Seattle Kraken versus Vancouver Canucks 7 p.m. Pacific time Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle, Washington How to watch: CBC or stream on Hulu or ESPN+ Radio: 950 KJR AM
A wise and very angry lead singer once whispered into a heavily distorted microphone, “It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?” That singer wasZack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine, and he was most certainly not talking about the Seattle Kraken home opener, which will finally be played Saturday against the Vancouver Canucks.
But that lyric feels like it fits, doesn’t it?
Yes, it does have to start somewhere, and there truly is no better place than here, in Seattle, at Climate Pledge Arena. No more city council meetings. No more construction updates. No more arguing about what the team name should be. No more discussion about who the Kraken will pick from which team. Now, it starts. Now, we just show up and celebrate.
Aw, hell, you can’t stop us now.
No more excuses
It truly was a grind of a road trip for Seattle, with five games in eight nights played in five different cities, spread across three timezones, and with injuries hitting the team along with plenty of Covid-related drama.
There was no time for practice, and the group was surely exhausted by the time it took the ice for its final game of the trip in New Jersey.
But all that is in the past now. The team had a day off followed by two days of practice, and for the first time in the history of the franchise, it will take home ice Saturday with a crowd fully behind it.
There were some obvious issues that needed fixing by the Kraken, and the hope coming off the trip was that a couple practices would allow coach Dave Hakstol and his staff to address them.
“We had a couple of really good workdays,” Hakstol said Friday. “We wanted to pinpoint certain areas, and we were able to do that. In general, our transition game from defense to offense, from offense to defense is really the area that we needed— one of the areas we needed to clean up, both with and without the puck, so that’s one of the areas that we touched on.”
The Covid drama has also apparently subsided within the organization, at least for now. After getting Yanni Gourde and Vince Dunn back from injury prior to the game against the Devils, veteran forward Calle Jarnkrok, who had been in Covid protocol for nearly two weeks, is expected to play his first official game for Seattle.
Inserting players like Gourde and Jarnkrok into the forward lineup changes the whole makeup of the team, and Hakstol will be able to roll out the deepest lineup he has been afforded to date.
So, no more excuses.
Kraken need a hot start
On their very challenging five-game road trip that the Kraken ended with a 1-3-1 record, they made a habit out of falling behind early. Though the team showed resiliency by battling back in Vegas, Nashville, and New Jersey, this trend can’t continue for long if Seattle expects to be in the hunt for a playoff position later in the season.
Saturday, with a rocking building, there will be a lot of emotions at play, and this should propel Seattle to a hot start. It will be Vancouver’s mission to withstand the initial onslaught and counter with a goal or two of its own, like we’ve seen other teams do against the Kraken.
Seattle needs to take advantage of the extra boost at the beginning. Potting a goal or two early would blow the once suspended roof off the newly christened arena.
“The energy obviously is going to be great,” said Kraken captain Mark Giordano after practice on Friday. “The only thing you can get in trouble with when you’re too excited is penalties and stuff like that. I don’t think our team has an issue with that—knock on wood—but yeah, just use that energy in a positive way.”
Vancouver Canucks
After Vancouver showed well in the NHL bubble two seasons ago, reaching the second round, there was hope in British Columbia that the Canucks would take another step in 2020-21, as their young stars gained another year of maturity.
That did not happen.
Everything went wrong for the club last season, and it finished seventh place in the Scotiabank North Division with a 23-29-4 record.
Now in the eighth year of general manager Jim Benning’s seven-year plan (don’t ask), hope has again returned to Vancouver that perhaps this year the group improves.
There are still the young players that will likely torment Kraken fans for the next decade—Brock Boeser, Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, and Bo Horvat—but Benning added several pieces like Jason Dickinson, Conor Garland, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson that could have an impact.
“They got everybody going. It’s a real good hockey team,” Hakstol said of the Canucks. “When you look at the balance, whether it’s loading up the top six or a balance through nine and 12 forwards. You look at the changes they’ve made on the blue line. The thing that stands out about them is they play fast. They play direct, and they play fast, and they start on time.”
So far, the new mix has brought… mixed results, and Vancouver is 2-2-1 and wrapping up its own brutal six-game road trip Saturday. The Canucks are coming off a 4-1 win over an apparently very stinky Chicago Blackhawks team on Thursday.
WIth Vancouver just a stone’s throw up I-5 (Highway 99 north of the border), the proximity alone should make for a heated rivalry between the Canucks and the Kraken.
