Seattle Kraken versus Minnesota Wild 7 p.m. Pacific Time Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle, Washington TV: ROOT Sports Radio: AM 950 KJR
We’ve said on several occasions that the time for excuses has passed for the struggling Seattle Kraken, who have lost three straight and five of their last six games. Most of the excuses themselves—new team, new building, new systems—evaporated as we eclipsed the one-month mark of the season. But there was always that one little “injury and illness” excuse bouncing around in the backs of our brains, and now even that excuse is almost entirely gone for the last-place Kraken (4-9-1), who desperately need to find a win Saturday at home against the Minnesota Wild (9-4-0).
At long last, Colin Blackwell will play his first game for the Kraken on Saturday, meaning coach Dave Hakstol will (almost) have his whole group available to him for the first time.
Colin Blackwell making debut, Riley Sheahan on waivers
Seattle held a lightly attended optional practice on Friday, so morning skate Saturday was far more structured than we’ve seen on other game days. The team had almost full participation and actually did line rushes and power play work, both of which are rare at morning skates.
The only players that weren’t on the ice were Jaden Schwartz (some members of the media thought they had seen him early on, but then Nathan Bastian took his place in line rushes) and Riley Sheahan. Hakstol confirmed Schwartz is available, so his absence is nothing to worry about, and Sheahan… well, Sheahan was placed on waivers to make room for Blackwell.
We at Sound Of Hockey were not surprised to see Blackwell inserted into the lineup, because it was obvious that he was getting closer and closer to returning from a nagging lower-body injury that had kept him out since the start of training camp. We were surprised, though, that the corresponding roster move was to waive Sheahan, who had played all 14 games for the Kraken to date. We thought Sheahan would come out of the lineup, but we also figured Will Borgen—who has not yet played a game—would be the one waived.
Of course, Borgen is younger and as a right-shot defenseman with upside is more likely to be claimed than a veteran grinder like Sheahan. So, it makes sense from that perspective, but it’s a reminder of what a brutal business the NHL can be. Sheahan had been a good soldier who played his role well, while Borgen is likely to continue watching games from the press box and not getting any opportunity to play games in either the NHL or the AHL.
Blackwell, an affable guy and big personality, was over the moon to be making his debut.
“I’m ready to go, finally,” Blackwell said Saturday. “It’s been a long process, just trying to get better every single day, and I’ve been feeling really good recently. I got cleared so really looking forward to tonight and finally getting out there with these guys. They’ve been battling for a little while, so wish I could have been out there. Just being out there at Climate Pledge [Arena] too for me, it’s going to be pretty special.”
Almost the full roster for Seattle
With Blackwell in for the first time Saturday, and Jared McCann back as of Thursday when he scored two goals against the Ducks, the Kraken will dress their deepest lineup to date. They’ve had COVID issues and several injuries to this point, and now with only Mason Appleton out with a lower-body injury, we will see what a (mostly) complete roster can do.
Blackwell was skating Saturday with Morgan Geekie and Brandon Tanev on what figures to be the fourth line. That’s a pretty unique fourth line, though, with more skill than you would typically see from a bottom trio. This should give Hakstol an opportunity to roll all four of his lines with a potential for offensive output from every layer of the forward group.
It’s also interesting to think how quickly the fourth line has evolved with guys coming back from protocol and injured reserve. For so many games we saw Sheahan centering Max McCormick and Nathan Bastian. Saturday, McCormick is in the AHL, Sheahan is on waivers, and Bastian is likely a healthy scratch for the second game in a row.
This is what happens when you get (almost) your whole group healthy at the same time.
Minnesota Wild
The Kraken take on the Minnesota Wild for the second meeting of the season. These two teams played at Climate Pledge Arena on Oct. 28, a night when Seattle really turned in a complete effort in front of Philipp Grubauer—who had one of his most solid performances of the season, stopping 30 of 31 shots—and came away with a 4-1 win.
That night, Seattle got the timely save by Grubauer that it has been lacking on a lot of nights. In the closing minutes of the second period, Yanni Gourde turned a puck over to Wild superstar Kirill Kaprizov in the neutral zone. Kaprizov came in all alone, and Grubauer made a huge save with his blocker. It’s a moment that stands out as exactly what Seattle needs more of to be successful.
On their first visit to Seattle, Mats Zuccarello was in COVID protocol, meaning Kaprizov did not have his favorite teammate dishing the puck to him. Zuccarello is back for Saturday’s game. Kaprizov and Kevin Fiala also had not been scoring prior to that contest, but they have since notched three and two goals respectively, and both have constantly looked dangerous.
The Wild have won four of their last five, but came up short in their last game Thursday against Vegas. They’ve been comeback kids all season long, so hold on tightly if the Kraken find themselves with a one- or two-goal lead in the third period.
