The Kraken fell to the Arizona Coyotes 4-3 in a shootout Tuesday. They have dropped their last six games that ended in shootouts, and in this one, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Matty Beniers, and Jordan Eberle couldn’t find a way to get one across the line. Joey Daccord stopped two of three attempts on the other end, but Nick Bjugstad’s shootout tally was the game-winner.
The Kraken scored early, just 40 seconds into the game, when Eeli Tolvanen and Yanni Gourde executed a rare two-man breakaway to perfection.
🚨 GOAL-vanen! 2-on-0 break with Yanni Gourde leads to a tap in goal for Eeli Tolvanen 40 seconds in.#SeaKraken lead 1-0 early. pic.twitter.com/W7gIZvMKt6
After that it was a familiar refrain for the Kraken. Having built the lead, they gave it away.
“We gave up two on the [penalty kill] and ultimately that didn’t allow us to hold the lead. But it was a back-and-forth type of game,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said postgame.
Here are our Three Takeaways on this loss in Tempe, Arizona.
Takeaway #1 (Curtis): Seattle had the edge when it could keep five skaters on the ice
Hakstol indicated before the game that he was looking for the team to play with improved pace following a lackluster effort at home Saturday at home against Calgary. After watching his team’s effort, he seemed encouraged with the response he saw. “Real hard effort. Guys played hard throughout,” he said. “We played a full sixty-five minutes tonight.”
When Seattle was able to keep five skaters on the ice, the team played a fast, forechecking style that held Arizona down. “We used our legs well, we forechecked well,” Jamie Oleksiak said of the team’s five-on-five play. “We didn’t try to get too fancy with the puck. We used our speed to our advantage.”
Seattle outscored Arizona 2-1 in five-on-five situations. In addition to the Tolvanen goal in the first period, Justin Schultz scored on a pinpoint wrist shot from the top of the right-wing circle off a feed from Beniers in the second period.
This five-on-five advantage was fully earned by the shot quality the team was able to generate. According to Natural Stat Trick, the Kraken generated 58.82 percent of total shot quality in normal manpower situations.
The Schwartz-Wennberg-Eberle forward line, in particular, stifled the Coyotes at five-on-five. That unit gave up just one low-danger shot attempt against Joey Daccord, while creating 11 shot attempts on Connor Ingram, including two high-danger attempts. All in, the line generated an astounding 97.26 percent of total on-ice shot quality in almost ten minutes of five-on-five time.
The Kraken were less successful in reduced manpower situations, however. During 4:00 of four-on-four play during regulation and then 5:00 of three-on-three during overtime, Arizona found space to use their skill game, dominated possession, and seemed to have Seattle on the ropes at times. While Arizona wasn’t able to capitalize with a goal in these situations, they effectively suppressed Seattle’s offensive chances and pushed the game to a shootout where the Coyotes capitalized.
Takeaway #2 (John): Penalty kill continues to struggle
I mentioned it in my Monday Musings this week, but the penalty kill has been a big struggle for the Kraken in recent weeks, and that continued Tuesday; Arizona continued on two of their four power plays. Since the Detroit Red Wings game on Oct. 24, the Kraken have killed just 52 percent of their penalties. The league average in that span is 79 percent.
I rewatched every penalty kill from this Coyotes game, and the only observation I could make is they are not winning the 50/50 pucks often enough to clear the zone and kill time. There were several moments where the Coyotes would get off a shot attempt and reclaim the puck for more zone time.
Another contributing factor is Seattle’s face-off percentage on the penalty kill. For the season, they are around league average at 45.3 percent, but over the last five games they are at 20 percent. Losing the face-off enables opposing teams to have more zone time, which will ultimately lead to more shots and goals.
I don’t think it will solve the penalty kill issue, but help might be on the way in the form of Brandon Tanev who has been sidelined with a lower-body injury since opening night. He is on this road trip and participated in morning skate with the club in Arizona. Tanev was the Kraken’s leading forward in penalty kill time last season, and his speed might add a dynamic to opposing teams’ defense pinching in on 50/50 pucks.
Takeaway #3 (Darren): Matty’s best game of the season
I need to first address my colleagues here before I really get into my Takeaway from this game.
