Seattle Kraken at Detroit Red Wings 4:30 p.m. Pacific time Little Caesars Arena, Detroit, Michigan TV: ROOT Sports Radio: AM 950 KJR
On last week’s Sound Of Hockey Podcast, yours truly commended Calle Jarnkrok for how well he played against the Washington Capitals and even named him one of the SOH Three Stars. The following game, Jarnkrok got injured when Jordan Staal of the Carolina Hurricanes fell on him. On this week’s Sound Of Hockey Podcast, our own John Barr commented that—although Jarnkrok and Mark Giordano (COVID protocol) are out currently—the Kraken have been relatively healthy during the course of this season. Well, lo and behold, news broke Wednesday morning that in addition to Jarnkrok and Giordano, Jaden Schwartz, Jordan Eberle, Chris Driedger, and Will Borgen are all unavailable for this Kraken game against the Red Wings.
Do we think podcast-related jinxes are real? Not really, but the timing truly is incredible.
Coach Dave Hakstol didn’t give any additional information beyond that the players noted above are out Wednesday. Jarnkrok and Driedger are now officially on injured reserve, though, which means Driedger will be out at least a week, while Jarnkrok could theoretically return Friday if he happens to be ready. Schwartz, Eberle, and Borgen are still on the active roster for now.
Schwartz and Eberle have shown a lot of on-ice chemistry, so maybe it’s just a “two peas in a pod” thing. Or maybe Schwartz just refuses to play, knowing that Eberle is out. Or maybe it’s just sympathy pains? We don’t know, but we’ll look into those theories.
Ok, kidding aside, losing two of your top scorers simultaneously is not ideal.
The Driedger injury is also especially disappointing. He had just started playing well, earned himself a second consecutive start Monday, and won in both of his latest opportunities. The sequence played out in a very similar manner to his first injury, where he completed the game in Philadelphia, then was surprisingly on IR the following day. When he returned from that injury, he shared that he had tweaked something in his knee, and it got worse as time passed after the game against the Flyers. Hakstol did say that whatever the injury is this time, it popped up after Monday’s win in Buffalo, so one can’t help wonder if this new injury is related to the previous one.
Kole Lind and Joey Daccord recalled
Seeing that many players become unavailable at once might make you wonder if the Kraken can even field a full team against the Red Wings, but the math works out. They lost two forwards and a defenseman from what they had in the lineup on Monday, but they had a forward and a defenseman scratched that night. So Colin Blackwell and Jeremy Lauzon will draw back in, while Kole Lind was recalled from Charlotte, along with netminder Joey Daccord.
Assuming no last-minute scratches, the Kraken do have just enough healthy bodies present and accounted for in Detroit to avoid playing guys out of position or dressing fewer than the usual 20.
After sticking with Seattle all through training camp, Lind played just one game during his October call-up. It came on that fateful night when the Kraken got smoked by the Flyers and Driedger got hurt the first time. Lind played 9:21, was a minus-2, and had two penalty minutes. With the Charlotte Checkers, he does have two goals and five assists in 17 games played.
Daccord played two games in place of Driedger during his first stint with the NHL club. He was good against the New Jersey Devils on Oct. 19, but got hung out to dry a bit against the Edmonton Oilers on Nov. 1. At the AHL level, he has a 2.35 goals against average and .915 save percentage in eight games this season.
Kraken look to close out road trip in successful fashion
The Kraken will certainly need a “next man up” mentality against the Red Wings on Wednesday, but if they can find a way to win—despite so many players out of the lineup—then this could end up being a hugely successful road trip. Returning to Seattle with six points in four road games would be another lift to this club, which is still relatively fresh off a six-game losing streak.
To get it done against the Red Wings, the Kraken will need to continue to employ the winning formula that the team conjured up the last two games. That means opportunistic scoring, stout defense and shot blocking, and steady goaltending.
Philipp Grubauer has been good in his recent starts, so let’s see if he can continue to build on his game, especially now that he is again back to shouldering most of the load for the foreseeable future.
Detroit Red Wings
The Kraken will also have to slow down an improved, young Detroit Red Wings team.
Lucas Raymond was just named the NHL’s Rookie of the Month for November. He posted five goals and seven assists in 14 games and narrowly beat out his teammate, goalie Alex Nedeljkovic, for the honor. Raymond, 19, was the No. 4 overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft and is paying very early dividends for general manager Steve Yzerman and his staff. In all, he has 21 points in 23 games and leads the team in scoring.
Meanwhile, Moritz Seider, the No. 6 overall pick in 2019, has also burst onto the scene on the Detroit blue line. Seider, 20, was the Rookie of the Month for October. He has two goals and 12 assists, while Dylan Larkin and Tyler Bertuzzi have chipped in with 19 and 18 respectively. Side note, we believe Bertuzzi is still unvaccinated against COVID and is the only player in the NHL who has not gotten the jab. It has no bearing on this game, but we thought it was interesting.
In all, the Red Wings are 11-9-3, good for fourth place in the Atlantic Division. They’ve won three in a row after losing four straight on a recent road trip.
Don’t look now, but the Seattle Kraken are suddenly cruising, having won four of their last five games, and the Sound Of Hockey Podcast is here to talk about it (because of course it is)!
This episode starts with Darren needing to get something off his chest, so he dives right into a Get Off My Lawn, while Andy and John desperately try to calm him down. Then they get to their Kraken talk, which is plentiful.