The play of Philipp Grubauer in the early stages of the season for the Seattle Kraken has been a hot topic among fans. We’ve mostly defended him, because we know there’s a lot of context to consider for goalies and because we know he’s better than what he’s been showing. We also wondered if the analytics on what he’s been giving up were as bad as the eye ball test was indicating.
For this week’s data dump, let’s dig into the analytics around Grubauer’s performance to date and see if there are any insights to gain. I am a little afraid of what I might find.
Quality of shots
Last week, I touched on shots and shot quality when evaluating the team’s performance. This week I am flipping the script and evaluating how good Grubauer has been at saving shots at the various quality categories defined by Natural Stat Trick and how that save percentage relates to his peers.
The shot quality categories I am going to look at are high, medium, and low danger shots. How a shot fits in those categories is related to distance and angle from the net. The closer and more square to the net a shot is taken, the higher the danger category.
I isolated all goalies who have played six or more games this season and plotted their save percentage by shot category. (All shot quality data is from NaturalStatTrick.com.)
Yikes. His numbers look poor when compared to the rest of the league, and I imagine even Grubauer himself would admit he has been struggling this season compared to last season. For anyone paying attention, particularly the last few games, this should not come as a surprise.
Let us look at how his numbers compare to last season.
Ok, it’s clear that Grubauer is struggling. The real question is why is he struggling?
Learning a system?
The Kraken are going through a rough patch with three losses in a row including a loss to, at the time, the winless Arizona Coyotes. I took that loss to the Coyotes tougher than I would have expected for Game 12 of 82 in the inaugural season. As they say, it is better to feel the pain than to feel nothing at all.
After the Arizona game there was a lot of discussion online about Grubauer’s performance in the crease this season, but on Saturday night, there was one tweet that stood out:
Kraken fans: The first time I ever interviewed Philipp Grubauer was in his first few months with Colorado and he’s been… just all right, and admitted as much to me. Said he’s big into getting comfortable with a system and it takes him a while to settle in with a new team.
For those that don’t know, Cat Silverman is a well respected writer and goalie analyst, so when she tweets something like this, I read it. It was an interesting perspective. I’ve always been under the impression that the strategy is to stop the puck, no matter what personnel or “system” is in front of you, and I never thought that a goalie must learn those systems as well.
While doing my soul searching in the aftermath of the Arizona game, I started to dig into the data to see if Cat’s tweet held any water.
I looked at save percentage by game, comparing Grubauer’s 2018-19 season, his first in Colorado when he would have been learning the systems there, to the 2021-22 season.
If you look at Grubauer’s first half of his first season in Colorado, you can see the inconsistency in the graph with a lot of games with a save percentage in the .700’s and .800’s. At least directionally, this seems to validate Cat’s tweet that Grubauer needs time to settle into a new system.
Give him time
Grubauer has been a very good goalie over the last few years and a goalie does not turn into a pumpkin between seasons. There were a lot of people that claimed Grubauer was a bust in the first part of his first season in Colorado, but he ended that regular season with a .917 save percentage and then had a .925 save percentage in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Goaltending can and will be frustrating at times, but I am going to give Grubauer more time to settle in before making a full assessment of his performance.
If you have any questions, insights, or feedback, let us know in the comments section.
The Sound Of Hockey Podcast is back with a new chuckle-inducing episode that the guys think you will really enjoy. As always, it’s heavy on the segbits, as John, Andy, and Darren meander through the world of hockey, both at the NHL level and beyond. Plenty of Seattle Kraken talk to start the show, like what happened on a painful road trip and how much of the recent struggles have been due to goaltending.
But then the guys shift their focus to discuss:The Jack Eichel trade The Bob Murray resignation The quality of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Segments this week include Sound Of Hockey’s Three Stars, Down on the Farm, Goalie Gear Corner, Weekly One-Timers, and Tweets of the Week.
Hockey is a chaotic sport, and perhaps that’s what makes it so entertaining to watch. Every time you go to the rink, you just never know what kind of a game you’re going to see. Thursday’s 7-4 Kraken defeat at the hands of the upstart Anaheim Ducks, though disappointing in terms of the result, truly had everything you could possibly want in a hockey game. It was high scoring, high flying, high intensity, and high drama.
The disheartening result is damaging for Seattle and huge for Anaheim, which has now vaulted into second place in the Pacific Division with its sixth win in as many games. The third straight Kraken loss simply means the challenge of getting back in the race is even tougher now.
For the Kraken, the intensity didn’t switch on until the second period, and they were back to chasing the game from the jump. To their credit, they never quit and continued to battle back, even as one-goal deficits turned into two-goal deficits. Every time that happened, they picked themselves up and got back to within striking distance of a tying goal, but that equalizer proved elusive.
Every inch Seattle took it gave right back to Anaheim.
Slow start proves costly for Kraken against Ducks
Of their several defensive breakdowns in the first period, only one was costly, as Grubauer stood tall to turn away the other 13 shots he faced.