John, those stats about the PK are staggering. The team got off to such a hot start in that area, and things have really regressed. On Tuesday, it was interesting to see Seattle get cooked by the exact same play executed by the same two players twice. On both of Arizona’s power-play goals, Clayton Keller and Nick Schmaltz did a simple give-and-go play between Keller on the right hash and Schmaltz in the high slot. Keller was the trigger man both times, and both times, it ended up in Seattle’s net (though Barrett Hayton got a piece of the first one to earn credit for the goal). I would love to see A.) the Kraken figure out how to defend this play, though it is tough with a good shooter in the bumper spot, since you have to respect Schmaltz there. And B.) the Kraken take a page out of Arizona’s book and use that play on their own manpower advantages.
Curtis, you mentioned in an offline conversation (sorry to put you on blast here) that you thought Matty Beniers looked a bit lost in this game, aside from his two assists. I would disagree with you on that, which brings me to my actual Takeaway.
From what I saw, this was Matty’s best game of the season so far by a long shot. I think because he has been struggling so mightily, I was hyper focused on him throughout this game, and every time I saw him on the ice, he made a play that I liked. There were a few mishandles and one bad turnover in the offensive zone that thankfully didn’t bite the Kraken. But, he made two good offensive plays that turned into goals, he had a breakaway opportunity late in the game, and he had two great looks from the left circle. Both of those he unfortunately put into Ingram’s chest, but still, the looks were there, and his hustle was constant.
We often hear slumping players say they only get concerned when the chances dry up. Matty had a lot more chances in Tuesday’s game than he has in past games this season, and that’s a sign that goals will start going in for him soon.
Last week, I mentioned that if the Kraken were to get four out of a possible six points from the three games between then and now, it would resemble a playoff team. They got four out of six points by beating Tampa Bay and Nashville and losing to Calgary. So why do I feel so icky and bummed about the Kraken right now? Recency bias.
Recency bias gives “greater importance to the most recent event” that often misleads us into overweighting the most recent events when determining the long-term outlook for future events. This happens in positive and negative scenarios. Right now, we have a bad taste in our mouths from the team’s performance against the Flames on Saturday.
Let’s acknowledge the good over the last week. The Kraken got a big win against a very good Tampa Bay Lightning team last Monday that marked the first win in franchise history against that club. They then beat Nashville on Thursday night at home. That was a bit of a redemption game after losing to the Predators back on Oct. 12, which – up until Saturday night – was the worst they played all season.
What’s up with Matty?
The short answer is that I don’t know. I hate the expression, since I feel it is something that hockey media makes up to create a narrative, but he could be “gripping the stick too tightly” right now. The last couple games, it feels like he is not playing with the same confidence we saw last year. There are times where seems to be passing instead of creating a shooting lane for himself, and other times where he is finding space to create a shooting option but misfires the shot.
I’ve seen him out on the power play, but I am not noticing him as a scoring threat or even a key part of the power play right now. He is third on the Kraken in total power-play time this season with 31:27 of ice time, but he only has three shots on goal. Conversely, Andre Burakovsky, who has been out since Oct. 21, has less than half that time as Matty with the same number of power-play shots. This could be by design in how the power play is structured, but Beniers has been largely unnoticeable.
It could also be that opposing teams know him a little better this season and know how to make his life difficult, or it could be some self-inflicted pressure he is putting on himself. No matter what it is, I know he will get through it and will be fine. Slumps happen, and they probably happen more often to young players in this league than we even know. I keep wishing for some kind of fluky, ugly goal to help him break out of this funk.
Other Kraken musings:
Jaden Schwartz has been playing excellent this season, but I think Oliver Bjorkstrand has been the best player over the last five games or so. Both Schwartz and Bjorkstrand have 10 points on the season and have shown up at critical times in games.
Bjorkstrand scored his fourth goal of the season on Saturday night. He did not score his fourth goal last season until Dec. 22.
Beniers has yet to score this season; last season he had five goals by Nov. 5.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the Kraken rank eighth in the league in power play percentage at 25.7 percent, despite how ice cold (1 for 11) the power play was to start the season. The Kraken have at least one power-play goal in each of their last three games.