It has to start somewhere.
Home opener notes
The Kraken are “taking over” Seattle on Saturday as part of the festivities. Per an email from the team, “Lumen Field, T-Mobile Park, Pac Sci Arches, Climate Pledge Arena, Columbia Tower, and The Great Wheel will be lit in the Kraken colors while flags are being raised at Starbucks HQ and across the fleet of Washington State Ferries.”
A pre-game party at Seattle Center’s Armory Food and Event Hall starts at 4 p.m., and there will also be a ceremony just before puck drop honoring those who helped make NHL hockey a reality in Seattle.
Projected lineup
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at Sound Of Hockey and the host, producer, and editor of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is an inconsistent beer league goalie who believes that five players have to make a mistake before the puck gets to him. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFunBrown or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
A LOT has happened in the hockey world since the last Sound Of Hockey Podcast episode, and the guys are back to bring you up to speed. Specifically, the Seattle Kraken have played five road games since the last show, so there’s a ton to discuss from those games. John and Darren also share their experiences from the game in Vegas and John discusses his experience from Nashville.
The segbits get a little out of control this week.Pacific Pulse (new segbit) Serious Business Bad Boys You Don’t See That Every Day Weekly One-Timers Tweets of the Week
And don’t worry, the guys work in some discussion on the Evander Kane fake vax card.
A LOT has happened in the hockey world since the last Sound Of Hockey Podcast episode, and the guys are back to bring you up to speed. Specifically, the Seattle Kraken have played five road games since the last show, so there’s a ton to discuss from those games. John and Darren also share their experiences from the game in Vegas and John discusses his experience from Nashville.
The segbits get a little out of control this week.
Pacific Pulse (new segbit)
Serious Business
Bad Boys
You Don’t See That Every Day
Weekly One-Timers
Tweets of the Week
And don’t worry, the guys work in some discussion on the Evander Kane fake vax card.
As the Kraken were taking their second regulation road loss in as many nights Tuesday, this one a 4-2 loss at the hands of the New Jersey Devils, their home arena opened its doors to the public for the first time, welcoming concertgoers for an evening with the Foo Fighters and Death Cab for Cutie.
Of course, the concert has no bearing on the Kraken, but seeing the building completed and fully operational is a sight for sore eyes, especially as Seattle’s road-weary hockey team comes home for the first time since training camp. Heck, even in training camp they technically didn’t get to play a home game since the arena was not yet ready, so knowing that the finishing touches have been put on Climate Pledge Arena at this point is a relief for many.
Seattle finished its five-game, season-opening road trip with an underwhelming 1-3-1 record, certainly not what fans might have hoped to see from the new team to begin its inaugural season. But when you consider the circumstances of playing five in eight days across three timezones in a bunch of historically tough buildings, with minimal practice, injuries piling up, and Covid protocol chaos… well, it could have been much worse, frankly.
The Kraken get to come home now, get a few days of recovery and practice, and go back to work with a nice four-game homestand to restore some balance. There are no excuses, but this was undoubtedly a tough way for Seattle to start its first season.
Here are our three takeaways from the most recent loss to the Devils.
Takeaway #1: Slow starts and loose defense do not victories make
In four of Seattle’s five games so far, the opposing team has gotten on the board first. In Vegas, Philadelphia, and New Jersey, the opposition got at least two relatively early goals, making the Kraken chase the game from the jump.
Sometimes you can come back from deficits—Seattle actually did temporarily negate a three-goal lead by Vegas and would have tied the game in New Jersey if not for Alex Wennberg’s goal being challenged and ruled offside—but you simply can’t rely on resiliency every night.
Making things worse, the Kraken, which are built around defense and goaltending, have been a bit loose on the defensive side of the puck. Coach Dave Hakstol has talked quite a bit about giving up too much off the rush, and that was again the case on Tuesday, as Dawson Mercer got his first career goal off a two-on-one just five minutes into the game.
Hopefully for Seattle fans, the end of a brutal road trip that has had twists and turns from the onset will mean a fresher team in a few days.
On Monday and Tuesday, Seattle ran into teams that had only played one game each and had done so in their own respective barns. Nonetheless, the Kraken need to be better in the first 10 minutes of the game.