After beating Washington and Carolina at home, Seattle has been on the road, where it has beaten the Florida Panthers and Buffalo Sabres, but lost to the two-time defending champion Tampa Bay Lightning. There’s lots to unpack from these victories, including an injury and an illness, impressive play by Will Borgen, and improved goaltending.
Once the Kraken talk dies down, the guys tour around the NHL via Serious Business, where they discuss the waiving of Matt Murray and Evander Kane and the firing of Marc Bergevin and… well… pretty much everyone else in Montreal.
Segments this week include Weekly One-Timers, Goalie Gear Corner, and Three Stars.
It’s a trap! Right? Well, no, apparently it wasn’t in the end. But in a game that certainly felt like a trap going in, the Kraken came out flying on Monday. They potted three goals in the first period, including two of the short-handed variety, and followed up a surprising win in Florida with a convincing win in Buffalo. The Sabres pushed back in the second and third periods and got some fortunate bounces that resulted in goals, but the version of the Kraken that we’ve been seeing recently was simply too much for Buffalo to handle.
Monday’s game felt like a trap because Seattle was coming off that emotional victory in Florida, against one of the NHL’s best teams, and had recently beaten other good teams, Washington and Carolina. It’s so easy to get a little ahead of yourself and assume victory against a struggling club like Buffalo, but to their credit, there was no letdown by the Kraken who have now won four out of their last five since their six-game losing streak ended.
It’s borderline comical to think back and remember how pessimistic we all were about the outlook of the Kraken after they bottomed out against Colorado with a miserable 7-3 loss on home ice on Nov. 19. At that point, a look ahead in the schedule made it seem as if the streak would extend to double digits before things got even a little better. Now, the Kraken are riding high and have a chance to take six points out of a four-game road trip if they can pull out one more win on Wednesday against the Red Wings.
Here are our three takeaways from a 7-4 Kraken win over the Sabres on Monday.
Takeaway #1: Will Borgen impressive again
What a story Will Borgen has been in his first two games after getting scratched for 19 straight to start his tenure with Seattle. Against Florida, he had five shot blocks, a shot on goal, and a fisticuffs-related roughing penalty, all of which helped earn him a spot in the lineup on Monday. Against his former team, the Buffalo Sabres, Borgen again showed why the Kraken have valued him enough to hold onto him, even as they’ve been forced to waive players that had at one time been considered regulars.
Borgen assisted on Mason Appleton’s first goal as a Kraken late in the second period, giving him his first NHL point. But the big moment for Borgen came much earlier and helped set the tone for what type of game the Kraken were there to play.
With the Sabres on the man advantage just six minutes into the game, Yanni Gourde made an outstanding hustle play to steal the puck from Rasmus Dahlin behind the Buffalo net. Gourde then found Carson Soucy, who beat Dustin Tokarski cleanly over the shoulder. There was plenty of time left on the Haydn Fleury penalty, though, and giving back a goal there destroys the early momentum.
Borgen put himself in front of two back-to-back bombs by Tage Thompson, drawing a cheer from the Kraken bench that could be heard on the TV broadcast.
Jamie Oleksiak blocked another shot seconds later, and Chris Driedger, who had his second solid performance in as many tries with 32 saves, swallowed up the last shot of the penalty kill.
From that moment on, you just knew it was going to be a good night for the Kraken.
With Borgen proving he can play, things are going to get even more interesting for the defensive corps, especially when Mark Giordano returns from COVID protocol. Hakstol was already rotating in Fleury and Soucy, two players that can certainly play a regular NHL shift. Now Lauzon, who has been a workhorse for much of the season, has been scratched for two straight games, but that likely will not stick.
It feels like something may have to give at some point, but for now, too many capable defensemen is a good problem to have.
Takeaway #2: Tanev – Geekie – McCann line is cooking
Nights like Monday are fun, because guys get to pad their stats as they all assist on one another’s goals. We saw that with the Brandon Tanev, Morgan Geekie, Jared McCann line, as all three forwards registered two points on the night.
McCann had two goals, including an absolute beauty that Geekie shoveled to him with one hand on his stick.
Tanev demonstrated—in about a seven-second span—why Kraken fans love him so dearly. He picked off a Dahlin pass at the Kraken blue line, then raced, fought, and clawed his way through the neutral zone to gain position on the former top overall draft pick. In the process, he drew a penalty, and with the delayed call coming, got his own rebound and shot it passed Dahlin, who had given up the battle and resorted to playing second goalie behind Tokarski.
It was a great night by this group, both in terms of numbers on the scoresheet and analytics, as they took 56 percent of the shot attempts when they were on the ice together and had 60.43 percent of expected goals for.
Takeaway #3: Jordan Eberle injured, maladies stacking up
Perhaps the lone negative from Monday’s game was that Jordan Eberle, the Kraken leader in goals with 11, was injured in the second period and did not return. We believe it happened around the 4:15 mark of the frame when Eberle took an Alex Wennberg pass and went hard to the net. He got a good whack across the legs from Henri Jokiharju, then got tangled up with Will Butcher, and it looked like his ankle may have turned in a strange way, as his blade dug into the ice. He wasn’t putting much weight on it as he headed to the bench.