The Coachella Valley Firebirds are 5-2-0 on the season after winning four straight games. It has been a total team effort; they have 15 different goal scorers this season.
Shane Wright and Max McCormick lead the Firebirds with four goals apiece.
In just their second season, the Firebirds have the largest season ticket base in the AHL. It’s a remarkable achievement and testament to the leadership at Oak View Group. OVG has raised the bar in how to launch a franchise, both at the NHL level and now the AHL level. I often wonder if that is why we are starting to hear more expansion talk around the NHL.
Niklas Kokko, one of the Kraken’s second-round selections from 2022 NHL Entry Draft, is currently leading the Finnish Liiga in save percentage. He earned his first career shutout last week. Kokko is expected to be the primary goalie for Finland in the World Junior Championship at the end of December.
It was pretty cool to see “marathoner” Zdeno Chara run his second marathon of the year. On Sunday, he completed the New York Marathon in 3:19:19, which is an improvement on his Boston Marathon time of 3:38:23 in April. Congrats Big Z.
After injuring his shoulder in the World Championships last summer, free agent defenseman Ethan Bear is getting close to being fully rehabilitated and is destined for an NHL contract. He probably isn’t a fit for the Kraken, but I am excited to see this former Seattle Thunderbird back in the NHL.
Player performance
Jani Nyman (Ilves/SEA) – Playing for Ilves in the Finnish Liiga, Nyman had two goals in Ilves’ 6-4 victory over Sport on Saturday night. Nyman is currently donning the Red Bull helmet as the top U20 goal scorer in the league. He now has eight goals and five assists in 19 games for Ilves.
🙌😻 JAMPPA
Ilves siirtyi Vaasassa kahden maalin karkumatkalle tällä Jani Nymanin kauden seitsemännellä osumalla! 🚨
Ryan Winterton (CVF/SEA) – The third-round selection of the 2021 NHL Entry Draft for the Kraken has three goals and five points in his last four games. This is Winterton’s first season of professional hockey after playing in the OHL the last few seasons.
Justin Schultz (SEA) – Has four assists over the last three games including two power-play assists. He has been a significant contributor to the success of the Kraken power play as of late.
Chart of the week
The Kraken have uncharacteristically scored first in most of their games this season, which is usually closely aligned with winning. But the Kraken have won just 25 percent of the games in which they’ve scored first. The league average is 65 percent, so I expect that percentage to improve now that the team is scoring more. In the meantime, it has been an odd statistic through the first 12 games of the season.
Goal of the week
I had a hard time deciding between these two, so I’m picking two goals of the week:
BJORK-JAM! 🚨
Oliver goes BarrDown Studios for a power-play goal! What a shot.
The Kraken hit the road for a quick two-game set starting with the Arizona Coyotes on Tuesday, and then on to Denver to face the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday. The Coyotes are not the pushover we have seen the last few years, and Colorado really took it to the Kraken in a 4-1 win in Seattle’s home opener.
Seattle then returns home next Saturday with a game against a reeling Edmonton Oilers club. Getting four out of a possible six points will again be great, but three would be fine. It is another cliché, but I am looking for a full 60-minute effort in these games. I don’t think we’ve seen one yet, and a full 60 was the theme when the team went streaking last season.
One area where the Kraken must improve is the penalty kill. They have a 73 percent kill rate over the season after not allowing a power-play goal through the first four games. Over the last two weeks, they have a league-worst PK success rate at just 52.9 percent. That is brutally low, and they’ve got no chance at qualifying for the playoffs if they do not turn that around soon. This brief road trip would be a great place to rekindle that early-season magic.
As always, let me know your thoughts, questions, or areas you want me to investigate.
Finally, I want to give a big thank you to our Patreon members. We have a long way to go to be fully sustainable, but the support we have received to date confirms people appreciate our work and want to help it continue and grow.
The Kraken lost 6-3 to the Calgary Flames Saturday in an uncharacteristically poor effort. We’ve seen them lose in a lot of ways, but they don’t typically get outhustled, and that seemed to happen for a long stretch against a down-on-its-luck Flames team that had lost six in a row coming in.