Takeaway #2: This Yanni Gourde guy is pretty good
We knew it. We just knew it. We hadn’t heard any kind of updates about Yanni Gourde in several days, so we didn’t say anything publicly, but we just had this hunch that Gourde would be in the lineup Tuesday. Sure enough, mere hours before the game, Seattle Kraken PR tweeted that Gourde would be a full participant against the Devils.
And he was good.
“[He had] great energy tonight,” Hakstol said after the game. “He brought a real boost to our lineup, he brings life on the bench, he brings the exact same thing on the ice. So, you know, he was a productive guy out there. He made some plays, he created a lot of o-zone time and did a good job with two linemates that he’s never played with before.”
Gourde was slotted on the top line between Jaden Schwartz and Jordan Eberle. He assisted on Jared McCann’s power play goal and won 56.5 percent of his faceoffs, and he was noticeable just about every time he was on the ice.
While we had a hunch that Gourde and defenseman Vince Dunn might return, we did not expect the last-second goalie shuffle that resulted in Joey Daccord getting the start Tuesday. Chris Driedger, who came on in relief in Philadelphia Monday, got injured, and we really don’t know how or when it happened.
The way this played out for Driedger is similar to Marcus Johansson’s sudden placement on injured reserve after the Vegas game. There was no indication of an injury during the game in Philadelphia, but Tuesday rolls around, and boom! Driedger is on IR, meaning he’ll miss at least a week.
All that said, Daccord played really well on Tuesday. He stopped 29 of 32 shots and made some huge and timely saves for the Kraken.
In the grand scheme of things, a five-game trip is so small. It’s important, no question. But it’s so small.
The bigger picture begins to come into focus on Saturday when Climate Pledge Arena officially welcomes the Seattle Kraken onto home ice for the first time, a moment we’ve all been eagerly awaiting for so long.
And what a magical and thrilling night that will be.
“I think it’s going to be a fantastic night,” Hakstol said Tuesday. “Just the energy and the positivity that has surrounded everything over the last— especially the buildup over the last few months, but really longer than that.
“You know, I haven’t really talked to any of our players about it, but I know that they’re going to be looking forward to it. Coming off of a nine- or ten-day road trip, guys will look forward to getting home, having a day with their families, a day to regroup, and then it’s going to be a great event to look forward to.”
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at Sound Of Hockey and the host, producer, and editor of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is an inconsistent beer league goalie who believes that five players have to make a mistake before the puck gets to him. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFunBrown or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
After a first period where the Seattke Kraken fell behind by a pair of goals to the New Jersey Devils Tuesday, it looked like a repeat of Monday’s blowout loss was on the menu again.
But not this time.
The Kraken pushed back in the second period, got their legs under them, and twice got back within one before finally falling 4-2 against the Devils. The Kraken got goals from Riley Sheahan and Jared McCann while goalie Joey Daccord made 29 saves in an emergency start.
“We just ran out of time and ran out of gas a little bit,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said.
Despite the loss, the Kraken’s third straight, there was excitement as two hours before the game Seattle announced that center Yanni Gourde was coming off injured reserve and would be playing. It would be Gourde’s debut with the Kraken as he has been recovering from an offseason torn labrum operation.
To say he was ‘recovering’ is underselling what he had been up to. Skating with the team from day one of training camp, it was obvious that Gourde was going to be back prior to the initial target of December. At the start of camp, general manager Ron Francis declared Gourde was ‘ahead of schedule.’
Turns out he was way ahead of schedule.
Gourde was good Tuesday. He logged 21:37 of ice time and centered a line with Jared McCann and Jaden Schwartz. While on the ice together the three took 57% of the unblocked shots. Those are encouraging possession numbers.
They didn’t figure in the scoring – Gourde did pick up an assist on a third-period power-play goal – but had several near misses as passes just eluded or hopped over sticks. Schwartz in particular missed the puck by inches on two great feeds from Gourde.
“It’s pretty tough to come in with new linemates, but I think we did a good job of simplifying things and going north and going deep,” Gourde said. “It didn’t work, we didn’t win but we had some good looks.”
New Jersey’s Dawson Mercer opened the scoring by converting a two-on-one at 5:02 of the first period. A bad pinch by defenseman Adam Larsson combined by no high third forward created the break and for the fourth time this season, Seattle gave up the first goal. Just over a minute later Damon Severson would score for the Devils to build a 2-0 lead.
