The Seattle Kraken have been on an incredible run since my last Monday musings on Dec. 18. They went 6-0-1 in that span and looked very similar to the 100-point team we saw last season. This group is confident and appears to be having a bit of fun out there. But what has changed?
One significant factor is the defensive mindset and attention to detail. Darren Brown wrote an excellent piece breaking down the changes that transpired over the last month or so. If you haven’t read it yet, go check it out. There is no denying that Joey Daccord has been great in net, but the team has also been very effective at limiting quality shots in front of him.
While the team hasn’t been scoring a ton over the last 10 games, averaging 3.2 goals per game since the point streak started on Dec. 12 (roughly league average over that timeframe), they are allowing just 1.3 goals against, which is the lowest in the NHL.
Depth scoring is back
The team might not be scoring as much as they were last season, but production from up and down the lineup is back. 17 players have scored goals since the Kraken went on their point streak, with Eeli Tolvanen and Kailer Yamamoto having the most goals in that stretch with four each. It seems like every night there is a new group of players scoring for the Kraken, a hallmark of last season’s success.
Scoring first
One thing I have observed lately is the Kraken’s ability to score first and then hold leads, which it struggled with earlier in the campaign. At the beginning of the season, in games where they scored first, the Kraken had a losing record. During the months of October and November, they scored first in 12 games, winning just four of those, equating to a league-worst .333 win percentage when scoring the opening goal.
Fast forward to the point streak, where they have scored first in eight out of the 10 games and have a winning percentage of .875. Not only are they scoring first more frequently, but they are also winning those games at a much higher rate than at the beginning of the season.
A quick note on the Winter Classic
The Winter Classic happened over a week ago, but I continue to think about what an absolute perfect day it was to showcase how much this city has embraced this team in two and a half seasons. I always had conviction for this sport in this city, but this team continues to exceed my expectations off the ice. It has been an extraordinary journey, and hats off to all the people that have worked for this team, directly and indirectly, leading to the Winter Classic being such a special day.
Other musings
There have been 27 teams that had exactly 41 points at the 39-game mark since the 2005-06 season. Of those teams, 11 qualified for the Stanley Cup Playoffs. That’s about a 41-percent chance. If you had told me last month that the Kraken would have a 41-percent chance of making the playoffs, I would have thought you were crazy.
Now that Andre Burakovsky is back, it seems coach Dave Hakstol is still not settled on where he fits into the lineup. Burakovsky has mostly played on the fourth line with Kailer Yamamoto and Tye Kartye since his return, but he has also spent time with Alex Wennberg and Brandon Tanev.
The lines will get even more mixed up once Jaden Schwartz comes back, which we think could happen Tuesday. He is traveling with the team on this road trip, implying his return is imminent.
It’s hard to even say from the below which is the “fourth line,” but we believe the line with Jared McCann and Burakovsky was listed at the bottom of the line chart for Seattle at practice on Saturday. If this lineup sticks for Tuesday’s game at Buffalo, that’s a heckuva fourth line. It will be interesting to see how Hakstol deploys a very deep forward corps.
I have really enjoyed watching Tomas Tatar on the Kraken. I have no idea why it wasn’t working in Colorado, but he clearly still has a lot of skill. He scored his third goal with the Kraken last Friday against Ottawa in his eighth game. He only had one goal in 27 games with Colorado this season.
THAT'S SOME SPICY TUNA! 🚨
Dunn hits Eberle at the blue line, who makes a one-touch pass to spring Tomas Tatar for his third goal as a #SeaKraken.
I’m looking forward to Chris Driedger getting a start or two on this road trip. It was great to see him win and perform well in his first start since 2022 when he beat the Calgary Flames on Dec. 27. Being that he is in the last year of his current contract, I would like to see him showcase his talent for potential landing spots next season.
In case you did not know, Driedger will require waivers if the Kraken send him down to Coachella Valley when Philipp Grubauer returns from injury.
There are seven teams that could knock the Kraken out of a Western Conference wild card spot at the end of the season. Edmonton and Minnesota are the two teams I am most concerned about at this point. It is too early for it, but I am already scoreboard watching. I loved seeing Chicago beat Calgary in regulation on Sunday, thanks to former Kraken Colin Blackwell scoring two goals.
With so many Kraken prospects in the tournament, I enjoyed the IIHF World Junior Championship even more than normal this year. It was fun to watch all of them, but Jani Nyman and Carson Rehkopf were the standouts for me. I imagine Nyman could be playing in North America next year, and Rehkopf likely has one more year in the OHL.
Speaking of Rehkopf, he didn’t waste much time getting back into the swing of things in Kitchener.
Joey Daccord (SEA) – Joey is 5-0-1 since Dec. 18 and has the highest save percentage in the league over that stretch. The team in front of him has played better defensively, but Joey has been coming up huge.
Ales Stezka (CVF/SEA) – Stezka notched his first AHL shutout on Saturday night against the Abbotsford Canucks. He has a .980 save percentage over his last two games.
Eduard Sale (CZE/SEA) – The Kraken’s first-round selection from the 2023 NHL Draft had seven points in seven games during the World Junior Championship. He still has one more year of eligibility to play in the WJC, so it will be interesting to see if he returns next season.
Chart of the week
As mentioned above, a key factor contributing to turning this season around is the emphasis on defense and limiting goals against. The chart illustrates the reduction in goals allowed by the Kraken this season and compares it to other teams.
Nyman had numerous highlights in the WJC, and one of the standout moments was his shootout goal that secured the victory for Finland over Sweden.
The week ahead
The Kraken embark on a six-game road trip, with the initial three matchups appearing relatively favorable. Seattle faces Buffalo on Tuesday, Washington on Thursday, and Columbus on Saturday. The team should aim to secure at least four points in those three. Key areas to watch include Burakovsky’s deployment in the lineup, Schwartz’s return, and the performance of the power play.
While there is currently no significant concern about the power play, the team has only scored one goal in eight opportunities over the last four games. The Kraken haven’t appeared particularly threatening with the man advantage lately, and it would be beneficial to see an improvement before it becomes an issue.
Feel free to leave any questions, feedback, or areas of exploration in the comment section. I appreciate your support.
Under a week remains until the trade deadline for the Western Hockey League, and the biggest mover so far has been the Wenatchee Wild, who made it clear that an overhaul is needed for the organization to move forward.
