity to do it.”
Bylsma has already been working with young Kraken players in Charlotte, where he guided prospects like Alexander True, Cale Fleury, and Max McCormick, three players he thinks are close to being full-timers in the NHL. Getting those types of players over the hump and onto the next level now falls more squarely on Bylsma’s shoulders, but he is ready for the challenge and has been in this position before.
“I think when we look at it from an organization standpoint, it’s such a critical part of the process for us,” added Francis. “We draft these young men, and we ask them to go and play in the American Hockey League, and we try and draft and develop them to get to the NHL. So having a guy with that sort of pedigree—he’s coached at all levels, AHL, NHL, World Championships, he’s won a Stanley Cup, he’s been coach of the year in the NHL—we feel very fortunate we have somebody like Dan to lead that charge and help the development of our young players.”
Plenty of work left to be done in building the Coachella Valley Firebirds
When the inaugural Kraken season ended, Francis went through a laundry list of AHL-related projects ahead of him for this offseason, as he is now tasked with building out the Firebirds from scratch. Deciding on a head coach was one of those items, but that was just the start.
“I would say [the list of responsibilities] is slightly shorter, but it’s still a long list,” Francis said. Some hires left to be made include an athletic trainer, assistant coaches, goalie coaches at both the NHL and AHL levels, a video coach, a skills coach, and—oh, by the way—almost a full roster of players.
Adding one more wrinkle to what will surely be a challenging first season for Coachella Valley, their home venue, Acrisure Arena, will not open until at least December, and their practice facility will not open until at least mid-October.
So, Francis said the AHL team would start the season in Seattle and “play some games up in this area,” making the Kraken Community Iceplex the home base for the Firebirds initially. They will then transition to Coachella Valley when their practice arena opens.
There are plenty of questions left to answer before the Coachella Valley Firebirds can take flight. For now, with Bylsma as the team’s first head coach, one big question has been resolved.
On this week’s Sound Of Hockey Podcast, the guys give a couple quick Seattle Kraken updates, revolving around the signing of Finnish free agent Ville Petman and the re-signing of Jeremy Lauzon with the Nashville Predators. They then shift their focus to junior hockey, where they discuss the Seattle Thunderbirds falling just short against the Edmonton Oil Kings and Kraken prospect Ryan Winterton reaching the Memorial Cup.
Eventually, John, Andy, and Darren circle back around to NHL talk, discussing the opening of the Stanley Cup Final, Bruce Cassidy and John Tortorella getting hired by NHL teams, and Gary Bettman’s latest presser.
Segments this week include Bad Boys, Weekly One-Timers, Tweets of the Week, and Three Stars.
It feels SO GOOD to be back! It’s been a long time since we’ve put pen to paper for the purpose of giving you one-timers of the weekly variety, but here we are, ready to serve up some bite-sized hockey news for you.
As is tradition in Weekly One-Timers, we shall start with some Kraken and other local news, then expand the sphere of information to include the whole hockey world. Let’s dig into it, shall we?
Kraken news… sort of
Jeremy Lauzon re-signs
Technically this isn’t Kraken news, but it is at least Kraken related. Former Seattle defenseman Jeremy Lauzon re-signed with the Nashville Predators for four years at a $2 million annual salary.
Due to injury, Lauzon only ended up playing 13 games with the Preds after being traded by the Kraken at the NHL Trade Deadline for a second-round pick in the upcoming draft. He had one goal and zero assists in that time with 14 penalty minutes.
It was not the most impressive stat line, so we were a tad surprised to see the four-year term given by general manager David Poile. Perhaps he heard people saying a second-round pick for Lauzon was too much and felt he needed to prove it was a good trade. Or perhaps he just really likes the player and wants to keep him around for a while.
Either way, we’re happy to see Lauzon get a nice payday.
Ryan Winterton headed to the Memorial Cup
Ryan Winterton, selected by the Kraken in the third round of the 2021 NHL Entry Draft, is headed to the CHL’s Memorial Cup after his Hamilton Bulldogs knocked off the Windsor Spitfires in Game 7 of the OHL Championship Series.
Winterton helped the Bulldogs with 19 points (7-12—19) in 18 playoff games, a nice follow-up to a regular season in which he returned from a long-term injury to rack up 46 points (20-26—46) in 37 games.