Hakstol did not have any real update after the game, but if he misses time, Eberle will join Calle Jarnkrok on the shelf. With Mark Giordano on COVID protocol, things are getting rather thin all of a sudden.
To Seattle’s credit, the group has shown well with the “next man up” mentality, as guys are jumping in and out of the lineup and producing. Colin Blackwell was scratched the last two games. So one would think that if Eberle or Jarnkrok can’t go in Detroit on Wednesday (Jarnkrok hasn’t been on the road trip, so this feels unlikely), then Blackwell would be there to fill the void.
Remember those 40 minutes when Seattle was fully healthy against the Capitals? Those were the days minutes.
In a game ripe for a letdown, the Seattle Kraken started quick and held off a third period push to defeat the Buffalo Sabres 7-4 at KeyBank Center Monday.
Seattle (8-13-1) scored thrice in the first period to build a lead and added on throughout for the team’s fourth win in the last five games. Buffalo (8-11-3) outshot the Kraken in the third period and scored twice to pull within two goals but ultimately were outlasted.
Twelve Kraken players recorded points while Carson Soucy and Brandon Tanev scored the franchise’s first two short-handed goals to stake Seattle to a 2-0 lead. Jared McCann and Mason Appleton scored twice, Tanev had three points, and Chris Driedger made 32 saves to win in back-to-back starts.
“What it’s been has been different guys contributing at the right time and at different times,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said. “That’s what gives a team confidence when somebody goes out of the lineup, somebody new comes in and contributes and that’s everybody’s job to be ready to come in and contribute in whatever way the team needs.”
Monday’s game was a test for the Kraken and one that may not have been obvious.
Coming after five games against the league’s best, and winning three of them, it would have been easy for Seattle to overlook the Sabres. It could have a been a night to exhale and take a breather.
“They gave us a late push with a couple late goals,” Tanev said. “But at the end of the day we get a great win here for our group.”
Shorties set tone for the Kraken against Sabres
Two short-handed goals opened the scoring for the Kraken and gave them the lead.
First, it was Yanni Gourde who forechecked hard on the penalty kill. He stripped the puck and threw it out to Soucy in the high slot. Soucy fired a slap shot that beat Sabres goalie Dustin Tokarski at 5:47 of the first period.
“[Gourde] could kind of sense that and he got up and got on top of it,” Hakstol said. “Those guys have the green light to go when they can without creating a ton of risk… I thought it was just a real good read to jump the first one.”
The Kraken were short-handed later in the period, and Tanev stole the puck in the Seattle end and took off while fighting Buffalo’s Rasmus Dahlin with one arm. Tanev drew a penalty, but before it could be assessed, he fired a one-handed shot that was stopped. The rebound came right to him and he snuck it in the net to make it 2-0 at 14:40 of the first.
“Your overall mindset is to try to do the job and kill the penalty and you get an opportunity to take a puck out,” Tanev said. “Then you try to take a puck to the net and create a scoring chance and I was fortunate enough to get a great bounce and have the puck in the net.”
With the two goals, Seattle became the third team this season to score multiple short-handed goals in the same game and the seventh expansion team to score multiple short-handed goals during their inaugural season.
“A couple of incredible efforts on those goals,” Appleton said. “You come into a building and it kind of sucked the air right out of it when you score goals like that. So that was real good for us and the way we want to start games on the road for sure.”
McCann scored his first of the night at 19:04 of the first to give Seattle a commanding 3-0 lead at the intermission.
Kraken have answers for Sabres all night
The Sabres scored at 1:53 of the second period to pull within 3-1, but the Kraken had an answer. Morgan Geekie took the puck deep into the Sabres corner and flung a one-handed pass back to McCann who was all alone in front for his second of the night to make it 4-1 at 7:59 of the second.
Jeff Skinner scored his first of two at 17:27 of the second to pull the Sabres back to within two at 4-2. The Kraken once again responded with Appleton scoring from in close at 18:09 to restore the three-goal lead and score his first of the night.
“Obviously there’s pretty goals, but you know those count the same as the gritty ones,” Appleton said.
Skinner scored his second 37 seconds into the third period to again pull the Sabres to within a pair at 5-3. Once again the Kraken answered. This time it was Jaden Schwartz with his fifth of the season at 13:44 to make it 6-3.
Dylan Cozens scored at 18:27 to keep the Sabres’ hopes alive, cutting the Kraken lead to 6-4. Eventually the Sabres would pull Tokarski for an extra skater, and Appleton hit the empty net to finish the scoring and send the Kraken home with two points.
Tentacle tales
+ Jordan Eberle left the game in the second period with an injury and did not play in the third. Hakstol did not have an update after the game.
+ Will Borgen played for the second straight time and the former Sabre defenseman picked up his first NHL point by assisting on Appleton’s first goal.
+ The Kraken scored seven goals for the first time in franchise history.
+ Gourde’s assist on Soucy’s goal was his 200th career point. He reached the mark in 328 games. Five active players who were undrafted reached 200 in fewer games.
+ Seattle will wrap up its current four-game road trip Wednesday in Detroit to take on the Red Wings.
Seattle Kraken at Buffalo Sabres 4 p.m. Pacific time KeyBank Center, Buffalo, New York TV: ROOT Sports Radio: AM 950 KJR
For much of the first two months of the inaugural season for the Seattle Kraken, goaltending—expected to be one of the team’s biggest strengths coming in—was a glaring issue. Philipp Grubauer had a few good starts, but his stats sunk to among the worst in the league, and Chris Driedger, on few opportunities, hadn’t done much to bolster confidence in the team’s netminding.