Seattle’s second period was better, and they missed on back-to-back power plays but came close and built momentum. That led to Sheahan’s goal to cut the lead. The momentum was short-lived, though, as Jimmy Vesey would score before the period ended to re-establish New Jersey’s two-goal advantage.
“Not a whole lot had to be said,” Hakstol said about any intermission pep talk he gave the team. “We came out against a fresh team, and they were quicker than us for the majority of the first period. They won a lot of races and got us on transition for one of the goals. As the period went on, I could see us getting our legs.”
McCann would score on a power play late in the third to give the Kraken life again but the Devils would seal the deal with an empty net goal scored by Pavel Zacha.
Daccord answers the call
After making one start in the AHL with Charlotte over the weekend – he made 26 saves and won 4-1 – Daccord was called on to fly to New Jersey and start the game. It turns out that Chris Driedger injured himself at some point during his third period duty Monday in Philadelphia.
Not the best conditions in which to make your first start, but Daccord showed no nerves or uncertainty. He allowed three goals while making 29 saves. None of the goals he allowed were questionable and he made several big saves to keep Seattle within striking distance.
“Joey was outstanding tonight,” Hakstol said. “He made some huge saves for us. It’s not always about big saves it’s when you make them. Joey gave us both, he gave us big saves and he gave them to us at the right time.”
Driedger was placed on injured reserve but no timetable was offered. Daccord will be with the team for at least the next week.
Other notes and tidbits
There was a lot of talk after the game about Seattle’s lack of practice and how it impacted the Kraken as the road trip wore on. “We definitely need some practice time,” captain Mark Giordano said. “You can see it in little areas of the game.”
Seattle will have Wednesday off before getting back to that needed practice on Thursday.
A night after the team didn’t fight as hard as they would like, the compete level was there Tuesday. “I like the fight and the pushback from the guys,” Giordano said. “I think we’re guilty a little bit of guys caring too much. You start squeezing it and overthinking it because you don’t want to be the guy that makes the mistake. We’ve just got to clean up a few areas.”
In the first period New Jersey’s young star Jack Hughes was taken to the ice hard in the corner by Seattle’s Jeremy Louzon. Hughes got up slow favoring a shoulder and did not return to the ice. Similarly, Morgan Geekie was hit in the face by New Jersey’s Jonas Siegenthaler in the second period. Geekie did not return and there was no update after the game.
Seattle Kraken at New Jersey Devils 4 p.m. Pacific time Prudential Center, Newark, New Jersey TV: ROOT Sports Radio: 950 AM KJR
UPDATE: The Kraken dropped some late-breaking news Tuesday afternoon, just hours before Seattle was set to take the ice against the New Jersey Devils. Yanni Gourde, who had been recovering from shoulder surgery that was originally supposed to keep him sidelined for several months, has been activated from injured reserve and will make his debut for Seattle on Tuesday.
In the same tweet from Kraken PR, the team revealed that netminder Chris Driedger, who was expected to start Tuesday, had been placed on IR, while Joey Daccord had been recalled from AHL Charlotte. Daccord will now make the start.
The #SeaKraken have made the following roster moves:
-Yanni Gourde has been activated off of IR -Joey Daccord has been recalled from the Charlotte Checkers -Chris Driedger has been placed on IR -Kole Lind has been reassigned to Charlotte pic.twitter.com/758RuMlDPZ
To get yourself fired up for a Daccord start, you may want to watch this video, which we filmed with him during Kraken training camp.
—
Here’s our original story:
Sometimes in hockey, the best thing you can do is forget about your last game and move onto the next one. Teams typically look at back-to-back games as a challenge to overcome, but occasionally it’s a benefit to be able to get right back on the horse after taking a hard fall. Seattle got crushed 6-1 in Philadelphia on Monday in a game where nothing went right. Thankfully for the Kraken, they have no time to dwell on the ugly loss and have an opportunity to salvage their brutal five-game season-opening road trip with a victory tonight against the New Jersey Devils.
One thing we thought we would see from Seattle coming into the season was a 1A/1B goalie platoon, where Philipp Grubauer got more starts than Chris Driedger, but Driedger would be used regularly. With that in mind, we were sure that Driedger would get his first start of the year on Monday after Grubauer had gone for each of the first three.
Instead, Grubauer again was in the crease to start the game, indicating that Driedger would finally go Tuesday in Newark. What’s interesting about this utilization is that it’s more indicative of a team with a traditional starter and backup than it is of a team that intends to rotate its battery throughout the season.