The Bulldogs celebrated their berth in the Memorial Cup by pounding a giant nail into a table using a sledgehammer.
The Seattle Thunderbirds encountered adversity through seemingly every step of their journey this season, but they just kept winning, even as the odds stacked up against them. They battled through injuries, COVID issues, and ill-timed suspensions. After cruising past Kelowna in the first round, the T-Birds faced elimination games against Portland and Kamloops, only to force Game 7’s in both series and keep themselves alive.
But the high-flying Edmonton Oil Kings, with their aggressive forecheck and star-studded lineup of future NHLers, ultimately proved to be too much in the end.
After winning Game 1 of the WHL Championship Series in Edmonton, the T-Birds lost the next three straight, including their only two home games of the series. Again on the brink of elimination, they battled back for a road win in Game 5, but finally succumbed with a 2-0 defeat in Game 6.
We attended several games of the playoffs, including both of the home games in the Championship Series, and we have to mention what an absolute treat it was to get to witness high-level hockey that deep in a postseason, and seemingly in the middle of the summer. It was such a blast to be a part of that, and we hope the kids on that T-Birds roster will remain very proud of what they accomplished this season.
Congratulations to the Oil Kings (begrudgingly), and congratulations to the Thunderbirds.
Stanley Cup Final underway
We don’t have much to share on this topic that you don’t know already, but the Avalanche and Lightning have finally linked up for a postseason showdown, a matchup that has felt like destiny for several years now.
The two perennially elite teams got off to a rip-roaring start on Thursday, with the Avs eking out a 4-3 overtime victory after the Bolts had erased a two-goal deficit.
This has the makings of an all-time great Stanley Cup Final, and the fans seem to be enjoying it so far.
The NHL coaching carousel kicked it into high gear this week. In a spring/early summer in which some well-respected coaches around the league found themselves without jobs when their teams were dispatched, it’s no surprise to see some big hires being made.
Bruce Cassidy was hired by the Vegas Golden Knights after just a few days of unemployment, and our old buddy John Tortorella has Re: Torted himself back into coaching by getting hired by the Philadelphia Flyers.
Interestingly, Barry Trotz remains without a job, though we can’t help wondering if he has quietly passed on at least one opportunity. Trotz has been tied to the Winnipeg Jets lately, and the Winnipeg Sun reports he will be in talks with them again this weekend.
Last week, we shared analysis on the 20 percent increase in USA Hockey player memberships over last season. This week, we are looking into the numbers reported on female memberships to evaluate the growth (or decline) of female participation in USA Hockey.
Before the pandemic, female participation had been on a steady increase over the previous 10 years, averaging around a 5 percent annual increase from 2013-14 to 2019-20. Like in all sports, the pandemic severely impacted female participation in a good chunk of 2020 and 2021.
Here is how the female participation numbers have looked since 2012-13.
Like the trends we reported last week, female memberships are also seeing a huge recovery with an increase of 25 percent season over season. One of the storylines for the “all players” numbers reported by USA Hockey was that memberships are up significantly but have yet to return to the pre-pandemic numbers of 2019-20 season. This is not the case with female memberships, as they are up more than 5 percent compared to the 2019-20 season, an all-time high.
State-by-state USA Hockey female memberships
When we break it down by state, we see some relatively consistent numbers compared to the overall numbers we analyzed last week. Massachusetts, California, New York, Michigan, and Minnesota added the most memberships since last season. They were all some of the most severely hit during the pandemic-impacted season in 2021-22.
In terms of percentages, the top states for growth among female participants are consistent with the total membership reported. Here is a look at the top 10 states by percentage change.
This consistency makes sense, since if a state is recovering, it would be likely that all people are returning to hockey at the same rate.
Female hockey in Washington State
In Washington State, female hockey memberships are up 87 percent from last year, and what might be more impressive is that memberships are up 20 percent compared to 2019-20. This is more than just a recovery from the pandemic-impacted season of 2020-21.
These are really encouraging trends for female hockey players in Washington State. The more players there are, the more opportunities this will provide for girls to play at an older age, as participation has tended to wane in the older age groups. If you can grow the game at a young age, there will be more players at the older age groups, even if the retention rate stays the same. Here is a breakdown of the players by age group and percentage growth of each category.