That most glaring miscue came fewer than five minutes into the game. In transition, Carson Soucy—playing left defense—found himself just a few feet away from partner Vince Dunn on the right side of the ice. That meant Max Comtois was gliding in all alone on the weak side. From the dot, he wound and fired a shot that Grubauer stopped, but as the puck bounced around in front of the net, 18-year-old Mason McTavish found it and buried his second career NHL goal.
There was no pushback offensively, and Seattle got just four pucks on the usually impermeable John Gibson. As the Kraken went to the dressing room, it was clear they would need to bring a lot more heat to break through.
Said Jordan Eberle, “We’re finding ways to lose. Tonight was a little different. I thought we started really slow, they really took it to us and [Philipp Grubauer] really kept us in it. We were lucky to be down one after one there.”
A very strange, high-flying period of hockey
The Kraken did break through in the second, but so too did the Ducks in a bizarre period of hockey.
It started with Jeremy Lauzon laying a high hit on Isac Lundestrom, which the Ducks did not like. Comtois went right after Lauzon, and the two tussled, both landing themselves in the penalty box. Oddly, Lauzon got an extra minor penalty on the play for his initial hit, while Comtois—who started the brouhaha—only got the one for roughing. That dustup set the tone for the strange frame.
Troy Terry used Mark Giordano as a screen to score his 10th (!!!) goal and 17th point of the season, giving Anaheim its first two-goal lead at 3:10. Terry looked dangerous every time he touched the puck, which is no surprise with the incredible hot streak he’s been on to start the season. The 24-year-old is just oozing confidence right now, and he showed it Thursday.
Jaden Schwartz answered 35 seconds later when he took a pass from Jordan Eberle off the rush and rifled it off the crossbar and in to bring the Kraken back within one.
Just when you thought the Kraken were starting to cook, Josh Mahura, off an offensive zone face-off win, blasted it through traffic. It beat Grubauer on a shot he never saw, and just like that it was again a two-goal deficit for Seattle.
The earlier issue with Lauzon was apparently not settled in the eyes of the Ducks, as Josh Manson challenged him, and the two dropped the gloves and threw a bunch of right jabs and crosses at one another, before Lauzon ultimately took Manson down to the ice.
The fight appeared to re-energize the Kraken, as Jared McCann, playing his first game since a bout with COVID, went hard to the net and a Ryan Donato pass bounced off him and through Gibson. In case you’ve lost count, the score at that point was 3-2.
The second period scoring was not quite done, though, as Kevin Shattenkirk re-established Anaheim’s two-goal lead at 15:46 on the one goal of the night that Grubauer would have wanted back. From the right dot, Shattenkirk snapped a shot that just squeezed through Grubauer’s armpit, and as soon as he realized it had gotten through, he looked skyward in disgust.
That brought the game to 4-2 to close out the second, and surely this thing was over, right?
Not so fast. The third period was every bit as wild as the second. Oh, and before we go there, just to add one bizarre cherry on top of a bizarre period, Gibson got in the grill of Brandon Tanev behind the play and held onto his stick for a good ten seconds. The referees stood and waited for them to sort it out, even though Gibson was visibly preventing Tanev from skating away.
It was all very strange.
Eberle stays hot, but Kraken come up short
Eberle continued his hot streak 3:57 into the final frame. On a two-on-one rush, Alex Wennberg sauced a perfect pass onto Eberle’s tape. As Gibson sprawled to cover the yawning cage, a confident Eberle buried it, putting Seattle back in business. That’s the sixth goal in four games for Eberle and his eighth in Seattle’s last eight.
Six minutes later, Hampus Lindholm pinballed one through traffic, making it 5-3. NOW it was over, right? Still no.
Exactly one minute elapsed before McCann took a pass from Donato while streaking into the offensive zone. He made a hard and deft cut to the middle, and in one fell swoop let go a howitzer that pinged off the right post and in to cut the deficit to one yet again.
The Kraken continued to push, and the line of Eberle, Schwartz, and Wennberg just missed on several prime scoring chances in the closing minutes. But an ill-timed goalie pull, just as that line was changing, gave Sam Carrick an easy empty netter and put the nail in the coffin.
Just to rub a little salt in the wound, Terry added another empty netter for his 11th (!!!) of the season and brought the final score to 7-4.
Frustrating loss against a good team
This latest loss was frustrating for players and fans alike on a lot of levels. The start was not good, but Grubauer bailed the team out in the first period and gave Seattle a chance going into the second.
Then as the game went on, the Kraken would gain ground but give it right back like they were engaged in trench warfare. That simply can’t continue to happen. For all the resiliency that this team has demonstrated, it rarely seems to get over the hump when it’s trying to mount a comeback. Giving back goals after working so hard to score just kills Seattle’s momentum, and it’s the latest troubling trend for this group.