Playing Grubauer for the fourth game in a row backfired on Monday. That’s not to say that the goals were Grubauer’s fault—they really weren’t, save for perhaps the fifth one that squeaked through his pads—but having the team’s starter get shelled is not good for anybody.
And because there was another game against the Devils looming Tuesday, coach Dave Hakstol was clearly hoping that Grubauer could gut it out to save Driedger. By Hakstol’s own admission, he ended up leaving Grubauer in for the fifth goal, at which point he probably should have been out of a game that had already gone sideways.
Though there was no morning skate to confirm, we are fully expecting that Driedger will get his first start for the Kraken Tuesday. He stopped six of seven shots Monday in relief and got a little help from his goal posts. The 27-year-old had a breakout season in Florida last year, where he went 14-6-3 with a 2.07 goals against average and .927 save percentage in 23 games, commanding plenty of time despite sharing the net with Sergei Bobrovsky.
In addition to getting beaten up on the scoreboard Monday, Kraken players also took their lumps physically. Nathan Bastian—who returns to New Jersey to face his old team Tuesday—was fed a whole tray of knuckle sandwiches in a fight with Nate Thompson. Jamie Oleksiak landed several rights on Nick Seeler, but also went to the penalty box looking at his hand after hitting Seeler’s helmet with a few of those blows.
While those are all just bumps and bruises, Mason Appleton was involved in an awkward collision late in the game that was a bit more concerning. He was ridden into the boards by Flyers defenseman Keith Yandle in an innocuous-looking play, but Appleton went down in a heap. He then struggled to the bench, where he was doubled over in pain for a while. It was hard to tell what happened on the play, but it looked like he may have tweaked something. Again, no morning skate to confirm if he’ll be back in the lineup Tuesday, but keep an eye on his status when the Kraken take the ice against the Devils.
New Jersey Devils
Many in the hockey world thought that the New Jersey Devils would take a big step last season. They did not, however, finishing 19-30-7 for seventh in the temporarily formed East Division. Can they do it this year? They’re young, but there’s again reason for Devils fans to hope for improvement.
Our choice for breakout player of the year is Jack Hughes, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2019 NHL Entry Draft. When he was selected, it was obvious that he had plenty of growing and maturing to do physically. Now that he’s 20 years old, he appears to be filling out a lot more and sounds confident and ready to lead this Devils team.
Hughes got off to a great start in New Jersey’s first game Friday against the Chicago Blackhawks, scoring two goals including the overtime game winner. He was so excited to have potted the winning goal, he threw his stick in the crowd in celebration, something we don’t believe we’ve seen before.
New Jersey also got a shiny new cornerstone player on the back end in Dougie Hamilton, who signed a seven-year $63 million deal over the summer. The offensive defenseman immediately made his presence known in New Jersey, scoring 17 seconds into that opening game against the Blackhawks.
Ryan Graves—acquired in a pre-Expansion Draft trade with Colorado—skates with Hamilton on an all-new top defensive pairing.
In net, the Devils have problems. Their starter, Mackenzie Blackwood, is one of just a handful of players in the NHL who has so far refused to get vaccinated against Covid-19. This is an issue anyway, but it will be especially painful for New Jersey when they travel to Canada, where—as of now—he will not be eligible to play.
All that is moot for tonight, though, as Blackwood is apparently getting over an injury. So, newly signed Jonathan Bernier gets the nod for the second time in as many games. Bernier, 33, has become a journeyman in the later stages of his career, having now spent time with six NHL organizations. He was 9-11-1 behind a terrible Detroit team last season, with a 2.99 GAA and .914 save percentage, in line with his career numbers.
Former Spokane Chiefs superstar and current Devils defenseman Ty Smith is on injured reserve, so we will not see him against the Kraken.
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at Sound Of Hockey and the host, producer, and editor of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is an inconsistent beer league goalie who believes that five players have to make a mistake before the puck gets to him. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFunBrown or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
They can’t all be Picassos, and the Seattle Kraken certainly aren’t hanging the film from Monday’s 6-1 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers in a museum any time soon.
Seattle actually had some life and a few chances early in the game.
Jordan Eberle got the puck on the doorstep early on but Flyers goalie Carter Hart was able to get his glove on it, or depending on how you look at it, Eberle shot it into his glove, to keep the game scoreless.