Coach Dave Hakstol had leaned on Grubauer on the opening road trip, and when Driedger got his first appearance in relief, he got injured and missed several weeks. Then Driedger returned, but Hakstol continued to rely on Grubauer, even as his slump worsened.
Driedger got just two spot starts over a three-week span and only in situations where it was painfully obvious that the backup should be utilized. That changes on Monday, as Hakstol has indicated that Driedger will get the nod for the Kraken against the Sabres.
It will be Driedger’s second consecutive start after he backstopped Seattle to an impressive 4-1 win over the Panthers on Saturday with 33 saves. Against his former team, Driedger looked in control from the drop of the puck, stopping a Jonathan Huberdeau breakaway in the first two minutes. He was quiet in the crease, always in the right place and on time, and pucks were hitting him, even with traffic in front.
It was a big night for the likeable Driedger, who said the win was “about as good as they feel.”
With Driedger signed to a three-year contract, paying him $3.5 million per year, we at Sound Of Hockey fully anticipated that he would get a good share of the net with Grubauer, who signed an even bigger deal later in the summer. It hasn’t shaken out that way up to now, but Driedger getting the start on Monday feels like a step toward a more equitable division of labor.
In that game against the Panthers, Driedger showed that he is capable of winning, even against top teams in the NHL. He took advantage of an opportunity, and now Hakstol is rewarding him by showing some confidence in him with another start.
Of course, it’s a small sample size of recent successful outings by both Grubauer and Driedger, but it’s funny how these things can shift. Two weeks ago, we wondered if the Kraken goaltending would ever live up to expectations. If both goalies can build off recent positive performances, there’s a chance we will soon be debating nightly who should play in goal. If we get to that point, it will be a very good problem for the Kraken.
Will Borgen and Riley Sheahan also in again for Kraken against Sabres
Will Borgen spent the first 20 games of the season as a healthy scratch, continuing to show up and work every day, just waiting for his opportunity to play. Even with Mark Giordano in COVID protocol, it still felt unlikely heading into Saturday’s game that Borgen would get in, but he finally got his chance.
There’s been a season-long logjam on the Kraken blue line that has resulted in Haydn Fleury and Carson Soucy rotating in and out of the lineup. Borgen never factored in, but after Jeremy Lauzon had a tough game against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Friday—he threw the pizza that eventually got one-timed in by Steven Stamkos to make it 3-0—Hakstol opted to scratch Lauzon for just the second time.
Borgen performed well in his debut, logging just under 14 minutes of ice time, with one shot on goal and five blocks. He also got involved in a dustup in the opening minutes of the game, showing he was willing to get involved physically.
The move to get Borgen mixed in more frequently makes plenty of sense. After all, he’s a right shot, which balances out the defensive pairings a lot more and means that only one player is on his off side instead of two. Vince Dunn has played the right side for most of the season, but was able to shift back to his natural side on Saturday.
It really was strange watching players like Riley Sheahan and Nathan Bastian—both of whom had played significant roles for Seattle—get waived, while Borgen continued to collect dust in the press box. But the team clearly values the young defenseman and resisted putting him up for grabs.
Hakstol had maintained that the guys who were playing were those who had earned the spots out of training camp, but he was clearly not pleased with the effort on Friday in Tampa. So, he shook things up for Saturday and liked what he saw. Borgen gets another chance for the Kraken Monday against his old team, the Buffalo Sabres.
Sheahan was recalled from Charlotte prior to Saturday’s game in Florida and also drew in in favor of Colin Blackwell. Sheahan is expected to play again Monday in Buffalo.
Eberle looks to stay hot for Kraken against Sabres
This is the second meeting between the Seattle Kraken and Buffalo Sabres. The Kraken won convincingly in the first game between these two teams at Climate Pledge Arena on Nov. 4. Jordan Eberle scored a hat trick that night, the first in franchise history, and has been (mostly) hot ever since.
Eberle scored twice on Saturday against the Panthers and now has 11 goals on the year, which leads the team by three. He had a three-game stretch prior to Saturday in which he was held off the scoresheet, and those three games coincided with nights where he was not on a line with Jaden Schwartz. Eberle and Schwartz were reunited Saturday, along with Yanni Gourde, and Eberle went right back to producing.
It was the revenge game of all revenge games for Seattle Kraken goalie Chris Driedger Saturday night at FLA Live Arena.
He was facing the Florida Panthers, his former team who oh, by the way, are the top-scoring club in the NHL and had yet to lose at home. At the other end of the rink was Spencer Knight, the 20-year-old, former first-round pick by Florida whose arrival late last year essentially made Driedger expendable.
And it was the second of a back-to-back for the Kraken after losing 3-0 in Tampa Bay on Friday.
None of that mattered Saturday.
After struggling through his first two starts with Seattle, Driedger was on and on early, making 33 saves as the Kraken (7-13-1) denied the Panthers (14-4-3) a chance at setting a record 12th straight home to win to start a season by winning 4-1.
“[Tonight’s win] is about as good as they feel,” Driedger said.