Wenatchee retools
During their time playing for Team Canada at the IIHF World Junior Championship in Gothenburg, Sweden, rumors began to circulate that the Wild would be looking to trade away their phenom forwards Conor Geekie (ARI) and Matthew Savoie (BUF) to regain the draft picks they lost from previous years. Wenatchee had no first- or second-round selections in the WHL Bantam Draft for the next five seasons.
As Sportsnet’s Jeff Marek began reporting early last week, trades with the Swift Current Broncos for Geekie, and the Moose Jaw Warriors for Savoie were in line, with the only questions being what would be the return packages.
In recent years, trades in the CHL have been far more off the rails than before, the types of trades you would make with your friends in fantasy football. One example from last season was when the hosts of the Memorial Cup, the Kamloops Blazers, gave the Everett Silvertips four roster players and 10 Bantam Draft selections (14 totals assets) for Olen Zellweger and Ryan Hofer. So with Geekie and Savoie both being top NHL Draft selections a couple seasons ago, the return for them was bound to be steep.
The trades were finalized Thursday, Geekie to Swift Current in exchange for three players and four picks including two first-rounders, while Savoie to Moose Jaw brought the Wild seven picks in return, including two first-round selections.
Additionally, the Wild traded defenseman Ashton Cumby to the Seattle Thunderbirds for a sixth-rounder in 2024.
Put bluntly by Wild general manager Bliss Littler, “These are tough decisions – we do not want to be in a position, nor do we want our fans to see us in a position, where we would likely win seven to 10 games a year for the next five years.” Wenatchee needed to balance the present team with future stability, and the way to do that was by offloading their higher-value, expiring assets.
Wenatchee may not be done either. Rumors are swirling about them looking to move some more of their roster pieces, including names like captain and defenseman Graham Sward (NSH), Zach Benson’s WHL rights (BUF), and goaltender Daniel Hauser.
The Wild being very candid about the decision they are faced with…..it sure sounds like they are admitting they need to tear it down this week and trade "expiring" assets.
So….Geekie, Savoie, Sward, Benson (conditional on return from the NHL). Who else could go….Hauser? https://t.co/llD6XA6aaI
While trading away Geekie and Savoie does hinder Wenatchee’s chase for the division title, scoring isn’t entirely depleted. The Wild will continue to rely on the production from Kenta Isogai and the aforementioned Sward if he stays put.
With 10 points in Isogai’s last three games, including his first career WHL hat trick against the Kelowna Rockets on Saturday, and Sward becoming the first WHL defenseman to 50 points this season, the Wild will look for more players like them to step into the roles played by Geekie and Savoie for the rest of the season and into the playoffs.
Top teams meet in the Rose City
The two other horses battling with Wenatchee atop the U.S. Division met in Portland on Friday night.
Everett Silvertips and Portland Winterhawks alternated the scoring in a back-and-forth game. Everett had the lead towards the back half of the third before a last-minute, shorthanded, game-tying goal from Portland’s Marcus Nguyen forced overtime and eventually a shootout.
Despite Everett goalie Tyler Palmer (CGY) and his 51-save performance on the night, it wasn’t enough. The Silvertips were defeated 5-4.
Everett has had noteworthy struggles in Portland for a while now. Including playoffs, the Silvertips losing streak at Veterans Memorial Coliseum extended to 13 games, with their last win there coming on Nov. 16, 2021.
With the win, the Winterhawks moved into sole possession of first place in the U.S. Division and became the first U.S. team to 50 points on the year.
Everett salvages week
Despite the loss on Friday, the Silvertips came home to energetic crowds for the rest of the weekend, starting Saturday against the Seattle Thunderbirds, when Everett pelted T-birds netminder Scott Ratzlaff (BUF) with 57 total shots on net. Despite the 54-save performance from Ratzlaff, two goals from Julius Miettinen and one from Ben Hemmerling (VGK) were enough to down the Thunderbirds, 4-2.
The next night was much of the same formula for the Tips. Welcoming in the top team in the Western Conference in Prince George, Everett displayed yet again why it’s a force to be reckoned with on home ice. Two early first-period strikes from Hemmerling and another from Miettinen to begin the second had Everett in the driver’s seat.
A lengthy glass maintence delay halted the Silvertips momentum a bit, as the Cougars would eventually pull within one goal, but it was too little, too late. With the 4-2 victory, Everett clinches the season series over Prince George, winning three out of four, as well as taking five out of a possible six points on the weekend.
“Even though we let one slip away on Friday, we really battled back on Saturday and Sunday in front of our home crowd,” Hemmerling said. “Once we get our team healthier and continue to build off of games like we just played against Prince George, it’ll all come around.”
The Silvertips continue to jockey position with Portland and Wenatchee. With the win on Sunday, they sit tied for second place with the Wild at 51 points and one point back of the Winterhawks for first place. “We’re right there,” Field said. “If we play the way we know we are capable of, hopefully by the end of the year we’ll be the last team standing.”
Bolstering their blue line
On New Year’s Eve, the Silvertips swapped overage defensemen with the Regina Pats, trading Ty Gibson and a 2025 second-rounder for Parker Berge.
Following the game on Sunday, I asked Berge about his transition to the City of Smokestacks. “It takes a little bit to get used to playing with all new guys, as well as the different systems in place,” Berge said. He has three assists in the games he’s played with Everett thus far. “It was a quick turnaround from being told I was traded to then playing with a brand new team the next night, but going from a team that’s not doing very well to a team that’s in contention has been pretty cool.”
“Berge fits in really well with this group,” Field said. “He has a presence to him that no matter what is going on, he tends to settle the group down, make simple yet smart plays.”
Jagger Firkus
Bringing it back to the Moose Jaw Warriors, Jagger Firkus (SEA) returned to the WHL following his abbreviated call up to Team Canada at the World Junior Championship. With seven points in his first two games back, Firkus boosted his season point total to 66, ranking first in total points in the Eastern Conference and third in the league overall, as well as collecting his 250th career WHL point Saturday night in Swift Current.
Those in the Pacific Northwest wishing to see Firkus and the Warriors will have the opportunity to do so Feb. 23 through Mar. 3, as they make their journey through the U.S. Division and visit Tri-City, Spokane, Portland, Everett, Seattle, and Wenatchee.
The WHL trade deadline is set for this Wednesday, Jan. 10.
Sunday marks a team travel day for the Seattle Kraken, as they wing their way to upstate New York for the start of a two-week, six-game expedition that will zig zag them through Buffalo, Washington, Columbus, Pittsburgh, and New York (Rangers), before a strange stopover in Edmonton on the way home.