As the standings climb gets more and more daunting, nights like Thursday are a stark reminder that the Pacific Division is better than it has been in recent years. The Ducks used to be viewed as easy points, but not anymore. Their long-standing youth movement is finally bearing fruit. They have evolved into a talented, fast, and exciting hockey club, with more young, impactful players still on the way.
The Kraken truly can’t afford to take more time to figure out ways to win instead of ways to lose. The climb back into the playoff race is getting steeper by the day.
Seattle will face the Minnesota Wild Saturday in the second game of this six-game homestand.
Seattle Kraken versus Anaheim Ducks 7 p.m. Pacific time Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle, Washington TV: ROOT Sports Radio: AM 950 KJR
As the saying goes, you have to make hay when the sun is shining. Of course, this is November in Seattle, and the sun almost never shines this time of year, but as it pertains to the Kraken, they are in last place and are now entering an uber-important six-game homestand. Sunshine or not, it’s time to make some hay.
The sun does shine in Anaheim this time of year, and it has been particularly bright there in the early stages of this season. A young team, the Ducks are on fire and represent a herculean task for the Seattle Kraken on Thursday.
Lineup questions
Coach Dave Hakstol was mostly coy in his morning press availability on Thursday (as he always is) about his lineup plans and indicated there will be a few “game-time decisions” for him and his staff. He did confirm that Jared McCann will play in his first game since entering COVID protocol two weeks ago.
McCann, who has seven points in eight games (3-4=7), is a key piece of the offensive attack for Seattle, and his absence was noticeable. He shared on Wednesday that he was hit hard by COVID, losing his senses of taste and smell, and lacked energy. Wednesday was also his first time back on the ice, so we shall see if he can perform to the best of his abilities Thursday.
In pre-season, McCann centered a dynamic line with Jordan Eberle and Jaden Schwartz that dominated at times. The trio was broken up early in the regular season, though, as Hakstol tried to squeeze goals out of his snake bitten group.
Toward the end of McCann’s absence, Alex Wennberg got slotted between Eberle and Schwartz, at which point Eberle got hot and scored five goals in three games. Interestingly, McCann was back in that spot at practice Wednesday and spoke as if he expects to play with Schwartz and Eberle.
What remains unclear is whether Yanni Gourde will be available Thursday. It is believed he was injured when he blocked a shot with his knee in the first period against Vegas on Tuesday. He did return after that and scored a goal but missed most of the third. He did not participate in practice Wednesday but was on the ice at Thursday’s optional morning skate. UPDATE: Looks like Gourde is in, as is Ryan Donato.
Goalie talk
The goaltending has gotten a lot of attention from the fledgling Kraken fanbase of late. Chris Driedger made his first start Tuesday in a 4-2 loss to the Golden Knights after Philipp Grubauer had a tough night in Arizona on Saturday. Neither netminder has particularly impressive stats, but we believe there’s improvement on the horizon for both.
Hakstol stressed Thursday that he doesn’t really care about their save percentages, but he does care about getting timely saves, which can have such a huge impact on the momentum of a game. At key points—like right after a Kraken goal, for example, or in the opening or closing minutes of a period—does Grubauer come up with the big save? Seattle hasn’t gotten that recently, so that will be something to look for as Grubauer returns to the crease against Anaheim.
Anaheim Ducks
These aren’t the same Ducks that had become so pleasant to play against in recent seasons. The youth movement that was put in motion several years ago—centered around players like Trevor Zegras, Troy Terry, Maxime Comtois, Sam Steel, and others—is starting to pay off, as Anaheim has gotten off to a great start to its season and sits in third place in the Pacific at 7-4-3.
Of course, the man who started that movement, general manager Bob Murray, has just resigned with allegations swirling about his treatment of those inside the organization and an investigation into his conduct underway. Murray’s fingerprints will remain on this roster for years to come, and while what he did behind the scenes is very much in question, the on-ice product appears to be dramatically improving.
Driving that improvement has been the emergence of Terry, who has been unstoppable in his 13 games played this season. The 24-year-old right winger is third in the league in goals with nine and has added seven assists. He scored the game-winning goal for the second straight game Tuesday in Vancouver, which led the Ducks to their fifth consecutive win.
There’s also been a feeling over the past few years that the rebuild in Anaheim has been wasting an exceptional talent in netminder John Gibson, who is now 28 years old. If this team does prove to be the real deal as the season wears on, Gibson will be a huge piece of the success. Gibson gets the nod Thursday. A shoo-in for Team USA in the upcoming Olympics, he is again proving tough to beat with a 2.34 goals against average and .927 save percentage.
Projected lineup
We’re basing this on lines from practice on Wednesday and guessing that Gourde will not play. Of course, this could change dramatically if he does go. UPDATE: With Gourde apparently… Gourde to go, the lines looked very different than they have before in warmups. This is reflected in the projection below.