Mikael Backlund gets the loose puck after Grubauer had made a breakaway save on Greer but couldn't find the puck to cover it. pic.twitter.com/QTtM0KmZXQ
“I feel like maybe they were more desperate than us,” said Pierre-Edouard Bellemare. “I think hungrier, won some battles, and it got away.”
Even through a sloppy middle period, in which the Kraken fired a measly three shots at Flames goalie Dan Vladar, it still felt like Seattle would come out victorious against its struggling opponent. But Noah Hanifin’s power-play goal late in that second period put the game in doubt, and the third period went sideways quickly.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 6-3 Kraken loss to the Flames.
Takeaway #1: Cheap shot by Mangiapane had big impact
Moments after Vladar made his biggest save of the game, sprawling to rob Alex Wennberg on what looked like a sure goal, Andrew Mangiapane took a cheap shot at Jared McCann. McCann had slid to block Mangiapane’s shot and was lying in a prone position on the puck. Mangiapane inexplicably cross-checked McCann across the back of the neck, smashing the star forward’s face into the ice and drawing blood.
McCann saves a goal, and Mangiapane cross checks his face into the ice.
Mangiapane has been assessed a match penalty for attempt to injure. He's out of the game, and #SeaKraken have a 5-minute power play. pic.twitter.com/tV5LLzG9Xk
Mangiapane was assessed a five-minute major for cross-checking and a match penalty for intent to injure, removing him from the game.
1:11 into the power play, Oliver Bjorkstrand scored a nearly identical goal to the one he scored Thursday against Nashville, again sniping from the top of the right circle over Vladar’s glove. That gave the Kraken a 1-0 lead with nearly four minutes of power-play time left.
BJORK-JAM! 🚨
That's one way to make a team pay for a dirty hit.
Seattle failed to score for the rest of the major penalty, though, and just 14 seconds after it expired, Martin Pospisil—who had been serving Mangiapane’s penalty—scored on his first NHL shot in his first NHL game after a three-on-two rush.
The goal by Bjorkstrand was nice, but if Seattle could have gotten a second one there, this is probably a different story. Heck, even just keeping Calgary from scoring seconds after the penalty ended may have done the trick.
McCann left the game for a while after the cheap shot, but he did return and played the remainder. We will be curious to see what supplementary discipline comes for Mangiapane.
Also, worth noting, there was no physical response from Seattle after that incident, which is becoming a pattern with this year’s team.
Takeaway #2: Second-period PPG turned the tide
The Kraken had a bad second period by every metric. It isn’t surprising to see Calgary had 70 percent of the shot quality in the frame, especially when you remember that Seattle only shot on goal three times. The share of shot quality would have been tilted even farther in the Flames’ favor, except Tye Kartye had a great look before getting blasted into the boards by Nikita Zadorov.
Kartye gets stopped by Vladar after a nice setup by Shore. Then Kartye gets BLASTED into the boards by Zadorov.
“We weren’t breaking out clean, we weren’t on the forecheck as a five-man unit,” said Justin Schultz. “Just kind of chasing it a lot in the second, and we couldn’t really recover from that.”
Even so, the Kraken were ahead 2-1 and nearly escaped the period with their lead intact. But Eeli Tolvanen and McCann took back-to-back penalties, giving Calgary 46 seconds of five-on-three time, then another 1:14 at five-on-four. The Kraken came within one second of killing off both penalties, but Hanifin’s shot through traffic squeezed through the wickets on Grubauer to make it 2-2 with just one minute left in the second.
“There’s not one singular turning point,” Hakstol said. “But, I mean the obvious one is we work our way through the five-on-three, and you get towards the end of the PK, but ultimately… that changes the complexion of the entire game and obviously changes what the result of the second period is.”
The ugly second frame carried into the start of the third for Seattle, and Yegor Sharangovich put Calgary ahead with a high tip at 1:33. The Flames never relinquished the lead from there.
Hakstol said, “I didn’t think we got lulled into a trap, I thought we got outhustled in the first 10 minutes of the third period, plain and simple.”