For the streaking Kraken, who have won six straight and earned points in each of their last 10 (8-0-2), the trip represents an opportunity to solidify themselves back in the playoff bubble if they can string together more strong performances during these six games.
“When you’re winning games and playing well on the road, it really helps your team bond,” Jordan Eberle said. “We had a great season on the road last year, and this road trip for us in the standings is going to be absolutely huge, so we want to continue that.”
In total, Kraken players, coaches, and traveling staff will spend 12 days on the road, bouncing from city to city and living out of their suitcases while still conforming to the NHL norms of making themselves presentable for entrances and exits to each arena on game days.
So how do they pack for all that? What personal responsibilities do they need to handle before embarking on such a journey? We asked these questions of Kraken players and their coach to get a better understanding of what goes into preparing for an extended road trip like this one.
The packing list
Clothing
One consistent theme we picked up from Kraken players was that they try to pack as lightly as they possibly can. They don’t want to be schlepping multiple suitcases through six different cities, and they’re more willing than we expected to re-wear clothing in order to make it all fit into one piece of luggage.
Take Alex Wennberg, for example, who considers himself a minimalist when it comes to packing for a long trip. “[I’m a] one-suit kind of guy,” Wennberg said. “I learned the hard way to bring another dress shirt because, you know… pasta, meat sauce with a white dress shirt; not always the best combo. Other than that, it’s just a pair of sneakers and the dress shoes, so I pack light.”
Yes, that’s one suit for six games, but the center doesn’t plan on doing laundry or dry cleaning during the journey.
“No way [I’m doing laundry], I’m just dealing with it. And, I mean, if worse comes to worst, there’s some stores that could help me out with [clothes], so yeah, that’s my idea.”
Defenseman Will Borgen is similar in his approach. “I usually just pack, obviously a suit, sweatpants, sweatshirt, some going-out-to-dinner clothes, some jeans. Loungewear… some shorts for the hotel, that’s about it.”
Eberle, on the other hand, figured out a hack for making the suits look a bit fresher in his walk-in photos from game to game.
“I usually only have like two pairs of pants and two jackets, so I flip them around with the blazers,” Eberle said. “And then, you obviously need a couple shirts. So I’ve just learned that it’s easier to pack that way, and then you’ve just got to figure out outfits for dinner.”
Of the players we talked to, it seemed that two dress shirts was about the maximum they would pack, and even that was to be on the cautious side. Jared McCann said he learned the hard way on a trip earlier this season when he tried to get by with just one dress shirt.
“Beginning of the season, I had a pretty bad spill, and it was like a one-day road trip,” McCann said. “So I didn’t have an extra dress shirt, and I had to wear my polo. I looked like an idiot.”
As for coach Dave Hakstol, who has to be fully buttoned up on the bench for each game and will be featured prominently on television, he had yet to actually get his bag packed as of Saturday afternoon.
“I’ll let you know [what I’m bringing] in about two hours,” Hakstol said. “I’ve got to go home and pack. I’m trying to figure out how I can get through with one suit and two shirts, but I don’t think that’s going to work. So yeah, it’s a long list for this one.”
Even so, Hakstol indicated he would not allow himself to exceed one suitcase for the trip.
“Essentials”
There were a few different ideas of what the “essential” non-clothing items were that players would make sure to bring along.
For example, McCann jumped straight to snacks, specifically Skittles, while Borgen veered toward his iPad, headphones, and his Nintendo Switch, which he plays with, “Yammer, Dumo, Schuller, Bjorky, Lars, Matty, and then sometimes Schwartzy, sometimes Kartsy.” (When you’re talking about playing Switch with the boys on the road, you simply have no choice but to refer to them by nicknames only.)
Wennberg brings his computer for movies, and McCann brings his “PC,” as he called it, for occasional gaming of his own.
But then there’s the card-playing crew, which requires a unique piece of equipment, a “ledger” that is carried and maintained by Eberle for playing a game he called “13 Up, 13 Down.”
“Hey, Schwartzy, who’s the best card player?” Eberle called across the Kraken dressing room.
Jaden Schwartz yelled back, “Probably me.”
Eberle did not accept this answer. “No, be honest.”
Schwartz thought about it again for a moment, and then, in a more hushed tone, said, “Ebs is pretty good.”
“Yeah, see? I just needed him to say it,” Eberle said with a smirk.
Personal dealings
It can often be lost on fans that professional athletes are human beings with families and real-life, adult responsibilities of their own. For some, going away for two weeks isn’t an easy thing to do.
The preparation levels for such a trip range from “Just make sure the lights are off and lock the door,” in Borgen’s case, to making sure to spend quality time with wives and kids in the cases of veterans like Wennberg and Eberle, or—in McCann’s scenario—giving plenty of attention to Cheddar, his pet corgi.
“I prefer to be home, rather than on the road,” Wennberg said. “On the road, you’re doing the same thing all the time. You’re hanging out in your room, you go out for dinners, which is nice, but eventually you kind of miss the home life, the family. But, I mean, it’s part of work. There’s nothing you can do about it, so I try to make the best out of it and just see some positives.”
While life on the road brings nice perks for NHL players, like flying on a chartered all-first-class jet, staying in five-star hotels, and dining in top-tier restaurants with teammates, players with families know they are missed when they’re away.
“I think it’s nice, nowadays, obviously with FaceTime, that you’re able to see [the kids] every day and try and get that in,” Eberle said. “But as bad as this is to say, I think they’re used to me leaving quite a bit. That’s always the hardest part for me is just being away from the kids for so long.”
Having said that, for a father of two young children, Eberle sees some benefits to going out on the road.
“You get a chance to get a full night’s sleep, which is nice,” Eberle said with a laugh. “I mean, you miss [the kids], but you get a full night’s sleep, so that’s always huge.”
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Seattle’s first game of the six-game trip will be played Tuesday at the Buffalo Sabres at 4 p.m. PT and will end Thursday, Jan. 18, with a game at the Edmonton Oilers.
Darren Brown
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at soundofhockey.com and the host of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is a member of the PHWA and is also usually SOH’s Twitter intern (but please pretend you don’t know that). Follow him @DarrenFunBrown and @sound_hockey or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
Jump to the Monthly scorecard that will be updated monthly until the end of the season.