Seattle got two goals from Jordan Eberle who was playing in his 800th career NHL game along with two points from both Jamie Oleksiak and Joonas Donskoi.
“It was a real competitive game for us, a competitive game both ways,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “We went start to finish tonight and we knew we needed to do that in this building against this team that hadn’t lost in this building yet this year. So it was a good 60-minute performance for us.”
Eberle opened the scoring for Seattle in the first period, but the dagger came at 5:57 of the third period when he picked up a rebound off a Yanni Gourde chance and backhanded his second goal of the night to put Seattle up 3-1.
The goal was the insurance score that Seattle needed to put away the Panthers.
“That’s typical Gourdie,” Eberle said. “He’s hard on the puck and doesn’t really give up. He made a great play, just missed the shot and I was there to put in the rebound. That was all him.”
Kraken lean on Driedger
Driedger thwarted a Jonathan Huberdeau short-handed breakaway chance early in the first period which gave a clue that he was dialed in. When Seattle was in the throes of its recent six-game losing streak, those chances seemingly always resulted in goals.
In the second period, the Panthers pushed back, down 2-1. Florida outshot the Kraken 13-7 in the second, took 67 percent of the quality shots, and led in high danger chances 5-2. Despite the tilted ice, Driedger stood tall while hardly looking rattled.
“The first two, or three [starts] you could say didn’t go my way,” Driedger said. “I just needed to go in there and feel good, make some saves and get the confidence back. A lot of buzz coming back into this building. Pretty happy with the performance of our group, that’s about as good as I’ve seen our group play, hat’s off to them.”
If Driedger’s confidence is back, and with the resurgence of Philipp Grubauer over the last three games, the Kraken just might be starting to see the goalie tandem they envisioned when the season began.
Seattle gets off to an early start
The first period has been an adventure for the Kraken, but it’s slowly been getting better and Saturday’s opening period was perhaps the best of the season.
Seattle went to the power play 25 seconds into the game and cashed in at 2:22 to take a 1-0 lead. After Driedger’s big save and with time running out in the power play, Donskoi found some space and drew the penalty killers to him as he deftly sent a cross-ice pass to Eberle who knocked in his 10th goal of the season.
It was the seventh time in the last nine games that the Kraken scored a power-play goal.
Florida tied the game at 6:59 of the first period when a MacKenzie Weeger shot from the point was deflected past Driedger by Patric Hornqvist in front of the net.
Jamie Oleksiak blasted a shot from the point at 10:40 of the first and it was deflected in by Ryan Donato to give the Kraken a 2-1 lead. It was Donato’s third goal of the season.
After Eberle’s third-period goal to give the Kraken a two-goal advantage, Oleksiak would put the final nail in the coffin with his first goal as a Kraken at 16:35 when he scored from deep in his own zone on the empty Florida net.
“We didn’t like the outcome last night, it was a tough outing for us,” Hakstol said. “It didn’t feel good walking away from the rink last night. So, your next opportunity was tonight, and the guys did a real good job in terms of being ready to go and play hard together for 60 minutes.”
Tentacle Tales
+ After a rough six-game losing streak, the Kraken have three wins and six points in their last four games. Those points come after playing four of the top teams in the NHL (Washington, Carolina, Tampa Bay, and Florida) in succession.
“Honestly, I believe we’re past the building blocks, and we’re just trying to put wins together,” Hakstol said. “We went through a tough stretch, where we couldn’t find a result that would go our way. We hit a few speed bumps and wobbled a little bit, but we had to push back, and the pushback has come in a real tough stretch on the schedule in terms of playing high level teams.”
+ Will Borgen made his Kraken debut Saturday. The former Buffalo Sabres defenseman has been practicing with Seattle all year only to be a daily healthy scratch. He ended the night with 13:51 of ice time and one shot.
+ Seattle owned the dot on Saturday, winning the faceoff battle easily. Morgan Geekie went 11-for-14 on the draw and former Panther Alex Wennberg won 13 of the 16 faceoffs he took.
+ The Kraken were again without captain Mark Giordano who remains in the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol. Calle Jarnkrok was also out of the lineup for the second straight game after sustaining an undisclosed injury in Wednesday’s 2-1 win over the Hurricanes.
For several weeks, we’ve had circled this pair of back-to-back Kraken road games against the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers, expecting it to be an uphill battle. The two contests grew especially daunting when the Kraken were in the midst of a six-game losing streak and were looking ahead at their schedule to see things only getting harder and harder.
One of those two tests is now in the rearview, and unsurprisingly, it proved to be really hard. The other is coming later Saturday afternoon, and with the Panthers boasting an 11-0-0 record at home, well… Let’s just say the second test doesn’t look any easier than the first.
With the rapid succession of games, we’ve decided to go with a bit of a hybrid approach here, a “Three Takeaways” meshed together with a game preview. If you’re confused about how this might work, you’re not alone, but we’re going with it.
Let’s start with our three takeaways from a 3-0 Kraken loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Takeaway #1: Mark Giordano in COVID protocol
First, let’s address the elephant in the room, which is that captain Mark Giordano was a late scratch Friday due to being placed in the NHL’s COVID protocol. Coach Dave Hakstol said he found out Friday afternoon, so Giordano traveled with the team on Thursday.
“It’s not ideal,” Hakstol added. “But it’s part of our lives right now on all different levels. It’s happened before.”