Takeaway #3: Not good enough
These games happen, so we’re trying not to overreact here. The Flames saw an opportunity building in the second period to snap their embarrassing losing streak, and they took advantage of a Kraken team that wasn’t relentless enough.
We saw a few games like this last season when the Kraken had gotten a smidge too comfortable with their position in the standings and let winnable games slip through their tentacles. But they’re also not in a position right now—at 4-6-2 on the season—to be taking any team for granted, especially a Calgary club that has dominated Seattle over three seasons (the Kraken are now 1-7-0 all time against Calgary).
We still think the Kraken are close to going on one of their runs like last season, ripping off a bunch of wins in a row, but this game was a step in the wrong direction. Hopefully it’s a case of two steps forward and one step back, and this loss can motivate the club to now take a bunch of steps forward.
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.
As the Seattle Kraken prepared to take on the struggling Calgary Flames Saturday, line rushes at their morning skate looked familiar to what we’ve seen over the past week. Assuming nothing changes between practice and game time, this will be the third game in a row coach Dave Hakstol has trotted out the exact same lineup, dating back to the team’s road-trip-closing overtime win against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Oct. 30.
Seattle got off to a slow start to its season, going 1-4-1 in its first six games. Its lineup has been shuffled several times since then partly out of necessity (Brandon Tanev and Andre Burakovsky each got injured in those first two weeks) and partly because Hakstol wasn’t seeing results from groups that were so successful together last season.
The Kraken have started to find success, going 3-1-1 in their last five games, and it seems their line shuffling is settled… for now.
“You come out of wins, you come out of games where you find ways to get points as a group, you’re pretty cautious to make changes,” Hakstol said. “Now, that doesn’t mean we can’t do it, but we’ve liked some of the combinations.”
What’s working?
The forward mix Seattle has gone with the last two games (and will stick with Saturday against the Flames) has looked like this:
Tye Kartye – Matty Beniers – Oliver Bjorkstrand Jaden Schwartz – Alex Wennberg – Jordan Eberle Jared McCann – Yanni Gourde – Eeli Tolvanen Devin Shore – Pierre-Edouard Bellemare – Kailer Yamamoto
When the Kraken started their recent four-game road trip in Detroit, everything looked identical to the above, except Eberle and Bjorkstrand were flipped. With Burakovsky out of the lineup, Eberle skated alongside the two youngsters with whom he found success in last season’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. But the last tweak to the lines came when Bjorkstrand and Eberle traded spots, and things have gone swimmingly for Seattle since that minor change.
“We’ve won a few games, so it seems to be working,” Bjorkstrand said. “We obviously had a slow start, so we’re trying to find a little bit of something that’s working, but I think it looks good. I think we have a lot of combinations that could work.”
The Kraken started the season with forward combinations that were practically etched in stone for long stretches of last season, especially McCann, Beniers, and Eberle playing together on the top line, and Tolvanen, Gourde, and Bjorkstrand making up the third line. But Hakstol recognized those groups didn’t have the same mojo in the early stages of the current campaign, so he quickly recalibrated.
Hakstol said, “When you look at Gourdie, McCann and Tolvi, right? We know that Gourdie and Tolvi have great chemistry. Jared McCann has fit in well there. I thought Matty Beniers had a real good hockey game the other night [against Nashville], and Ollie Bjorkstrand was a part of that. So that group showed a little bit of chemistry together.”
Plenty of depth
The Kraken have enough skilled players that Hakstol can sprinkle them up and down the lineup, even with a guy like Burakovsky out long term, and that depth creates mismatches for some of Seattle’s top players. How can an opponent properly match up against a 40-goal scorer in McCann skating on the team’s third line? As we’re seeing lately, it’s a tall task for opposing coaches to answer that question.
“We have a lot of guys who can score goals and create chemistry with anybody,” said McCann. “And I’m playing with two guys that– I know what they’re gonna do, meat-and-potatoes kinds of guys that just focus on what makes them successful. And I feel like that’s what I was kind of missing at the beginning of the year. I was just trying to make things a little complicated. Getting back to watching guys like Yanni and Tolvi play that way just helps my game.”