Again, the reasons for the growth in girls and women’s hockey is the same as it was for all members: 1) return from pandemic-impacted season. 2) Kraken emphasis on the Adult Learn to Play, NHL Learn to Play and Sealeague programming at Kraken Community Iceplex.
The growth in girls and women’s hockey in the area is encouraging, as even more growth is expected in the coming years. Next year the Seattle Kraken will be adding girls-only teams in the 8U, 10U, and 12U age groups, and the Kraken will inspire plenty of youth and adults to give hockey a try.
Having built a base trade value chart using only intra-season trades, my next project was to look at trades involving picks from multiple years to determine how teams value future draft picks in trades. In other words, analyze the time value effect on draft pick trades. What additional value did a team obtain if it agreed to convert a present draft asset into a future draft asset?
With respect to the NFL draft, the well-worn “conventional wisdom” suggests a one-round premium would need to be paid to get a team to move into the future. A team trading a fourth-round pick in the upcoming 2022 draft would demand a third-round pick in the 2023 draft in return.
I wanted to do slightly better than “conventional wisdom” or hand waving, so here we go.
Approach
I isolated the trades involving a one-for-one swap of a pick in year X for a pick in year X+1. This yielded a list of 60 trades.
As I have described previously, there is an obvious limitation in analyzing deals involving future picks; when a team trades in year X, it does not know where the draft pick in year X+1 will fall precisely.
To deal with that uncertainty in this rudimentary year-over-year analysis, I have presumed that NHL teams are able to reasonably approximate the future draft pick position of the picks they obtain; teams may err in both directions in their estimates, but on average their projections are sound. Therefore, I used the actual draft position of the year X+1 pick as a proxy for the teams’ prediction at the time of the trade.
I then ran the 60 sample trades through the value chart as if they were intra-season trades and looked for a trend in the error rate. The four 2021 trades are listed in the chart below.
One note before moving onto our findings, high picks were not frequently involved in future-pick trades. The highest pick traded in this type of swap was pick No. 65, which was traded in 2014 for a third-round pick in 2015. Without any future pick swaps in the first or second rounds to guide us, any model of discount value in this range is speculative.
Three Takeaways
1. Future draft pick trades did not generate a “full round” of value. In almost every instance, this additional value obtained in a draft pick trade into the future was not close to a “full round” worth of additional value. Instead it was most often the equivalent of moving up somewhere between five and twelve picks. A trade generating value in this range could reasonably described as “fair” based on historical precedent.
2. Mid-round picks traded into the future create small, but real, draft pick value. For third- or fourth-round picks traded for a future asset, teams received on average an additional 5.98 “points” of draft pick value. This is a significant result. And, under the value chart, it is roughly equivalent to obtaining an additional late fourth-round pick.
3. Late-round picks traded into the future create marginal draft pick value. For picks traded in the fifth, sixth, or seventh rounds, the additional value received by the trading team was minimal, registering at just .19 additional “points” of draft pick value on average. This is roughly the equivalent of a late seventh-round pick. It is also within the error range we might expect to see in a normal intra-season transaction.
This suggests to me that towards the bottom of the draft, teams trading into future years are less focused on value generation and more often driven to trade because they do not see a player on the board they want to select or because they would rather use reserve list space elsewhere. This is speculation, though.
There are other potential explanations. It could be that teams are not particularly accurate in predicting where their trade partner will fall in the draft in year X+1, perhaps because of optimism bias. If so, this would leave the trading team, on average, with less value than they believed they were receiving when the trade was made.
Methodology Postscript
At first I attempted to create a unified model that would link the draft pick value points of a current-year draft pick to an expected return of additional draft points if that pick were traded into the next year. For example, if pick No. 97 was traded into the future, how many points should be expected in return? How about pick No. 125?
Unfortunately, the best fit models did not yield a strong model for all picks. The most intelligible fit was linear and it was quite weak:
The x axis in the above is the draft chart pick value traded into the future. The y axis is the net draft pick value received in return in year X+1. This is usually a positive value but is sometimes negative. The trend line attempts to discern an expected additional value of trading a pick this year into a pick next year. In chart form, the expected additional values derived from the trend line are as follows:
The numbers have some intuitive appeal, but I cannot really endorse this model because of its weak predictive value.