Of course, the first concern is the health and safety of the individual, and the second is the health and safety of the players and staff around him. There are several reasons players can go into protocol, but assuming Giordano has contracted the virus, concern remains that it could spread amongst teammates, coaches, and staff.
There have been two separate instances of COVID in the ranks this season, but the team managed to keep those cases isolated. Calle Jarnkrok tested positive prior to the team’s first game, which sparked brief stints in protocol for four other players. But those players were all cleared in time for the opening game in Vegas, and Jarnkrok was the only player who missed time. Jared McCann and assistant coach Paul McFarland were positive a few weeks later, but again, the cases remained isolated to just those two.
Let’s hope that happens again this time.
Losing Giordano from the lineup just as the team had started to right the ship is damaging for Seattle. Aside from the fact that he leads the team as its captain, he also plays big minutes on the top defensive pairing and often quarterbacks the power play.
Takeaway #2: Lightning hand Kraken their first shutout
It’s hard to say if Seattle’s lack of offensive output on Friday had anything to do with Giordano’s absence, but having such a key piece out of the lineup is never a good thing. Frankly, there was not much push from the Kraken against the Lightning, and the shutout by Andrei Vasilevskiy—his second in a row—looked downright easy.
There were a few chances off rushes, but those were one-and-done scenarios, as the Kraken just couldn’t get set up in the offensive zone for any kind of sustainable pressure.
“We were a half-step behind tonight,” Hakstol said Friday. “Their puck speed got us. We never got them stopped in our zone, and likewise in the offensive zone we didn’t create enough possession.”
For the many difficult losses that the Kraken have racked up this season, they have always managed to find the back of the net at least once, even in the couple games they’ve gotten knocked around. They’ve always pushed back and tilted the ice at some point, but that didn’t really happen Friday.
Takeaway #3: Sometimes you have to just tip your hat
After the Kraken surprised the Capitals and the Hurricanes on Sunday and Wednesday, there was hope that Seattle might find a way to sneak past the Lightning as well.
But there’s a reason the Lightning have won two Stanley Cups in a row, and the way they shut down the neutral zone once they had gotten a lead against the Kraken was clinical. They simply know how to seize control of a game, and they demonstrated this for the umpteenth time on Friday.
Tip your hat and move on.
More lineup changes coming for Kraken against Panthers
The Kraken now look to quickly reset and shift their focus to the Florida Panthers. In his morning press availability, Hakstol indicated that more changes would be coming to the lineup for Saturday’s game against the Florida Panthers.
Riley Sheahan has since been recalled, so expect him to slide in.
The Seattle Kraken have recalled F Riley Sheahan from Charlotte.
With Sheahan back, that leaves just him and Will Borgen as healthy options. So if there are multiple changes (plural), as Hakstol implied there would be, then perhaps Borgen gets a look on Saturday. We shall see.
As more information becomes available, we will update this story.
UPDATE: Sheahan and Borgen are indeed in Saturday. Jeremy Lauzon, who had a tough turnover that led to Tampa Bay’s third goal on Friday, will be scratched for the second time this season. Colin Blackwell is also out for the first time since he returned from injury on Nov. 13. We do not yet know if either of these changes are injury or illness related or are simply coach’s decisions.
Chris Driedger in to face his old team
Chris Driedger was selected and signed by the Kraken from the Florida Panthers at July’s Expansion Draft. Things haven’t panned out the way he would have hoped coming into this season, as he’s only gotten three chances to play. When he has played, things haven’t gone particularly well.
In his first appearance, which came in relief against Philadelphia, he got injured. In his second appearance, which came almost a month later in Vegas, he gave up four goals on 23 shots. In his third appearance, a start against the Colorado Avalanche, he was pulled after four goals on 13 shots.
Driedger could really use a quality start Saturday to show to himself and to the team what he’s capable of. He put these Panthers on his back for significant stretches of last season, going 23-14-6 with a 2.07 goals against average and .927 save percentage, and surely a win against his old mates would be a massive confidence boost.
Florida Panthers
The Panthers are scary good. They had to change coaches after Joel Quenneville was implicated as part of the cover-up in the Chicago Blackhawks’ sexual abuse scandal, and even with that turmoil, they haven’t missed a beat. Now with Andrew Brunette behind the bench in an interim role, Florida has continued its winning ways to the tune of a 14-3-3 record, good for first place in the Atlantic Division, and perfect numbers at home.
Aleksander Barkov drives the bus, but the secret to Florida’s success is a balanced attack that gets production from all parts of the lineup. Jonathan Huberdeau, Anthony Duclair, Carter Verhaeghe, and Aaron Ekblad are all having great seasons offensively, while Sergei Bobrovsky has morphed back into the exceptional goaltender he once was after some early challenges in his Florida tenure.
Did we mention that the Panthers are 11-0-0 at home? That’s tied for the longest home winning streak to start a season in the history of the NHL, so if they beat the Kraken Saturday, they will set a new record. Sheesh!
Working in the Kraken’s favor on Saturday is that Florida is also on the second of back-to-backs after a rare 4-3 loss to the Capitals in Washington on Friday. Bobrovsky played that game, so we will likely see Spencer Knight on Saturday. Knight, the 20-year-old hero of this year’s World Junior Championship, is 5-2-1 with a 3.03 GAA and .903 save percentage.