The Seattle Kraken are on a team-record 10-game streak with at least a point in the standings. They’ve gone 8-0-2 in that stretch, good for 18 out of a possible 20 points, thrusting them right back into the playoff conversation.
The wins definitely help Seattle’s playoff chances, but there’s plenty of work to do to solidify a position. The Kraken will likely remain in a fight for a wild card spot for the foreseeable future, and perhaps the rest of the season.
“Our playoff battle is still ahead, and it’s still an uphill battle,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said Saturday. “But what our players have done is stay with it through some thick and thin here, stick together, and now that’s what you have to do is… dig in in the second half [of the season].”
As of the writing of this story, Seattle is sitting at 41 points and in the last wild card spot in the Western Conference but is near the top of the league in number of games played at 39. All the teams the Kraken are in competition with for wild card spots have played fewer games, so realistically, Seattle is in a lower spot than the standings suggest.
With that in mind, we wanted to paint a more sensible picture of how the Kraken’s playoff chances actually look, now that they’ve gotten themselves back in the hunt. For Seattle’s 43 remaining games, we reviewed strength of schedule (SOS), considered how many points the Kraken need, and created a breakdown of Kraken opponents. This can hopefully serve as a blueprint for the games the Kraken need to win moving forward.
Strength of schedule
The strength of schedule looks at how tough or easy Seattle’s matchups will be, at least on paper. The Kraken are in good shape here, as they have the fourth-easiest schedule remaining in the NHL, according to tankathon.com. Interestingly, a large portion (13 of 16) of the teams with the easiest schedules are in the Western Conference.
This is notable since the Kraken play each Western Conference team either three or four times per year and Eastern Conference teams only twice. The Kraken have 26 games remaining against Western Conference opponents and 17 against the Eastern Conference. The games against the Western Conference will have increased importance because any losses against Western Conference teams would both hurt Seattle and also help another team in direct competition with the Kraken.
How many points does Seattle need?
Before the start of the season, our own John Barr wrote, “When looking over the last 11 seasons, excluding the 2019-20 season that had a unique play-in format, the average minimum point total of the bottom playoff team was 92.4 points on the season.”
The Kraken are currently sitting at 41 points, so from John’s methodology, they would need another 52 points in 43 games to be an average bottom-of-the-pack qualifier. That would put them at 93 points, which would not guarantee a playoff spot, but it would put them in real contention to be in the postseason. Out of the last four full seasons, 93 points would have gotten a team into the playoffs 50 percent of the time. 95 points improves that number to 75 percent.
The Kraken would need ~1.2 points per game or three wins every five games the rest of the way.
Schedule breakdown
We’ve broken the Kraken’s remaining opponents into three categories: Playoff Bound, Bubble, and Tankers.
Playoff Bound – Teams that should make the playoffs; those near the top of the standings
Bubble – Teams fighting to make the playoffs, most likely as wild cards
Tankers – Teams most likely to miss the playoffs; should be Seattle’s easiest opponents
Playoff-bound teams
Eastern Conference – Boston Bruins, New York Rangers, New York Islanders, Florida Panthers, Toronto Maple Leafs
Western Conference – Colorado Avalanche, Winnipeg Jets, Dallas Stars, Vancouver Canucks, Vegas Golden Knights, Los Angeles Kings
There are 14 games left against teams bound for the playoffs. These will be hard-fought games, but Seattle will need to win some of these if it expects to earn a playoff spot. Unscientifically, we’re targeting a 45-percent win rate against this group. There are 28 points available, so if the Kraken can grab six wins and 12 points they will be in good shape.
The Kraken have had success against Florida, Colorado, Vancouver, Vegas, and Los Angeles this season but have also lost to teams in that group.
Bubble teams
Eastern Conference – Philadelphia Flyers, Carolina Hurricanes, Washington Capitals, Tampa Bay Lightning, New Jersey Devils, Pittsburgh Penguins, Detroit Red Wings
Western Conference –Arizona Coyotes, Edmonton Oilers, Seattle Kraken, Nashville Predators, St. Louis Blues, Minnesota Wild, Calgary Flames
The Kraken are smack dab in the middle of this group. Assuming the playoff-bound teams all make the postseason, only two teams from each conference in this category will qualify. To make the playoffs, the Kraken need to show they can consistently beat these teams.
Defeating the Western Conference bubble teams in regulation should always be the goal, as the club will not want to give any of these opponents standings points. There are 18 remaining games against bubble teams, and we’re setting a win target of 65 percent. This would earn the Kraken 22 points out of a possible 36.
Tanker teams
Eastern Conference –Buffalo Sabres, Ottawa Senators, Columbus Blue Jackets, Montreal Canadiens
Western Conference – Anaheim Ducks, Chicago Blackhawks, San Jose Sharks
These are teams Seattle should beat 100 percent of the time, but this is the NHL, and every game is tough. The Kraken have 12 games remaining against “tankers” and will need to win 90 percent of them, based on our projections here. That would give Seattle 20 points out of a possible 24 against this category of teams.
Seattle can make it
The Kraken’s 10-game point streak has put them in a realistic conversation for a playoff spot. We are optimistic they can earn a playoff berth, but they have to continue their strong play. As of Jan. 5, Seattle’s point total is 41 points. Following the win percentage targets above, 12 (playoff bound) + 22 (bubble teams) + 18 (tanker teams) + 41 (Kraken current points) = 93 points.
The Kraken need to win at roughly a 65-percent rate for the rest of the season, which would be an improvement over their current win percentage of 52.6. Games against Western Conference bubble teams will be Seattle’s most important games, but the Kraken cannot take nights off against the tanker teams. And exceeding the 45-percent win-rate target against playoff-bound teams will help create a cushion.
The Kraken have 21 home games and 22 road games remaining, so it’s a pretty even split. They are about to start a six-game road trip and will end the campaign on a four-game road trip in April, so February and March will contain a whopping 15 home games.
Monthly scorecard
Moving forward, we will update the below “monthly scorecard” to keep you informed on how the Kraken are doing against the targets we’ve set here.
Update (Jan. 31) – The Kraken fell a little behind the pace accumulating 11 points out of the forecasted plan for 14 points. They are still in the hunt, but will need to make up three points during the rest of the season. February will be a make or break month as the Kraken only have games against Playoff Bound and Bubble teams. After a tough loss to the San Jose Sharks to end the month, the Kraken go on break until Feb 10.