What looked promising for the Seattle Kraken Tuesday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas turned bad in just 1:33 of game time and they lost 4-2 against the Vegas Golden Knights.
It was the second straight loss on the road for Seattle (4-8-1) in which it held a lead, and Tuesday had a familiar odor to the disappointing loss Saturday in Arizona.
“We’re just a fragile team,” Jordan Eberle, who scored his seventh goal of the season, said. “We’re finding ways to lose instead off finding ways to win.”
After a dominating second period, Yanni Gourde scored a goal to put Seattle up 2-1 with 31 seconds left in the period. Instead of building momentum, it would be Vegas (7-6-0) who tied the game on a goal from Evgenii Dadonov on the next shift with 15 seconds left before intermission.
The Golden Knights rode that wave to score twice on goals from Reilly Smith, one at 30 seconds and again at 1:16 of the third period, to take a two-goal lead and sail to a win. Goalie Robin Lehner made 25 saves, 10 of which were in the third period, to squash any Kraken notions of a comeback.
“This was a hard loss,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “We worked really hard to be in a position going into the third period and that slipped away. We’ve got to reset, practice tomorrow, and get ready for a game Thursday.”
Chris Driedger made his first start in net for Seattle and allowed four goals on 23 shots. Gourde’s goal was his second in two games and third on the season. Eberle scored his seventh goal in seven games to open the scoring in the first period.
It was in the second that the Kraken were gaining control.
Seattle took 75 percent of the unblocked shots at 5-on-5 and 75.8 percent of the quality shots. They also drew two penalties as the ice was tilted and the Kraken were controlling things. They took a deserved 2-1 lead when Brandon Tanev hit a streaking Gourde in stride for a go-ahead goal.
That’s where things turned.
With time running down in the period a Shea Theodore shot was stopped by Driedger, but he couldn’t control or find the rebound and it was poked in by Dadonov to make it 2-2.
“We have to go into the intermission up by one,” Hakstol said. “That’s a goal we can’t give up. We got caught with an out numbered situation at the net on a throw in. That’s a little too easy.”
Vegas grabbed the lead when a Theodore point shot was tipped by Smith in the slot causing Driedger to miss it with his glove. Smith would then knock in a touch pass in front on a Vegas power play to make it 4-2 and sap the life out of the Kraken players.
Driedger had a similar struggle with the glove late in the first period with the Kraken up 1-0. Vegas defenseman Alex Pietrangelo threw a shot on net that seemed to surprise Driedger. Despite getting a piece of it, he was not able to keep it out of the net.
“There’s a couple he’d probably want back,” Hakstol said of Driedger’s game. “He’s got to reset and be ready to go back to work at practice tomorrow.”
The last two games have been a struggle and wiped away the good feeling last week’s win at home over the Buffalo Sabres gained. Trends are starting to emerge as the Kraken can’t find a way to cash in on repeated stretches where they control the play, and they are still looking for timely saves from their goaltenders.
Finishing a team once they’ve built a lead still appears to be a lesson that the team needs to learn.
Power play finally breaks through
One bright spot Tuesday was Seattle finally cashing in on a power play. It came in the first period after Gourde goaded Vegas’ Chandler Stephenson into taking an unsportsmanlike penalty for grabbing Gourde’s visor.
Eberle would then find a rebound in front and score on the backhand. It snapped a streak of 23 straight failed power play attempts.
In a touch of irony, Seattle failed on two second-period power plays which would have gone a long way to giving them a two-goal lead and change the tone of the contest. Even when the power play works the Kraken still managed to have it let them down.
“We’ve got to get feeling good about ourselves,” Mark Giordano said. “In tight games, we’ve got to find a way to still make those plays.”
Other Kraken game notes
— Marcus Johansson returned to the lineup Tuesday for Seattle. He last played in the season opener, also against Vegas, but recorded an assist on Eberle’s goal.
— Ryan Donato was injured in Arizona and was not in the lineup Tuesday. Hakstol did not have an update.
— Gourde did not play the last six minutes of the game, apparently suffering an injury. Hakstol did not disclose what the nature of the injury was nor did he offer any status update. Earlier in the game, Gourde took a shot off the knee but returned to the ice for his next shift.
— The Kraken open a six-game homestand at Climate Pledge Arena Thursday with a game against the Anaheim Ducks.
Seattle Kraken at Vegas Golden Knights 7 p.m. Pacific time T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas, Nevada Watch: ESPN+, Hulu (Streaming only) Radio: AM 950 KJR
Back to where it all began, the Seattle Kraken are in Vegas on Tuesday to take on the Golden Knights for the second time in their existence and the first time since opening their inaugural season on the Strip. Circumstances are a bit different this time around, as we know a lot more about both teams, but this is still a tough building and a tough opponent, and it is again an important game for Seattle.