Seattle Kraken at Tampa Bay Lightning 4 p.m. Pacific time AMALIE Arena, Tampa, Florida TV: ROOT Sports Radio: AM 950 KJR
The Seattle Kraken snapped out of their painful six-game losing streak with two wins to close out their homestand over elite teams in the Washington Capitals and Carolina Hurricanes. But this stretch of difficult opponents is not yet getting any easier for the Kraken, who now enter back-to-back games with the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers on Friday and Saturday.
This first game of a four-game road trip features the return of Yanni Gourde to face his old team, with whom he won two Stanley Cups. The Lightning presented Gourde with his second championship ring on Friday morning.
In Seattle’s two consecutive wins, Philipp Grubauer broke through after struggling for a lot of his first two months in the Kraken net. With 37 and 35 saves respectively against Washington and Carolina, he was the dominant backstop Seattle fans hoped they would get from the jump.
With Grubauer playing reliably behind them, Kraken forwards and defensemen seemingly gave everything they had in those two contests to keep pucks to the outside and block whatever they possibly could. They also rewarded Grubauer with timely goals of their own.
Can the Kraken keep the surprising performances going against two more outstanding teams in a row to start this east coast swing?
Calle Jarnkrok out, Nathan Bastian gone
Mason Appleton returned from a four-week stint on injured reserve prior to Wednesday’s game against the Hurricanes. It represented the first time all season that Seattle had its full group healthy at the same time. To make space on the roster for Appleton, the Kraken placed forward Nathan Bastian on waivers, with the hope that he would clear and be assigned to the AHL’s Charlotte Checkers.
Calle Jarnkrok—who had his best game of the season Sunday against the Capitals—injured his left leg on Wednesday when Jordan Staal fell on him early in the third period. Adding insult to injury, Bastian got claimed by his old team, the New Jersey Devils, on Thursday morning.
That was a not-so-nice Thanksgiving dish for general manager Ron Francis and his staff. In a way, forty minutes of a fully healthy team cost Seattle a useful 23-year-old forward with upside and a year left on his contract before he becomes a restricted free agent. Bastian is the third Kraken player to get claimed off waivers this season, after Dennis Cholowski was snagged on Oct. 14 by the Capitals and Alex Barre-Boulet was re-claimed by Tampa Bay on Oct. 22 after just two games with Seattle. Cholowski ironically played against Seattle on Sunday, and Barre-Boulet will play Friday.
We surmised in our “Three Takeaways” story after the Carolina game that the Jarnkrok injury could sting in more ways than one, and the prediction proved accurate.
Jarnkrok is currently not on the road trip, and Hakstol gave no update Friday morning, saying he’s “still being evaluated.” Ryan Donato, who was scratched against Carolina, will slide back into the lineup on Friday.
What the Kraken face in the Tampa Bay Lightning
It’s no surprise that Tampa Bay is again one of the better teams in the NHL. The two-time defending champion Lightning enter Friday’s game against the Kraken with a record of 11-4-3, good for third place in a top-heavy Atlantic Division.
They are rolling pretty well lately, too, with two straight wins, five wins in six games, and just one regulation loss in their last 12. Their most recent victory came in the form of a 4-0 home shutout of the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday. In that game, Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 34 of 34 shots for his first shutout of the season. The Big Cat, a perennial Vezina Trophy candidate, is now 9-3-3 with an impressive 2.22 goals against average and .924 save percentage.
In that Tuesday win, a fully healthy Steven Stamkos continued his torrid pace and had a goal and two assists. In all, he now has 10 goals and 12 assists in just 18 games. Meanwhile, Victor Hedman has remained a dominant force on the blue line and is scoring at close to a point-per-game clip, and Alex Killorn has been impactful up front with seven goals and 10 assists.
The Bolts are dealing with health issues to key players, as Nikita Kucherov is expected to be out at least another month with a lower-body injury, while Brayden Point got hurt last week and is expected to miss four-to-six weeks with an upper-body injury.
Things were bad… then they were really bad… then they were good! The Seattle Kraken snapped a miserable six-game losing streak with an impressive win over the Washington Capitals on Sunday, and the Sound Of Hockey Podcast is here to break down the roller coaster ride that has been this past week.
Within the Kraken section that starts the show, the guys really get into what the fan reaction was during the very tough stretch and what it meant to the team, as well as some mascot news. John, Andy, and Darren then look ahead at upcoming matchups for Seattle, before diving into their usual segbits.
You will get plenty of Kraken talk from this one, folks!
The segbits this week include Three Stars, Weekly One-Timers, and Tweets of the Week.
You are warned, this thing gets really off the rails toward the end to the show, as Darren and Andy try to force in a late addition “Down on the Farm.”
Who said low-scoring games can’t be fun? The Seattle Kraken handed the Carolina Hurricanes just their third regular-season loss on Wednesday in a gritty 2-1 game in which Philipp Grubauer again dazzled and frankly stole the ‘W.’
These last two games have represented quite the turnaround for Grubauer, who was becoming the talk of the town in a not-so-positive way up until this week. Now, he’s the toast of the town.
Coming off a six-game losing streak, everything suddenly feels different for this Seattle Kraken squad, which has won two games in a row against elite teams and now heads on the road to continue facing difficult opponents.
Here are our three takeaways from this Kraken win over the Hurricanes.