Update (Mar. 1) – The Kraken accomplished the goal in February going 5-3-1 and achieved the forecasted 11 points. They got slow start to February, losing the first 2, but finished strong capped with a Philipp Grubauer shutout on Feb. 29 against the Penguins.
Update (Mar. 15) – We are moving to weekly updates. Latest can be found here.
It wasn’t always easy or perfect, but Joey Daccord was awesome yet again, and the Seattle Kraken got a 4-1 win over the Ottawa Senators, their sixth straight win and 10th game in a row with points (8-0-2).
It was another round of Seattle getting the saves it needed and snagging a few opportunistic goals to earn a victory, and—believe it or not—this one got the Kraken (at least temporarily) back into a playoff spot. It’s bonkers to think about where this team was just a few short weeks ago, and now here Seattle is, with a positive 16-14-9 record and a position in the postseason.
“We’re playing great,” Daccord said. “We’re sticking to our game plan, we’re executing it well, and it’s nice to see the results go our way.”
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 4-1 Kraken win over the Ottawa Senators.
Takeaway #1: Joey Daccord is on another planet
A lot has been written about Joey Daccord of late, but it’s hard not to focus on him when he continues to make save after save that we don’t expect him to make.
He had another right-to-left stuff job on Tim Stutzle Thursday, which mimicked the save he made on Jack Eichel to preserve his shutout late in the Winter Classic.
Daccord also set a franchise-record shutout streak of 158:35 (we had the time wrong in our tweet below), spanning from Travis Konecny’s first-period goal in the Flyers game on Dec. 29 until Parker Kelly just barely squeezed a tipped point shot through Daccord’s wickets on Thursday.
D'oh! Daccord's shutout streak is over.
Parker Kelly gets a tip, and it JUST sneaks over the line. Dunn was trying SO HARD to save that for his goalie.
“It would have been nicer if I got another shutout,” Daccord quipped. “No, the win’s great, and I’m happy to just keep this train rolling.”
You could tell Vince Dunn desperately wanted to keep that one out of the net for his goalie, but he just came up a hair short of reaching it before it limped over the line.
Daccord is brimming with confidence right now, so much so that he pulled off something we’ve never seen a goalie do before in a game. After Adam Larsson and Jared McCann took back-to-back penalties in the first period, Seattle had nearly four minutes of penalty kill time, including 17 seconds of 5-on-3 time.
Not only did Joey make a couple outstanding reads and saves on the extended stretch of PK, he cleared a puck himself by sending a high… BACKHAND… flip the entire length of the ice.
Is Joey Daccord just the coolest?
Watch this backhand high flip the length of the ice! Don't think we've ever seen that from a goalie before. Unreal.
Do you know how hard it is to even lift the puck off the ice on your backhand when you’re wearing a goalie catch glove? It’s quite difficult, given the lack of dexterity that comes with the bulky trapper, so seeing him send it as far as he did in the air was mind-blowing.
“As I was making that play, I was like, ‘I really hope this gets out, because if not, I’m going to be in trouble,’” Daccord said. “I’ve worked on my stick handling and puck skills a lot over the years, and backhand is definitely way harder than forehand, so happy I got enough wood on it to get it out.”
Added coach Dave Hakstol, “That was a heck of a play. There are certain plays that have some risk to them. That’s just great skill and the right play at the right time. That was a big clear at that time.”
We are hereby predicting Joey Daccord will become the first goalie in history to score a backhand goalie goal at some point (we don’t know for sure that it hasn’t happened before, but it seems highly unlikely, because… again… catch gloves make stick handling hard).
Takeaway #2: Burky gets one
It’s been a hard road for Andre Burakovsky since he tore his groin in a Feb. 7 loss to the New York Islanders last season. That injury ultimately ended his season and cost him the entire Stanley Cup Playoffs.
He had surgery and rehabbed in the offseason, returned in time for the start of the new season, and lasted just six games before getting thrown shoulder-first into the end boards by Jacob Trouba and missing a month and a half. He returned for (almost) one game on Dec. 7, when Kevin Bahl hit him into the same boards and put him back on the shelf for most of December.
Burakovsky returned Dec. 29 against the Flyers and has been spending time on the fourth line with Kailer Yamamoto and Tye Kartye. The winger scored his first goal of the season Thursday, at 19:03 of the second period, and it was an important goal that effectively put the game out of reach for Ottawa.
Tim Stutzle fell down and lost the puck in the offensive zone, handing it over to Yamamoto and creating a 2-on-1 the other way. Yamamoto made a nice pass, and Burakovsky showed his finishing ability to make it 3-0.
Stutzle blows a tire, and that sends Yamamoto and Burakovsky off to the races.
Great dish by Yamamoto, great finish by Burakovsky for his FIRST GOAL OF THE SEASON!!!
“It feels good to have some luck on your side,” Burakovsky said. “I mean, I’ve been having a lot of bad breaks for me this year and last year, so it was good to see it go in, for sure.”
Added Hakstol, “You go back over the last 12 months, it’s been a long road. There’s been a lot of challenges for him there, but he’s been able to handle it, and great to have him back in the lineup, and again, to see him have some success tonight.”
Good for Burky. Now, it’s time for Jaden Schwartz to get back in, and suddenly, this Kraken roster is going to look quite deep again.
Takeaway #3: A playoff spot?!
A hockey season can be a wild ride. Fans that stuck with the Kraken through the first half of this season—and especially the eight-game losing streak—are getting rewarded now and can enjoy a brief moment of basking in the playoff picture before Seattle almost surely falls back out of its current wild card spot while idle over the weekend.
Still, a lot of fans and media (ourselves included) were starting to abandon hope during that losing streak, so to see this team pull itself together in such a swift way has been stunning to watch.
The Kraken will take Friday off, practice Saturday, and then head out on a two-week odyssey through Buffalo, Washington, Columbus, Pittsburgh, New York Rangers, and Edmonton (that last top is a weird one, geographically).
Let’s see if they can keep this thing moving.
Darren Brown
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at soundofhockey.com and the host of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is a member of the PHWA and is also usually SOH’s Twitter intern (but please pretend you don’t know that). Follow him @DarrenFunBrown and @sound_hockey or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
Before turning their season around and rattling off a nine-game point streak (7-0-2) and five-game winning streak, the Seattle Kraken temporarily sunk far out of the playoff picture with a miserable eight-game stretch from Nov. 24 through Dec. 10. During that time, they went 0-6-2, and dressing room morale fell to a nadir we hadn’t seen since Seattle’s inaugural season.