Gourde has liked what he’s seen from all of Seattle’s top three lines lately. “This locker room, up and down the lineup, everybody can play different positions, and right now, it’s working that way, and it’s fun to watch,” Gourde said. “And you see that Wennberg line has been really good, effective. That Beniers line, they’ve been staying on pucks, playing fast… and our line, I mean, we’ve just got to keep going and keep building and keep building that transition and rush and be a little bit better in our D-zone.”
Still a work in progress
Is this how the lines will remain for the rest of the season? Of course not. More injuries will happen, and Burakovsky and Tanev will eventually come back. But there are trios of forwards that have shown they can work well together when things get shaken up again.
“It’s never going to be the right mix,” Gourde said. “It can change on a daily basis; it’s not something that is anchored in and that’s going to stay.”
Hakstol does seem confident in the group as it stands, though, and he’s also cognizant of the harmful effects too much line juggling can have on a team.
“One of the things you have to be careful with is it’s not always a line combination that’s not working,” Hakstol said. “So sometimes it’s about giving guys a little bit of time, rather than switching things up every two or three days and not allowing guys to get any comfort together at all. So there’s a fine line there.”
Lifting up slumping goal scorers
There are three forwards in the Kraken lineup—Jordan Eberle, Matty Beniers, and Eeli Tolvanen—that have struggled to find the offensive prowess they each showed last season. Those three have combined for just two goals this season, and Beniers, the reigning Calder Trophy winner, remains goalless.
We do not think it’s a coincidence that none of those three are on a line together currently. Instead, Tolvanen is now playing with the team’s top goal scorer in McCann, Beniers is with Bjorkstrand, who has had a solid all-around start to the season, and Eberle is playing with Schwartz, who has been Seattle’s most consistent player so far. Eventually, the goals being scored by others should rub off on Eberle, Beniers, and Tolvanen.
Asked specifically about Beniers, Hakstol thinks he’ll get the monkey off his back soon.
“One’s going to bounce in for him,” Hakstol said. “Whether he shoots it in the net or it bounces in off his ass, one’s going to go in sooner or later. And when it does, that’s going to loosen him up a little bit offensively.”
Other tidbits – Gourde testing neck guard
A big topic around the hockey world lately has been the use of neck guards, after Adam Johnson was tragically killed playing in a game for the Nottingham Panthers of the EIHL. In the wake of that horrifying incident, a handful of players around the NHL have been seen wearing protective equipment around the throat area.
Gourde was the first Kraken player to be seen wearing one Saturday.
“We all know what happened, and I think we’re testing some stuff out here to see how it feels,” Gourde said. “Protecting yourself is probably the biggest answer for [why I was wearing it].”
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.
The Kraken might be finding their mojo. Thursday’s 4-2 win against the Nashville Predators felt like so many of the games from the 2022-23 campaign. It was common last season for Seattle to get in a position where it badly needed to score a goal, and lo and behold, some unexpected hero would step up with the clutch goal.
Thursday, it was Brian Dumoulin who came up with a massive response goal at 16:58 of the second period, just 24 seconds after Roman Josi had tied it for Nashville. Couple that goal with Philipp Grubauer’s play to close out the frame (Grubauer took a rare penalty to make things more difficult on himself, but he came up huge in those closing minutes of the second), and the Predators’ momentum was completely sapped.
The Kraken are now 3-1-1 in their last five games. Are they getting on a roll?
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 4-2 Kraken win over the Predators.
Takeaway #1 (Darren): A big game for Grubi
Grubauer continued Seattle’s run of strong goaltending Thursday, earning his second win in as many tries. The consecutive victories have to feel good for the German Gentleman, who played well in his first four starts but got almost no goal support in those outings and took L’s in all four.
What has been really encouraging from Grubauer is that he hasn’t been giving up the early goals that have plagued long swaths of his tenure in Seattle. In years one and two, it was a regular occurrence for him to give up a goal on one of the first five (or so) shots of the game, leaving the Kraken chasing from the jump. With Seattle very much struggling to find its legs in its first game back after a long road trip, Grubauer was sharp from the opening face-off against Nashville.
“You can’t control what’s coming at you,” Grubauer said of his approach to starting games. “If it’s a breakaway for the first shot or a fluffy from the red line, stop everything, right? That’s the mentality.”