The Kraken are coming off a painful loss to the worst team in the league, the previously winless Arizona Coyotes, on Saturday. It was a game in which Seattle scored two goals and chased the opposing netminder in the very first minute of the game. In the second and third periods the Kraken allowed three unanswered goals to give Arizona a lead, then fought back to find the tying goal with 1:18 left. But just seconds later, a bad Adam Larsson turnover in the corner led to the game-winning goal by Lawson Crouse.
It was a night that Seattle fans hope to forget, but it will live on in infamy as the night those same fans completely lost it on Twitter for the first time (seriously, our mentions were… something).
Dave Hakstol acknowledged that it was a difficult game for the team, but hopes they can learn from it. “You gotta grow as a team out of some of the tough experiences,” he said Monday. “And that was a tough experience the other night. It was disappointing for all of us, but it gives you the opportunity also to learn something about yourselves and to be able to grow together.”
Tuesday, the Kraken look to right the ship against a banged up Vegas team.
Out goes Donato, in comes Johansson
Adding injury to insult on Saturday, Ryan Donato went head-first into the endboards on a very awkward play in the first period. He was slow to get up, but did eventually rise and looked ok in the immediate aftermath. He soon went down the tunnel, though, and did not return. Donato did not practice on Monday, but was back wearing a red non-contact jersey at morning skate on Tuesday.
Hakstol confirmed in his press availability after morning skate that Marcus Johansson will return against Vegas, so he will slot into Donato’s spot. Though the Kraken kept saying Johansson was still day to day, it’s not a huge surprise that he’s ready to go. He had been practicing in full, and nobody had been recalled from the AHL to replace Donato in the lineup.
Ironically, Johansson’s only game came at T-Mobile Arena on opening night, after which he somewhat mysteriously popped up on injured reserve and hasn’t played since. He had a big role in preseason and registered 16:13 of ice time with one shot on goal in that first game.
Chris Driedger starting Tuesday
On the previously discussed topic of our Twitter mentions, we hear your goaltending concerns loud and clear. You’re right that Philipp Grubauer has not been at his best so far and statistically has fallen toward the bottom of the league, but there is always context to consider with goalies.
First, Grubauer has been getting very heavily used. Some of that is the decision of the coach—after all, he did give the first five starts of the season to Grubauer—but some of that is simply terrible timing for Driedger to get injured. We all expected more of a 1A/1B platoon scenario, but that just hasn’t worked out. That can still come to fruition, though, and Driedger can start commanding more time with a quality start in Vegas.
Second, goaltending is a mentally taxing position that ebbs and flows during the course of an 82-game season, so give Grubauer time. He will get hot at some point, and you’ll go back to worshipping him as quickly as you might have stopped.
All that said, those that are clamoring for a Driedger start get their wish on Tuesday, as Hakstol confirmed he will go against Vegas. We did not anticipate that it would take until the twelfth game of the season before seeing him officially get the nod from the beginning of a game, but it’s better late than never.
Last season in Florida, Driedger was 14-6-3 with a 2.07 goals against average and .927 save percentage.
Vegas Golden Knights
Vegas currently has the following players listed on injured reserve: Mark Stone, Max Pacioretty, Nolan Patrick, Zach Whitecloud, and… Jack Eichel. William Karlsson is also out with a broken foot, though he for some reason is not officially listed on IR, and Alex Tuch and Peyton Krebs were traded in the Eichel deal.
That’s a lot of quality, regular players missing for the Golden Knights, who have been dressing guys like Michael Amadio and Jonas Rondbjerg to fill in. Paul Cotter is also expected to make his NHL debut Tuesday.
The Golden Knights beat Seattle on opening night, then lost four straight before rebounding—despite the injuries stacking up—for five wins in their last seven games. They did lose 5-2 in Detroit on Sunday, but have climbed back to .500 after a horrible start.
It’s an opportunistic team that showed how quickly it can strike the last time these teams played each other. That night, Seattle was playing an aggressive style that left things pretty wide open through the neutral zone. But the Kraken have adjusted their approach dramatically since then, so perhaps the goals won’t come quite as easily for the Golden Knights this time around.
Oh, and speaking of Eichel, holy cats, the Golden Knights traded for Eichel!
The disc replacement surgery that caused his rift with Buffalo has been scheduled for Nov. 12, then if all goes according to plan, the recovery should be about three months. So we won’t actually see him until at least February. When the superstar center does return, the Golden Knights are going to have to make some very tough calls to get themselves under the salary cap… but then they’ll have Eichel.
It’s been a season of firsts for the Seattle Kraken, but being the first team to lose to the Arizona Coyotes was not a first they wanted any part of.
But that’s what happened at Gila River Arena Saturday as the Kraken (4-7-1) raced to a 3-1 lead in the first period and then were outscored 4-1 the rest of the way for Arizona (1-10-1) to win 5-4.
It was a loss for the expansion team that could only be described as ‘bad.’