There were nights during that stretch where the Kraken seemed to be working their tentacles off and doing what their coach wanted them to do, but it just wasn’t giving the desired results. Seattle could not find the back of the net consistently enough to win games, and mistakes and sloppy puck management in its own end would cost the team defensively.
“I think we were getting looks, and we could say we couldn’t score and goalies were hot or whatnot,” Vince Dunn said. “But we were giving a lot more chances up than we needed to do… I think we were working hard, but maybe trying to do too much and do other people’s jobs. So that can kind of make you take yourself away from the game a little bit.”
After last season, when defensive mistakes were so regularly covered up by offensive success, it was perplexing to see Seattle play so inconsistently for the first half of the season, only to flip a switch and get right back in the race starting with a 4-0 win over the Florida Panthers on Dec. 12.
So what happened?
After the Seattle Kraken defeated the Vegas Golden Knights 3-0 in the 2024 Discover NHL Winter Classic on Jan. 1—the team’s fifth straight win—coach Dave Hakstol was asked if this season’s team has a different identity than last year’s team. His response was enlightening.
“This team is different. In order to gain some traction and push the right direction here, we’ve had to do it with a defensive mindset and a real grinding type of mindset. We haven’t been able to score our way to wins. We were able to do that at times last year. We became very confident in that type of mindset… Every year is a little bit different, the makeup of our group is a little bit different. But yeah, I would say that it’s a different mindset. We’re working towards it. We still have a lot of work left to do, but we’ve… look at it from where we were a couple weeks ago to where we are today. We’ve given ourselves a chance and an opportunity to keep climbing and keep working towards something.”
Kraken coach Dave Hakstol addresses media after the 2024 Winter Classic. (Photo/Darren Brown)
Altering the identity
This coaching staff has shown on several occasions over the past three seasons that it is capable of making in-season adjustments to better specific areas. Case in point, last season’s penalty kill dramatically improved when Seattle simplified its formation at the turn of the calendar year from 2022 to 2023.
There are other such examples, but changing the entire mindset of the team from “Outscore the opponent” to “Stay structured and patient” seems like a big ask, right?
“Honestly, not really,” Yanni Gourde said. “This team was always defense-first oriented. [We just] needed to make sure that details of the game were a little bit better, and we weren’t giving as many free chances to the other team. And I think that’s what it came down to. Everybody knows how to defend, we just made it more of an emphasis on each game.
“Every season is different. Last year, scoring goals just was a second nature. Every single night there was someone stepping up and scoring a goal, and we could outscore a team in various ways, different ways. And this year, it’s coming much harder to score goals, so you have to defend better.”
Data bears out that Seattle has been stingier since the losing streak turned into the current point streak.
Visualization by John Barr.
Post-game meeting
Based on how Gourde described it, a change like this sounds simple enough, but altering the collective mindset requires open communication from the coaches to the players and from the players to one another.
Dunn couldn’t remember which game it followed, but he did recall a “quiet” meeting, led by the coaches, after one of Seattle’s many losses in early December.
“[We were] really chatting about our team identity, not looking at video and things like that,” Dunn said. “I think since that meeting, we’ve all been a lot more accountable. And we’ve been taking every game and our jobs a lot more personally and making sure that if we work hard and work smart and care for each other out there, then things should fall into place for us.”
Gourde took a similar message out of that meeting. “I think it was mentioned holding each other a little bit more accountable, making sure that we take care of one another, and that we can make a switch as a group, as a team. We kind of started building from that point on.”
Dunn added that the shift in mindset was reinforced by the players in the room, and collectively they decided it was time to start battening down the hatches.
“When you hear from your teammates, and then you hear from your coach too, I think the balance of the two really makes guys understand and take it personally,” Dunn said.
While Dunn and Gourde saw the post-game meeting as a key moment in Seattle’s turnaround, Hakstol viewed the adjustment to a more defensive structure as more of an evolution over time.
“It’s not as easy as having one conversation,” Hakstol said. “Several weeks back, we just started talking a little bit more about just, ‘Hey, we’ve got to do more of the little things. We’ve got to tighten up. We have to find ways to— instead of looking for a way to score one more, until that starts happening, we’ve got to make sure that we’re really buckling down and doing some of the things that are necessary to get the puck back.’ And our guys have worked very hard at that.”
Outstanding goaltending doesn’t hurt
Of course, a team’s defense tends to look a lot better when its goaltender catches fire, and that is what has happened for Joey Daccord over this stretch. Daccord leads the league in save percentage (.956) and goals-against average (1.35) since this streak started with his Dec. 12 shutout of the Panthers.
“I mean, all our goalies have been playing really well,” said Will Borgen. “[Chris Driedger] when he stepped in there [for one game against Calgary], unbelievable. Joey’s obviously been a brick wall back there, you saw… two days ago. So, I mean, that gives us a lot of confidence.”
Visualization by John Barr.
Borgen also comically deflected when we asked him about the shift in mindset.
“That’s not really my realm,” Borgen said. “I always try to not let the other team score. I play defense. If our forwards score more goals, great. If they don’t, we’ll try to keep it tight.”
From the goalie out, “keep it tight” has been the name of the game for this Kraken team of late, which will go for its 10th straight game with points and its sixth straight win against the Ottawa Senators Thursday at Climate Pledge Arena.
Darren Brown
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at soundofhockey.com and the host of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is a member of the PHWA and is also usually SOH’s Twitter intern (but please pretend you don’t know that). Follow him @DarrenFunBrown and @sound_hockey or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
With Team USA showcasing dominance in the IIHF World Junior Championship so far, a compelling narrative has emerged, highlighting the United States as a burgeoning hockey superpower. This shift challenges the traditional mindset, and we’re beginning to expect momentous victories from USA Hockey teams.
I have been consistently documenting the growth of USA Hockey, using it as a justification for NHL expansion into new markets. To visually represent the progression, it seems timely to share another data analysis on the prevalence of American hockey players in the NHL, showcasing the remarkable journey we’ve undergone.
Nationalities of NHL players
The number of US-born players in the NHL has reached an all-time high this season, at 29.3 percent of the league. In contrast, the percentage of Canadian players has dropped to 41.2 percent, the lowest of all time. It’s worth noting that these figures might undergo slight changes due to factors such as injuries, call-ups, and other scenarios between now and the end of the season, but this is a good look at how the countries are trending.
As the chart indicates, this trend has been going on for quite some time.