Grubauer is playing aggressively, but when he gets outside the blue paint and gives up a rebound, he is reading the play and recovering quickly enough to slide and cover the follow-up shots as well. I recall a sequence in the second period (I can’t find video of it in the highlights, so this won’t be a great description) when Grubauer made a save to his right, then made a big push with his left skate and stopped a second shot from a bad angle. When he stopped the second one, he was a solid three feet outside his crease but was perfectly aligned to make the save. He recognized that as soon as the puck came off him, he needed to get repositioned in a hurry. It’s like he knows right where the play is heading even before it gets there.
Of course, his best save of the night came when Jaden Schwartz was in the box serving Grubauer’s own tripping penalty, just the second penalty of his career. Gustav Nyquist shot off Grubauer’s blocker, but the rebound went right onto the tape of Tommy Novak for what looked like Novak’s second power-play goal of the game. But Grubauer did a full split and got the toe of his right skate on the second opportunity, robbing Novak and helping his mates kill off the penalty he took.
“Sometimes it’s kind of awkward not being able to sit in the box there by taking the penalty,” Grubauer said. “There’s a couple of huge blocks, and we need those. It doesn’t matter who takes the penalty, sitting in the box, you want to kill it off for that guy and for the team.”
Grubauer ended the night with 32 saves on 34 shots, 1.99 goals saved above expected, two penalty minutes, and he helped Nyquist find his teeth on the ice after Adam Larsson knocked them out with a high stick in the first period. That’s quite the night!
By the way, when asked if Grubauer was actually hurt on the play where he took his penalty or if he was just milking it to get some sympathy from the refs, Grubauer said, “Wouldn’t you like to know! Next question.”
Takeaway #2 (John): Momentum for the power play
The power play has continued to improve as this season has gone on, and the Kraken notched another power-play goal on four opportunities last night. The Kraken are currently eighth in the league with a 25 percent success rate and are clicking at 35.7 percent over the last five games.
BJORK-JAM! 🚨
Oliver goes BarrDown Studios for a power-play goal! What a shot.
It still feels like there are moments where this team is struggling to enter the zone cleanly, but when they get set up, they are really moving the puck well. They are creating more options this season for scoring chances, instead of relying so heavily on Jared McCann and Daniel Sprong (like they did last season) to skate down from the left circle.
The Kraken ranked 21st in the league on the power play last season, so it is still a bit early to say if their top-10 ranking this season is the new norm for the power play or just some early-season luck.
Takeaway #3 (Curtis): Brian Dumoulin finds his footing
Dumoulin’s transition into the Seattle lineup has not been without its challenges. He has suffered a few notable defensive gaffes, and he has looked a step slow at times–perhaps still processing his role and fit in the Kraken system. As recently as last Thursday at Carolina, he blew a tire in the defensive zone attempting to take a breakout pass from Joey Daccord, which led to a turnover and an immediate Hurricanes score in a one-goal overtime loss.
Dumoulin has quieted some concerns over the last two games, though, showing savvy offensive instincts and sound, shutdown defense. He scored his first goal of the season Monday at Tampa Bay on a play where he read the strong-side action well and creeped down from his blue line position on the weak side with perfect timing to corral a rebound and shoot it before netminder Jonas Johansson could recover. Beyond the goal, he was Seattle’s best defenseman that night by on-ice shot quality at five-on-five. As measured by Natural Stat Trick, Seattle generated 77.05 percent of total shot quality when he was out there.
On Thursday night, Dumoulin may have been even better. He found the back of the net again on another skilled play. The Biddeford, Maine, native took open ice in front of him before changing the angle of his shot and simultaneously using Predator forward Cole Smith as a screen.
“We knew that their forwards sink back a little bit and try to block shots instead of coming out hard on us,” Dumoulin said after the game. “So, I knew I’d have an extra second there to try to create a lane for myself. And [Tye Kartye] did a great job screening the goalie also.”
The goal marked the first time in Dumoulin’s career he has scored in back-to-back games. “It’s great to contribute,” Dumoulin said of his goal-scoring streak. “With this team, everybody’s got to contribute for us to win. We’ve done that here in this last stretch. We’ve gotten goals from different people, and it’s important.”