Takeaway #1: Grubauer is who we thought he was
For those that were worried Grubauer would never pan out to be the top-tier netminder Seattle thought it was getting when it signed him in the offseason, concerns now have to be allayed, at least temporarily. He followed up an impressive 37-save performance on Sunday with an arguably better 35-save performance on Wednesday for the Kraken against the Hurricanes.
In Grubauer’s recent games against Chicago, Minnesota, and even his relief appearance against Colorado, he gave up goals, but they came on chances where he was hung out to dry. There weren’t bad goals getting by him in those games, as there had been in some earlier outings. So we thought this was coming, although until fans saw him put together full 60-minute games like he has suddenly been doing, it was still easy to doubt him.
But it sure has been a treat to watch him these last couple contests, hasn’t it?
What was most impressive about Grubauer’s play on Wednesday was that the NHL’s best team (at least in terms of its record entering the game) was getting tons of traffic in front of him, and he battled through all night. Even when he wasn’t seeing it, or pucks were changing directions on the way to the net, he was in perfect position and made himself big at the top of the crease.
Grubauer downplayed it after the game, saying, “Sometimes the puck just hits you,” which drew a big laugh in the media room. There’s truth to that for goalies, though. It’s a phenomenon that can’t really be explained, but it comes with confidence and being on your game. When you’re playing well and things are going your way, pucks that you think should get by you find ways into your equipment, even if you have no idea when the shot is coming or where it’s headed. And when things aren’t going your way, pucks you think you should stop find ways through.
He did eventually expand on those thoughts. “In this league now, it’s everybody’s strategy to get one or two guys in front of the goalie, take their vision away, get in the lane so the goalie has to move,” Grubauer explained. “Some teams don’t make it as hard as other teams, and I think Carolina made it really hard. So you gotta make sure you react. If you find the puck, you gotta know what’s going around you. You can’t just focus on the puck, you gotta know where are the open guys— where’s the fifth guy? And you need to make sure you place your rebounds well.”
Coach Dave Hakstol also pointed to Grubauer’s ability to fight for saves as a key to his recent success. “The big thing for me is he’s seeing the puck,” he said. “He’s finding the puck through traffic, he looks very calm and settled. He’s a guy that reads the play very very well, and we’ve seen that for sure tonight… He had good help from the guys around him, but he was finding the puck through traffic and then able to continue battling on the second pucks.”
Takeaway #2: Can a fight actually cause a momentum swing?
Look, we get it. We honestly, honestly get it. Not everyone likes the narrative that fights can change the momentum in a game, and we also recognize that believing they can is a bit archaic. Plus, after this little exchange via the Twitter machine, we’re frankly hesitant to even bring this up.
One cannot deny the efficacy of Vince Dunn taking Andrei Svechnikov—one of Carolina’s two best offensive players—off the ice for five minutes, right in the heart of the third period in a tie game.
The fisticuffs stemmed from Dunn playing the body on Svechnikov, who entered the Seattle zone on a one-on-two rush. He tried to make a flashy play between his own legs, but Dunn read it and pushed him to the corner. The two players came together behind the goal line, and Dunn got his hands up a bit as they battled. Svechnikov apparently took offense to that and threw several punches with his gloves on, leaving Dunn no choice but to drop his own gloves and defend himself.
Not only did the fight mean that Svechnikov would not be able to participate for the subsequent five minutes, but because he started it, he got an extra two-minute minor for roughing, which was served by Nino Niederreiter.
The Kraken didn’t score on the power play, but there’s no question the two minutes of good possession helped turn the tables. In the early stages of the third period, the Kraken had been playing hot potato with the puck, turning it over consistently in dangerous areas on the ice. In the later stages, after the power play and all that possession, Seattle’s puck management improved, and eventually the Kraken got rewarded when Marcus Johansson potted the game-winning goal at 16:52.
So, perhaps the fight didn’t really create the momentum or the turning point that led to the victory, but the outcome of the fight certainly did, narratives be damned.
Takeaway #3: The Kraken had their whole team healthy… for a little while
Mason Appleton played his first game since Oct. 26, when he injured his ankle against the Montreal Canadiens. His inclusion in the lineup Wednesday pushed Nathan Bastian onto waivers to make space and meant Hakstol had his whole group simultaneously healthy for the first time this season.
That lasted all of two periods.
In the first 30 seconds of the third period, Svechnikov gave Calle Jarnkrok a cross check just outside the Hurricanes’ crease, and Jarnkrok went down on all fours. Jordan Staal then fell on top of Jarnkrok, who stayed down for a bit and eventually got up and hobbled to the bench, putting minimal weight on his left leg. Jarnkrok went down the tunnel and did not return, and Hakstol had no update after the game.
The injury could prove… painful… on a lot of levels for the Kraken. Most obviously, if Jarnkrok misses time, that means the full healthy group will have been extremely short-lived. But Jarnkrok played his best game of the season on Sunday, scoring his first two points, and looked like he was starting to finally find his game. Plus, with Bastian waived, there’s a chance the Kraken could lose him on Thursday (we will know if this happens on Thursday morning).
The timing of most of Seattle’s returns and exits into and out of the lineup have aligned quite nicely, so they’ve largely avoided having to waive players they didn’t want to waive. This one could end up stinging.
UPDATE: Bastian was indeed claimed by his old team, the New Jersey Devils.