After giving up the lead with just over six minutes left in the game, and with Philipp Grubauer at the bench for an extra skater, Seattle tied the game at 18:42 on a Mark Giordano slap shot, and it looked like they would at least salvage a point by forcing overtime.
But 13 seconds later, Adam Larsson turned the puck over behind his own net, and it was passed out to Lawson Crouse who scored the go-ahead goal on his second of the night.
“Obviously that’s a real disappointing loss,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said.
The Kraken stormed out of the gates Saturday and Jordan Eberle scored at the 15 second mark with a backhand from in close followed by a Yanni Gourde goal at the 59 second mark, scored off the rush. That chased Coyotes starter Karel Vejmelka who gave up goals on each of the two shots he faced. Scott Wedgewood, who was just claimed off waivers by the Coyotes on Nov. 4, replaced him and made 27 saves to give Arizona a chance to come back.
“I don’t know. We got two quick goals and I don’t think we played real well after that,” Gourde said. “We weren’t managing the puck really well, weren’t playing fast, weren’t playing with our identity.”
Perhaps a harbinger of the way the night was going to end up came after the two early Kraken goals.
Just 34 seconds after Gourde scored, Seattle’s Morgan Geekie turned the puck over in the neutral zone and Shayne Gostisbehere found Antoine Roussel who had a two-on-one breaking into the Kraken zone. Roussel scored his first of the year and the Coyotes stemmed the tide a bit.
Even then, things looked good for Seattle as Nathan Bastian answered that goal at 11:04 of the opening period with his first goal as a Kraken.
The period ended with Seattle up 3-1 and leading in unblocked shot attempts and a somewhat dominating 59.77 expected goal percentage (xGF) – meaning not only were they getting more shot attempts but higher quality shots at that. This is how the game was supposed to go considering the Coyotes had been woeful the first 10 games of the season.
But Arizona quietly began to walk the Kraken down in the second period.
After a dump in by the Coyotes, Haydn Fleury got to the puck and the Kraken defender threw a backhanded pass up the boards in an attempt to break out. Gostisbehere read it, pinched, and broke the pass up. The puck would get to Travis Boyd who had an easy one-timer to cut the lead to 3-2 at 3:12.
The Coyotes started to turn the tide while down only one goal. They matched the Kraken in shot attempts and swung the quality shots to their side with an xGF of 59.77 in the second period.
“We had some of the pieces to our game, but we didn’t have the completeness at all,” Hakstol said. “That shows in… volume of chances. We didn’t make them work hard enough to get (chances).”
Third period unravels for Kraken
With a 3-2 lead for Seattle things started frantically in the third. The Kraken were in on Wedgewood on the first shift, nearly scoring on a couple of great looks. But they didn’t go in and Arizona transitioned the other way, getting the puck behind the Seattle net.
Johan Larsson beat the Kraken defenders to the puck and flung it in front to Crouse who blasted a shot to tie the game 3-3 at the 46 second mark.
“We got a good start early in the third, had a good shift,” Gourde said. “They get a scoring chance and score, quick turnaround. We’ve got to manage the game better…we got more looks in the third, but we’ve got to be better than that. Our identity is to play 60 minutes hard and we didn’t do that.”
Gourde is right, Seattle did get more looks in the third. A lot more.
Seattle had 18 unblocked shot attempts to the Coyotes 7 and had 77 percent of the quality shot attempts. Wedgewood made 12 saves in the period to keep Arizona in it. That allowed Phil Kessel to put the home team ahead at 13:34 with a power-play goal.
The goal was set up by Gostisbehere who ended with three assists.
“We’ll look at the clips, look at the tape and come up with an answer,” Gourde said. “Overall, our battle level, they won more battles than we did.”
— Seattle was 0-for-2 on the power play and has failed on 22 straight attempts.
— Ryan Donato was hurt after falling into the boards in the first period and did not return. After the game, Hakstol said that he did not have an update on the forward.
— Saturday was multi-goal comeback night in the NHL. Arizona came back from down two and was the third team to do so, joining the Vegas Golden Knights, the Minnesota Wild, and the Detroit Red Wings.
— With Eberle and Gourde scoring for the Kraken in the first 59 seconds, Seattle became the first road team to do so since the St. Louis Blues at Anaheim on Jan. 30 of 2004.
Seattle Kraken at Arizona Coyotes 7 p.m. Pacific time Gila River Arena, Glendale, Arizona TV: ROOT Sports Radio: 950 AM KJR
There are winnable games, and then there are games against the Arizona Coyotes, who still have a zero in the ‘W’ column after 10 games. At 0-9-1, it’s easy to look past a matchup like this, but the Kraken will need to bear down and make certain they come away with two points in the standings Saturday.
Philipp Grubauer is getting the nod in goal once again. We dig into this decision a bit more below.
Power play remedy?