Here is a different way to look at the data, which makes clearer how many NHL players come from each nation in the 2023-24 season to date:
To delve deeper into the analysis, I also examined the nationalities of current NHL players based on their birth year to determine if there is any indication of an upcoming trend. For instance, I compared the age distribution of US players in the NHL to that of their Canadian counterparts with the same birth year.
In my opinion, there was nothing noteworthy when examining this year’s NHL players by birth year. Generally, the percentage of Canadians by birth year fluctuates randomly between 38 percent and 50 percent across the entire range of birth years. Similarly, the percentages of US players vary between 20 percent and 40 percent throughout the birth years.
The growth of US players in the NHL
As mentioned earlier, the number US-born players in the NHL has been trending up for a long time.
Digging a bit deeper on that, here is an overview of the birth states of US-born NHL players. The below visualization may not be perfect for illustrating the growth of some states, but it’s worth noting that the category labeled as “Other” now includes 95 players in the NHL this season. This category encompasses states with fewer than 10 players represented in the current season. That tells you some non-traditional markets have seen growth.
Another perspective to consider on the data is to observe the number of states being represented by at least one NHL player throughout the season.
Most analyses attribute the growing interest in hockey among Americans to three main themes: 1) the Miracle on Ice in the 1980 Olympics, 2) Wayne Gretzky being traded to the LA Kings, and 3) NHL expansion. While the first two are challenging to validate definitively, the impact of NHL expansion aligns with the growth in USA Hockey memberships by state over the years.
To illustrate this transformation, I compared a map of NHL players from the 1990-91 season to the current 2023-24 season. The discernible impact of “southern expansion” becomes rather evident in the comparison.
Nationality by team
As a fun bonus piece of content, here is a look at the nationality breakdown by NHL team this season. The Kraken are 48 percent Canadian and 23 percent American. The team with the highest percentage of American players is the New York Rangers at 50 percent.
If you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions for further exploration, leave a comment below and I will get back to you.
The Utah Jazz surprised us all with their unexpected reveal of the Seattle Kraken’s Winter Classic Jersey on Nov. 17. This got me thinking about an NBA team inevitably returning to Seattle and what it might mean for the Kraken. More specifically, I’ve been pondering since that jersey reveal about how adding an NBA team to Climate Pledge Arena would impact the Kraken home schedule. Now that the hoopla of the Winter Classic has died down, I decided to do some investigating to see how other NHL teams’ schedules get impacted by sharing their buildings with NBA teams.
My expectation was that teams that share an arena with the NBA would have more mid-week games and fewer weekend games. In fact, the data does support that but does not have nearly the influence I would have guessed. The larger ramifications are on the specific day of the week the game is played and the number of day games.
Process
I analyzed 20 NHL team schedules—10 NHL teams that share an arena with the NBA and 10 that only house the NHL—from 2014-2024 and excluded the two seasons (2019-20, 2020-21) that were shortened due to the pandemic.
During the eight seasons researched, 328 regular-season home games were played per team with the exception of the Detroit Red Wings (205 games), who only started sharing with the Detroit Pistons in the 2017-18 season when Little Caesars Arena opened. For “NBA + NHL” cities, 3,157 regular-season home NHL games were analyzed. For “NHL Only” teams, 3,280 regular-season games were analyzed.
NBA + NHL
Currently there are 10 NHL teams that share an arena with an NBA team:
Los Angeles Kings
Dallas Stars
Colorado Avalanche
Washington Capitals
Detroit Red Wings
New York Rangers
Toronto Maple Leafs
Boston Bruins
Chicago Blackhawks
Philadelphia Flyers
One team of note is the Los Angeles Kings who share Crypto.com Arena with both the Clippers and Lakers. Interestingly, five of the “Original Six” NHL team arenas also play home to NBA teams. From a divisional standpoint, there are three teams each from the Atlantic, Metropolitan, and Central Divisions that house teams from both leagues and just one team in the Pacific Division.
NHL Only
I compared the “NBA + NHL” teams with 10 NHL teams that have their own barn, and the “NHL Only” teams used are:
San Jose Sharks
Vancouver Canucks
Montreal Canadiens
Buffalo Sabres
Carolina Hurricanes
Tampa Bay Lightning
New Jersey Devils
Pittsburgh Penguins
Nashville Predators
Minnesota Wild
Results
Data is sliced into a few views:
Sunday-Thursday versus Friday-Saturday
Days of the week
Day games versus night games
Comparison to the Seattle Kraken
Sunday-Thursday versus Friday-Saturday
As seen in the graphs, the difference between “NBA + NHL” and “NHL Only” for weekend games is only 2.6 percent. That works out to roughly one fewer weekend game each year for teams that share an arena.
Days of the week
What jumped out here is “NHL Only” teams played 68.2 percent of their homes games on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays compared to “NBA + NHL” teams played only 59.9 percent. By far these three days of the week are the busiest in the NHL.
For “NBA + NHL” teams, the remaining days of the week were more level with approximately 10 percent of the games each day, with Friday being the lowest at 8.6 percent. For the “NHL Only” teams, Wednesday was the least active day at 5.7 percent with Monday, Friday and Sunday coming in around a nine-percent average.
Day games versus night games
Teams that share arenas have to deal with converting the venue from hockey to basketball and back, which is the reason I looked at the data for day games. The LA Times reported, “… a group of 60 Crypto.com Arena workers set in motion a two-hour transformation of the playing surfaces, from Clippers hardwood to Kings ice, and for only a handful of times, back to hardwood for a Lakers game the following day.” Here is a video of the process to convert between basketball and hockey.
For reference, a day game is any game starting before 3:00 p.m. and a night game is 3:00 p.m. or later. The main takeaway is that “NBA + NHL” teams had 3.5 percent more day games than “NHL Only”.
The number of day games per team varied by a large margin. For the “NBA + NHL” teams, the range varied from 0.9 percent to 18.9 percent. For “NHL Only” teams the range varied from 0.6 percent to 14 percent. That seems somewhat like team preference was a deciding factor on if teams played day games or not, but in general Seattle might expect a couple more day games during the year if they end up with an NBA team sharing CPA.
Comparison to the Seattle Kraken
Through the first three seasons of hockey in Seattle, the Kraken are right in the middle between “NHL Only” and “NBA + NHL” teams with 33.3 percent of their games scheduled on the weekend. The Kraken have evenly distributed their remaining games over the other days of the week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday). Seattle has had six scheduled day games over the first three years which is 4.9 percent of their home games.