For the 2021-22 season, USA Hockey player membership has increased 20 percent nationwide over the 2020-21 season. According to the recently released numbers from USA Hockey, there were 93,603 player memberships added over the 2021-22 season increasing the total to 547,429. Recovery from the pandemic-impacted season is in full swing, but the overall numbers have not returned to their pre-pandemic levels where player memberships were 561,700 for 2019-20. Of the 52 territories in the report, 23 of them are exceeding their 2019-20 player membership numbers.
Here is a deep dive into some of the insights in the report.
USA Hockey memberships – the biggest increase
The biggest gainers in memberships were also the hardest hit during the pandemic season. California, Michigan, and New York saw the biggest rebound in memberships this season. California added 16,113 this year after losing 20,769 from 2019-20 to 2020-21 season.
It’s awesome to see Washington State add the fifth most members this season with an additional 4,610 memberships. In terms of percentage increase, Washington added the second most players.
USA Hockey breakdown by age groups
When we slice the data by age groups we can see the most robust recovery is coming from the adult hockey space (19+), but the second biggest increase is from the ‘Six and Under’ age group.
Washington State by the numbers
If we just filter on Washington State, we can see where the growth is coming from locally.
The biggest net additions is coming from the adult levels. There are two main reasons for this:
Recovery. Several leagues had significant shut downs during the 2020-21 season, so as these leagues started to come back, so would the players. Several of the leagues did not come back online until spring of 2021 as COVID-19 vaccines started to become available. These leagues were slow to ramp up and in most cases did not hit their stride until late spring/early summer when new memberships were classified for the 2021-22 season.
Kraken Adult Learn To Play. Adult learn-to-play programs are not new to the greater Seattle area, but the Kraken ran their programs all year and had multiple programs going each week. This meant their capacity per class was significantly higher than other programs.
On the youth hockey front, the biggest growth came from players 10 and under. Again, this is another indication of the Kraken’s influence and commitment to grow the game in the region. Part of this is a function of the NHL Learn to Play program that, up until this year, was not available to people in this part of the country.
Local organizations do not share their individual membership totals, but it is a safe assumption that the growth was not strictly from the Kraken youth hockey programs. The Kraken will get a lot of credit for the growth, but there are about a dozen associations in or near Seattle that continue to support learn-to-play programs of their own.
Washington State outlook
After the launch of the Vegas Golden Knights during the 2017-18 season, Nevada saw a huge spike in player memberships, but that did not happen until the following season.
However, it is unrealistic to expect the kind of explosive growth Nevada saw for a couple reasons. First, the Golden Knights had a magical inaugural season that ended with a trip to the Stanley Cup Final. That injected a new hockey market with excitement and enthusiasm that would propel kids and adults to try the sport out for themselves. The Kraken did expose the sport to many new families, which will inspire people to try it out next season, but a playoff run would have invigorated the fan base even more. Such a run likely would have led to a more massive increase in membership rates for Washington State.
Additionally, Nevada had a very low number of USA Hockey player memberships before the Golden Knights joined the league, enabling that region to grow its numbers at an unprecedented rate. To put it in a business perspective, Nevada had an untapped customer base. Washington State, on the other hand, had a significant number of hockey players in the area before the Kraken arrived.
There is little doubt that we will continue to see an increase in participation in Washington State, as the Kraken continue to grow the sport directly with “Try Hockey For Free” events and focused programming. But there will also be an organic impact, as the team improves on the ice, that will excite more and more families to take up hockey.
If you have any questions about the data or the analysis, please drop us a line on twitter or in the comments section.
For Seattle hockey fans, things haven’t gone their way recently. The Seattle Thunderbirds are now down 3-1 in the WHL Championship Series after losing two straight at home this week to the Edmonton Oil Kings, and Kraken goalie Chris Driedger tore his ACL playing in the IIHF World Championship.
On this episode, the Sound Of Hockey Podcast breaks down those WHL games and discusses what options the Kraken have to backfill Driedger’s position.
KENT – The Seattle Thunderbirds were three and a half seconds away from a chance of tying their best-of-seven WHL Championship Series against the Edmonton Oil Kings Wednesday night at the accesso ShoWare Center at two games apiece. The game was tied at 2-2 and one clear of the puck would have sent Game 4 into overtime, but Seattle couldn’t get it out of their zone.