Morgan Geekie was shifted to the left halfwall on the power play in Thursday’s 5-2 Kraken win over the Buffalo Sabres. Seattle still didn’t score on the man advantage that night and are now 30th in the league in this category, clicking at a miserable 8.33 percent. But Geekie’s first-period goal came just seconds after a Sabres penalty had ended, when Seattle was still clearly in power play mode.
The reason it’s notable that Geekie was on the left side is that he was already opened up and ready to fire when an Alex Wennberg pass through the seam found him in the left circle. Previously, when he was on the right side, he had to circle around the puck before he could shoot. We like this setup a lot more, as it puts one of the Kraken’s biggest cannons in a position to get the puck away with less time for the goalie to come across.
Keep a close eye on Seattle’s power play Saturday to see if it can finally break through and start improving on those dismal numbers.
By the way, Geekie brought the house down after practice on Friday. You must watch this if you haven’t already.
During preseason, we saw Jordan Eberle, Jaden Schwartz, and Jared McCann (the J’s) form impressive chemistry. As the team struggled to score in the early parts of the season, coach Dave Hakstol started mixing things up to try to find a new formula, then McCann went into Covid protocol.
On Thursday, Schwartz and Eberle were put back together halfway through the game, with Wennberg in the middle. Collectively, the group took off offensively, as Eberle potted the first hat trick in team history and Schwartz added an empty netter and assisted on two of Eberle’s goals.
It goes without saying that the trio will be back together on Saturday.
What’s the deal with Seattle’s goalie usage?
Hakstol confirmed that Grubauer will start again on Saturday for Seattle, which will bring him to 10 starts in 12 games for the team. There is some context to consider here, because Chris Driedger was out with a knee injury from Oct. 18 until earlier this week, and they’re being careful with him. Nonetheless, Hakstol has really been deploying Grubauer as a true No. 1 netminder, rather than rotating him with Driedger or—in Driedger’s absence—Daccord.
We did not expect this to be the case entering the season, especially with a guy like Driedger on the roster. After all, he stole the net away from Sergei Bobrovsky for good chunks of last season with Florida, and Bobrovsky makes $10 million a year.
We asked Hakstol this week if we might see more of a shift toward a platoon as the season progresses. “That’s not a prediction that I want to make as we go forward,” he said. “Too many things change in the short term from injuries to performance to the different segments of the schedule.
“The rhythm that we’ve had Phil in has been comfortable. We’ve had good practice time over the last two weeks here. We’ve had a pretty good rhythm in terms of rest and days off, and the games for—whether it’s Chris or in the case of the last couple weeks Joey to step in and play—will be very important. In terms of the numbers of [starts], I don’t have a prediction for you on that right now.”
So, that doesn’t sound like a shift toward more consistent rotation is coming any time soon.
It’s not how we expected things to shake out, but leaning on one guy is still very normal in the NHL. A look at netminder usage around the league confirms this.
Only the New Jersey Devils are excluded from the above graphic because none of their goalies have started more than 50 percent of their games.
Arizona Coyotes
After the Coyotes missed last season’s playoffs for the seventh time in eight tries, Rick Tocchet was replaced in the offseason by Andre Tourigny. Tourigny, a former NHL assistant coach, head coach of the Ottawa 67’s, and head coach of Team Canada at the World Junior Championship, certainly did not foresee the first 10 games of his tenure going this badly.
It’s also not a huge surprise, though. Arizona demonstrated that it was ready for an even deeper tank mode than before when it traded Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Conor Garland to Vancouver for the No. 9 overall pick in this past draft, plus Loui Eriksson, Jay Beagle, and Antoine Roussel.
Seriously, the Coyotes have been terrible. They rank last in the NHL in goals for with 14 and are in a league of their own there, seven goals behind the next-worst club in Dallas. Clayton Keller leads the team in goals with a whopping three, while Phil Kessel, Arizona’s other top scorer, has just one on the season.
Defensively, they aren’t much better, ranking second-to-last in goals allowed with 44. That’s three better than the 32nd-ranked team, Chicago, who fired coach Jeremy Colliton on Saturday.
A bad offense plus a bad defense do not make a winning team.
The one concern for the Kraken against the Coyotes is that they have had a hard time finishing on their many, MANY chances this season, and Karel Vejmelka—the starting goalie for Arizona—has been better than his 0-7-1 record would indicate.
Believe it or not, Vejmelka has so far turned in a very respectable .920 save percentage and 2.60 goals against average. He has only given up more than three goals one time this season, and that came against the first-place Edmonton Oilers on a two-goal night for Connor McDavid. The most crooked numbers, which have skewed Arizona’s team stats, have come on nights when Carter Hutton or Ivan Prosvetov have started.
Making things tougher for the lowly Coyotes is that they are on the second of back-to-backs after losing 3-1 Friday in Anaheim.
Projected lineup
Marcus Johansson, Colin Blackwell, and Mason Appleton remain on injured reserve, though Johansson and Blackwell both skated with the team at practice for the first time on Friday.