Overall
I agree that the NBA will come back to Seattle. “I think the NBA comes someday, and I think the NBA fans owe the Kraken fans a beer and a tip of the cap,” Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke told KOMO News on Jan. 4, 2023.
Kraken fans can rest easy, though, as the data supports that the NHL home schedule will not change drastically. There could be a few more day games and one fewer weekend game, but overall, we should continue to enjoy a similar schedule composition.
What. A. Weekend. The Seattle Kraken knocked off the defending champion Vegas Golden Knights in the 2024 Discover NHL Winter Classic on Monday in a core-memory-making event for everyone involved (except Vegas and its fans).
The pageantry, the hoopla, the flying fish, heck, even the weather… It all exceeded our expectations, and the game itself was fantastic.
“It’s honestly one of the greatest sporting events that I’ve been involved in or participated in, for sure,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “In terms of sporting events, it was pretty awesome. The field, and just the energy at the stadium throughout the hockey game… We got off to a good start, so that continued to fuel it, but just the spectacle and the feel for the event itself was outstanding.”
While this one felt very different than a standard home game, Seattle stuck to its same formula that has helped it reach nine straight games with standings points (7-0-2), five straight wins, and a record above .500 for the first time this season (15-14-9).
Here are our Three Takeaways from an unforgettable 3-0 Kraken win over the Golden Knights at the Winter Classic.
Takeaway #1: The Joey Show turns up
Joey Daccord took a big step toward cementing himself as one of the fan favorite athletes for the entire Seattle sports scene Monday. He has been on fire throughout this streak, and on one of hockey’s biggest stages, he pitched his second shutout of the nine-game span with 35 saves.
It was the first shutout in the history of the Winter Classic and earned Daccord the new “Cocoa Cup” MVP trophy.
“It’s just a special day for everybody,” Daccord said. “For our team, for the city, for hockey, that was an incredible day, and I’m just so grateful to be a part of it. It’s really special, and it’s a huge win for our group. That’s a good team over there. It’s a big two points, and at the same time, it was something that I’ll never forget and probably one of the coolest days of my whole life.”
Daccord’s performance helped make it one of the coolest days of a lot of people’s lives. For all the pomp and circumstance, if he had come out and had a dud of a game, the memories of the day would have faded quickly for the fans that shelled out big bucks for a chance to watch a hockey game outside from hundreds of feet away.
For his efforts, those fans regaled Daccord with chants of “Joey! Joey! Joey!” on several occasions throughout the day, and the goalie leaned into it after the game, hamming it up for the crowd as he headed for the Mariners Kraken dugout.
“He loves the fans, and he likes to put on a show,” said Matty Beniers. “And he did [today], he put up a shutout. He’s awesome. He deserves all the chants and all the glory he gets.”
For the second time in this nine-game stretch, Daccord briefly looked like he might have a chance for an empty-net goalie goal. Vegas had pulled Logan Thompson with more than three minutes left, and with a three-goal lead, the risk for Daccord to try for it was minimal.
Before a reporter could finish asking if Daccord wanted to try for the empty net, Joey interrupted and said, “Yes.” Then he elaborated, “I would have shot, but right before it got to me, it just bounced… I was going to try to catch it, place it, and shoot it. I was definitely shooting, but it just bounced away from me, so I didn’t get the chance there.”
Even Hakstol was pulling for him to fire one toward Vegas’s net.
“I thought Joey was going to settle one down there with just under a minute to go and try to shoot at the other end,” Hakstol said. “He couldn’t get it settled, so maybe that was one of the only disappointments for the crowd today.”
Imagine if he had scored a goalie goal right after doing THIS to Jack Eichel!
Takeaway #2: Stick to the formula
We’ve said it time and again over the three-season existence of the Kraken, but this formula works; solid goaltending, good team structure, and opportunistic goal scoring.
The Kraken jumped out to an early lead after Eeli Tolvanen made an outstanding tip out of midair on a Vince Dunn point shot, and you could see the confidence on the Kraken players, even from farther away than normal. They had jump and swagger after that and tilted the ice for several stretches in each period.
Thought Daccord bailed out his mates a couple times, Seattle did a great job of thwarting most prime scoring opportunities for the Golden Knights. And when the Kraken had chances to strike offensively, Tolvanen, Will Borgen, and Yanni Gourde came through with clutch goals.
Hakstol had interesting insight about the identity of this season’s team compared to last season and what it is doing now to string these wins together.
“This team is different [than last season],” Hakstol said. “In order to gain some traction and push the right direction here, we’ve had to do it with a defensive mindset and a real grinding type of mindset. We haven’t been able to score our way to wins. We were able to do that at times last year. We became very confident in that type of mindset.”
This new identity and this old formula is working.
It’s yet another example of how this coaching staff has been able to identify issues with the team, make mid-season adjustments, and turn things around. Here, they’ve changed the whole mantra of the group, and the result has been undeniably positive.
Takeaway #3: An unforgettable day
I wanted to use this last Takeaway to share some of my favorite moments from the day. First, getting to the stadium in time to see the Kraken arrive in their fishmonger garb and the Golden Knights get off the bus in head-to-toe Elvis costumes was a heckuva start.
But then some incredible touches were put on the event to make it uniquely Seattle, with the most shining example being Sir Mix-a-Lot playing Jump On It with altered lyrics like, “What’s up, Kraken, what’s up?” while the players walked through a tunnel of real salmon being yeeted over their heads.
Oh, and I also got a good kick out of Will Borgen—one of the heroes of the day with his Borgy Blast™️ goal in the second period—returning to his stall after the game to talk to media with two beers in his hands, only to have a Kraken PR representative sneak in behind him and rip them away.
Aside from the “Drop the puck” thing getting botched at the beginning and Joey not scoring a goalie goal, the day could not have gone better for the NHL, the city of Seattle, the Kraken organization, its fans, and… most importantly… yours truly. I had never been to a Winter Classic before, so I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, but it could not have been a better experience.
Thanks for following along with all of our coverage of the Winter Classic across this website, our social media channels, and our podcast. I truly hope you enjoyed consuming it as much as we enjoyed creating it.
Darren Brown
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at soundofhockey.com and the host of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is a member of the PHWA and is also usually SOH’s Twitter intern (but please pretend you don’t know that). Follow him @DarrenFunBrown and @sound_hockey or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