Had the Kraken cashed in on one of the early looks perhaps the game would have gone in a more positive direction for Seattle.
“It’s hard to say,” Kraken defenseman Carson Soucy said. “It would be nice if one of those goes in but we just didn’t stick with it enough.”
The Flyers were the ones sticking with it and would score thrice over the last ten minutes of the first period. The goals came from Claude Giroux, Travis Konecny, and Derick Brassard who banked one off Soucy.
It was 3-0 heading into the first intermission, but it already felt like the game was decided.
“We had a really competitive start in the first ten minutes and we did have a couple of good scoring chances,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said. “We gave up the first goal from 200 feet away which was a little bit of a theme tonight…we got beat up ice.”
Hakstol didn’t like the way his team defended the entire ice, feeling the goals were results from the lack of a forecheck or plays in the neutral zone.
Philipp Grubauer took the brunt of those mistakes, allowing five goals on 20 shots through two periods. Chris Driedger started the third period for Seattle and made six saves while allowing one goal in the third.
There was some thought that perhaps Grubauer should have been given the night off earlier and Hakstol said after the game that in hindsight he would have made the switch sooner. He also stressed the change in net wasn’t indicative of how Grubauer has been playing for the Kraken.
Seattle would eventually fall behind 5-0 in the second period before Soucy scored his first as a Kraken to stop the bleeding.
It’s a long season and teams will occasionaly lay an egg the way Seattle did on Monday. After the game there was no panic amongst the Kraken.
“There’s a lot of things that it looks like,” Hakstol said. “We were out of sync, we couldn’t put ourselves back on the right track and that’s the end result.”
Hakstol tweaks the lines
The top line had a new look Monday as Hakstol moved Alex Wennberg to center the Jaden Schwartz and Eberle group.
“We wanted to see a different combination,” Hakstol said. “It was a tough night to evaluate all of that.”
When Wennberg was acquired in free agency the general thinking was that he would take the top center role until Yanni Gourde was available to return from injury. While Hakstol is right, the line didn’t score and how they played in their own end is the stuff for film study.
However, an argument could be made they were the Kraken’s best line Monday, ending the night with positive possession numbers, something to build on moving forward.
Notes
The Kraken will finish their road trip Tuesday with a game against the New Jersey Devils. It’s expected that Driedger will make his first start for Seattle.
Nathan Bastian found himself in the middle of a number of skirmishes and one tilt with former Seattle Thunderbird Nate Thompson. Bastian was on the ice for 6:35 while earning 27 minutes in penalties.
Kole Lind played his first game with the Kraken. He played 9:21 but did not figure in the scoring. It was the eighth NHL game for Lind who played seven for the Vancouver Canucks last season.
Seattle Kraken at Philadelphia Flyers 4 p.m. Pacific time Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania TV: ROOT Sports Radio: KJR AM 950
Who doesn’t love a good revenge game? Because that’s what coach Dave Hakstol gets to experience tonight as the Seattle Kraken take on the Philadelphia Flyers. Well… sort of. He did visit as an assistant coach with the Maple Leafs a couple seasons ago, but this is his first game back as a head coach, so that’s a big deal, right?
“It’s always nice to come back,” Hakstol said Monday morning. “Obviously I have a lot of great memories here, and a lot of good friends, and obviously as you get to this time of day, it kind of flips full circle right to the competition of the game tonight.” Now those are some fighting words!
Ok, maybe it’s not really a “revenge” game per se, but Hakstol does certainly have a history with the Flyers organization, which hired him straight out of the college ranks back in 2015 and eventually relieved him of his duties after the team got off to a 12-15-4 start in 2018.
Hakstol also gave the update on Monday that Vince Dunn is still day-to-day, though he did participate in morning skate, so we will again see both Carson Soucy and Haydn Fleury in the lineup.
The only real change to the lineup comes up front.
After Alex Barre-Boulet made a huge play to set up Alex Wennberg in his first game with the Kraken on Thursday at Nashville, and after hearing what Hakstol said about his play that night, there was a general sense that he may have a role in the lineup moving forward. On Sunday in Columbus, he only saw the ice for a few seconds of the third period and spent the rest of the game on the bench.
Tonight, Barre-Boulet is being scratched in favor of Kole Lind, who makes his official debut with the Kraken, though he did appear in several preseason games as well. Lind, who was a well-liked prospect for the Vancouver Canucks before being selected by Seattle in the Expansion Draft, has seven games of NHL experience but does not yet have a point.