Instead, Edmonton kept the puck in and Oil Kings defenseman Logan Dowhaniuk flung the puck towards the Seattle net. It somehow found its way through bodies to send Edmonton to a stunning 3-2 Game 4 win over Seattle, disappointing the 4,468 in attendance.
The Oil Kings now lead the series three games to one.
The Thunderbirds may have played their best game of the series, scoring twice on the power play and outshooting Edmonton by a 38-25 margin, but couldn’t get another puck past Oil Kings goalie Sebastian Cossa.
“That’s playoff hockey sometimes, you don’t always get what you deserve,” Thunderbirds coach Matt O’Dette said. “There’s obviously things that we could have done better in the game to come out on top. But we worked, we came to play. Disappointing ending, but we did a lot of good things tonight.”
Edmonton was paced by a pair of scores from Josh Williams, 32 saves from Cossa, and is one win away from its third WHL Championship and a trip to the Memorial Cup.
Jared Davidson and Lucas Ciona scored for Seattle while goalie Thomas Milic kicked away 20 Oil Kings shots.
“I thought we played a good hockey game,” O’Dette said. “We needed to respond after last night to play a better game. We did clean up a lot of areas that we needed to clean up. It’s a heartbreaker, there’s no other way to say it. I mean, it’s a heartbreaking ending and we have no time to dwell on it. We have to be able to regroup and get ready for the next game.”
Game 5 will be played back in Edmonton on Saturday.
Wednesday’s game got off to a rocky start. Seattle defenseman Tyrel Bauer was given a five-minute major after a hit on Edmonton’s Brendan Kuny, who was carried off on a stretcher early in the contenst. Bauer’s penalty carried with it an automatic game misconduct.
In what was likely Bauer’s final game at the ShoWare Center – he is a signed prospect of the Winnipeg Jets and eligible to play in the American Hockey League next season – ended after five minutes of play.
“[The ref] said they had no choice because the player was injured,” O’Dette said of the call. “I thought it was incidental contact. Kind of two guys colliding that maybe didn’t see each other. I thought Bauer was heading back to the front of the net to defend. Obviously, you never want to see a player hurt like that. I hope he’s okay.”
After the game, Oil Kings coach Brad Lauer said that Kuny had been released from a local hospital and would recover.
Seattle survived the five minutes, but Reid Schaefer was called for boarding just before the major penalty ended, giving Edmonton two more minutes of a power play, but the Thunderbirds were able to kill that off as well.
Seattle’s penalty kill was quick on pucks and got clears while the Oil Kings could not get set up.
“Seven minutes straight on the kill is never ideal,” Seattle’s Jared Davidson said. “They found a way to get ‘er going and shut them down. It was awesome, awesome to see.”
The Thunderbirds then went on a power play of their own and cashed in when Calgary Flames prospect Ciona scored his eighth of the postseason to make it 1-0 at 16:08 of the first period.
Edmonton squared the game at 3:37 of the second period on a goal by Josh Williams who slid a rebound past Milic.
Williams would score again to make it 2-1 at 5:50 when he circled and fired a wrist shot.
Seattle tied the game at 12:58 on a perfect wrister from Davidson who scored his 13th goal of the postseason. The Thunderbirds ended the night 2-for-5 on the power play. The one power play on which they didn’t convert but needed to the most came with 2:40 left in the game when Justin Sourdif was called for a trip. The Thunderbirds couldn’t find one more goal, setting up the late-game heroics for Edmonton.
“I think we were getting to the net a little bit better,” Davidson said. “We were getting those second and third chances when they were sitting there, and we were taking away Cossa’s eyes a little bit better today.”
Seattle has been down 3-1 in the postseason once before, against Portland in the second round. They were able to find a way and fight back, winning twice on the road. They’re going to need to find that motivation one final time.
“We’ve been here before, so we just got to take it one step at a time, one game.” Lucas Ciona said.
Notes
> Seattle played without overager Henrik Rybinski who was hurt during Game 1 of the series.
> Likewise, the Oil Kings were without star Dylan Guenther who apparently was injured during Tuesday’s Game 3.
> It was the last game at the accesso ShoWare Center for Rybinski, Lucas Svejkovsky, and Ryan Gottfried, who are too old to return to the WHL next season.