Philadelphia Flyers
There’s a strong connection to the Pacific Northwest in this evening’s game, as Carter Hart is expected to be between the pipes for the Flyers. The former Everett Silvertips superstar burst onto the scene as Philadelphia’s full-time starter three seasons ago as one of the youngest goalies ever to hold such a role. He faltered last season, though, posting an unimpressive .877 save percentage and 3.67 goals against average in 27 games.
Hart is looking to get his young career (believe it or not, he’s still just 23 years old) back on track.
We may also see veteran center Nate Thompson, an Alaska native and former Seattle Thunderbird, suited up for the Flyers tonight.
As for the rest of the Flyers, the roster looks a bit different from what we’ve seen in the past. Cam Atkinson was acquired in the offseason for Jake Voracek, while Shayne Gostisbehere was jettisoned and Ryan Ellis and Keith Yandle were added on the back end.
The Flyers have played just one game so far, a 5-4 shootout loss to the Vancouver Canucks on Friday.
Projected lineup
For lack of a better guess, we’re predicting that Lind will slide in with Wennberg and Joonas Donskoi, though Hakstol gave a big “maybe” on his forward lines in his press availability, so we could see some shuffling.
There was an unmistakable feeling of deja vu that hit during the third period of Saturday’s 2-1 overtime Kraken loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets. Just two nights earlier, the Kraken entered the third with a one-goal lead against the Nashville Predators and went fully into a defensive shell, getting just one shot in the final 20 minutes. On Saturday, Seattle again entered the final frame with a one-goal lead and again promptly parked the bus in its own zone, conceding shots and zone time in exchange for keeping as much as possible to the outside.
It again took nearly 10 minutes for the Kraken to register a shot of their own in the third period against the Blue Jackets, but soon after they did that, Columbus leveled the score. As quickly as it arrived, the deja vu vanished.
Here’s what we’ve taken away from the Kraken getting their first loser point in the standings.
Takeaway #1: The formula is coming into focus
Seeing how Saturday’s third period played out was really interesting. The Kraken clearly intend to be a team that protects its leads late in games, rather than continuing to push and keep the opposition on its heels. They morph from a team with a relentlessly aggressive forecheck to a team with no forecheck whatsoever.
That approach will mean a lot of nail-biting finishes for fans this season, as it will often look like the Kraken are in hold-onto-your-butts mode. Seattle will appear under duress throughout third periods when they are leading.
Saturday showed that the Kraken aren’t really “under duress” in these situations, though, and that it’s actually by design for the flow of the game to go this way. The defensive bunker only didn’t work this time because the Kraken stretched out the ice a little more than they did on Thursday and allowed some odd-man rushes as a result.
Coach Dave Hakstol confirmed after the game that the one thing he didn’t like about the third period was that the group gave up too much off the rush.
What was most interesting about Saturday’s game was what happened after Eric Robinson broke through on Philipp Grubauer and found the equalizer. The Blue Jackets rode a wave of momentum for a couple minutes, but after that, Seattle re-engaged offensively and commanded zone time for much of the final eight minutes or so.
That’s proof positive that the Kraken have the ability to push back and create offensively when they want to, but if they have the lead in the third, there’s no real desire to go score more goals.
Takeaway #2: Philipp Grubauer… that’s it… that’s the takeaway
Seattle surprised us when they signed Grubauer, the biggest name on the free agent goalie market this offseason, to a six-year, $35.4 million contract. The goalcrease had previously appeared to be settled with Vitek Vanecek and Chris Driedger sharing the load after those two were selected in the Expansion Draft and Driedger was signed to a three-year, $10.5 million deal.
But man, what a luxury it is to have Grubauer back there. The Kraken can rely on him to back them up when they’re playing more aggressively and trying to gain the lead. When they get that lead, they can sit back and confidently expect him to make saves, as long as they keep shots to the outside. And even when the defensive structure breaks down, he’s still going to bail out his mates more often than not.
In all, Grubauer made 23 of 25 saves on Saturday. It doesn’t sound like that many, but when you consider the amount of zone time that Columbus got in the third and the quality of a couple of the chances earlier, he was stellar.
Signing last year’s Vezina Trophy finalist away from the Colorado Avalanche was an absolute coup by Ron Francis and his staff.
Takeaway #3: Brandon Tanev is on pace for 82 goals
We’ve talked a lot about the Kraken trying to protect their one-goal lead Saturday, but we haven’t discussed how they got that lead. Turbo Tanev potted two against the Predators on Thursday—one on the power play and one with an empty net—and followed that up with an absolute banger on Saturday.
Forward Oliver Bjorkstrand was back defending for the Blue Jackets and got tangled up trying to make a play on a bouncing puck. He went down, and suddenly the speedy Tanev was in alone with Elvis Merzlikins with all the time in the world.
Tanev showed pass to Riley Sheahan, but then turned, deked Merzlikins out of his jock, and went backhand shelf to put Seattle in front at 14:32 of the second. It was a goal scorer’s goal by a guy who is not known as a goal scorer.
So is Brandon Tanev a goal scorer? Will he continue this torrid pace?
Well, this pace certainly not. There’s a reason he plays on the third- and fourth-lines. His game is to fly around the ice, create havoc, and wear out opposing defensemen with his physicality, not score silky smooth goals like we saw on Saturday.
There is a world, though, in which Tanev contributes consistently. The Kraken, which lack obvious starpower of the scoring variety, need to be a score-by-committee type of team. They need help from their depth players, and Turbo is showing that he can be one of those guys that chips in.
Interestingly, Tanev had two golden opportunities as well in the opening game at Vegas, including a breakaway that just got poked off his stick by Robin Lehner, so his goal total could be even higher than it is now.
As he keeps getting matched up against more offensively minded lines, Tanev will continue to create chances with his lightning-fast speed.
Will he keep converting on those chances?
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at Sound Of Hockey and the host, producer, and editor of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is an inconsistent beer league goalie who believes that five players have to make a mistake before the puck gets to him. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFunBrown or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
Seattle Kraken at Columbus Blue Jackets 4 p.m. Pacific time Nationwide Arena, Columbus, Ohio TV: ROOT Sports Radio: 950 AM KJR
The Seattle Kraken are in Columbus to take on the Blue Jackets after a historic first 4-3 win in Nashville two days ago. The biggest news out of morning skate for Seattle is that Vince Dunn, who helped turn the tide of Thursday’s game with a big hit that led to a fight, has been ruled out and is day-to-day with an injury, according to coach Dave Hakstol. In his media availability, Hakstol was non-committal on whether the injury happened in Dunn’s fight with Yakov Trenin, but he did confirm it happened in that game.
Dunn’s exclusion is a big loss, as the shifty offensive defenseman has proven to be an impactful player for the Kraken. The good news for Seattle, though, is that it has plenty of depth on the blue line and other bona fide NHLers waiting to slot in. Haydn Fleury was scratched Thursday in favor of Carson Soucy, so both Fleury and Soucy will play Saturday, while Dunn recovers from his injury.
Philipp Grubauer will start his third game in a row and with good reason, as he was outstanding on Thursday, facing an onslaught of shots from the Predators, who were pushing hard in the third period to find an equalizer.
Alex Wennberg returns to Columbus where he spent the first six seasons of his NHL career. He did visit the Blue Jackets as a member of the Florida Panthers four times last season, but with no fans in the stands due to Covid restrictions. He knows the Blue Jackets and new coach Bard Larsen well. “They’re a skilled team right now,” Wennberg said Saturday morning. “They have a bunch of new assets that’s going to be really good for them, but it’s the same every night. You’re playing a team that has a lot of skill, a lot of good players, but you just have to play your game and focus on that.”
Columbus Blue Jackets
The Blue Jackets are 1-0-0 after beating a bad Arizona Coyotes team 8-2 in Columbus’ home opener Thursday. That game was an emotional one for the Blue Jackets, who memorialized Matiss Kivlenieks, the Columbus goaltender who passed away in a tragic fireworks accident during a 4th of July party over the summer.
Kivlenieks’ good friend and fellow Latvian, Elvis Merzlikins, looked excellent Thursday and stopped 36 of 38 shots, including a ten-beller on Lawson Crouse. Merzlikins appears poised for a huge season as the No. 1 for the Blue Jackets and will get the nod this evening.
Max Domi was outstanding Thursday as well, notching a goal and two assists, after returning sooner than expected from a shoulder injury. Remember, Domi was exposed to the Kraken in the Expansion Draft in July, but Seattle passed on the 26-year-old center.
As always, don’t sleep on Patrik Laine, who has as good a shot as just about anybody in the league.