Thursday’s goal–which put Seattle up 3-2 and held up as the game-winner–came at a crucial point in the game. Nashville had tilted the ice in its direction for much of the second period before finally breaking through with the game-tying goal at 16:34 in the period. Dumoulin responded just 24 seconds later. By scoring, he effectively wiped away all of Nashville’s hard work and gave Seattle the jolt it needed to hang onto this win.
Dumoulin’s contributions didn’t stop there. Though Nashville outplayed Seattle (except for Philipp Grubauer) over long stretches, Seattle generated 74.74 percent of total shot quality when Dumoulin was on the ice at five-on-five. This led all skaters for Seattle.
For the season, Seattle is generating more than 55 percent of total shot quality when Dumoulin is on the ice in five-on-five scenarios. This is fourth overall and second best among defensemen on the team, only fractions of a point behind his defensive partner Justin Schultz. Of course, Dumoulin and Schultz are taking some easier matchups, but this was likely Seattle’s vision when it signed Dumoulin to a two-year deal this offseason; take a player who has played first-pair minutes, move him down the lineup, and see if his productivity bounces back against lesser competition.
It’s a long season, and the sample size is still quite small. But, as it stands in early November, Dumoulin seems to have found his footing. “Obviously when you contribute you feel like part of the team,” Dumoulin said. “[I’ve] just got to continue to try to do that.”
There has been chatter about potential NHL attendance issues across the league early this season. Softness in Winnipeg, Buffalo, and Ottawa has been bantered about across Canadian hockey media outlets, but is it accurate? Is attendance actually a problem in those cities?
It is a little early to start sounding the alarms of potential attendance issues, and depending on how you look at the numbers, they can also be misleading. That said, we will dig into the attendance numbers through all October games to see if there are themes we might want to keep an eye on as the season progresses.
Overall attendance
Average attendance during the month of October across the league is up 2.3 percent from last season. That is good, but it is not back to the same level for the October games played in the 2019-20 season.
There are a few things to note here:
1) Arizona now plays its games at Mullett Arena with a capacity of 4,600 per game. Back in 2019-20, they played at Desert Diamond Arena (formerly Gila River Arena), and although they were not selling out, they still averaged 12,224 per game. So naturally, the shift to the smaller arena will bring the overall league average down.
2) The NHL is a high-sellout league where several teams sell all their tickets for all their games, so seeing growth from those teams is constrained by their capacity.
3) Since 2019-20, a few arenas have downsized their capacities slightly to clear room for more luxury seating and experiences.
4) The game count per arena can vary and therefore throw off the weight of a certain team’s attendance. i.e., The Chicago Blackhawks played eight home games in October of the 2019-20 season but have only played two October home games during the 2023-24 season. This is important because the Blackhawks play in one of the biggest arenas in the league, and the volume of games is thus not weighted as heavily in 2023-24 as it was in 2019-20.
Sellouts
To avoid some of the limitations and nuances of looking at average attendance, another way to evaluate these figures is to look at the percentage of games that sell out across the league. I consider a game a sellout if attendance is 99 percent of capacity.
Like the average attendance figure, this can be misleading due to the weighting of teams but still a good indicator of league-wide attendance.
Team-by-team detail
Looking at the change season over season you start to get a better read on some teams that might be struggling.
Here are a couple notes about the attendance changes season over season by team.
New Jersey is getting a pop in attendance after the team took major steps forward last season, including a first-round win in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Chicago’s attendance increase can be attributed to Connor Bedard joining the team after he was selected first overall in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft.
Buffalo has been called out as a team with softness in attendance this season, but they have increased quite a bit off last season’s October attendance numbers.
Winnipeg’s 19 percent drop is significant considering they did make the playoffs last season. Teams tend to not see a drop in their attendance after making the playoffs in the prior season.
Arizona, Boston, Dallas, New York Rangers, Seattle, and Tampa Bay have sold out all their games in October over the last two seasons.
It’s not the easiest to read, but here is a game-by-game breakdown of all the teams’ games through October. I will be updating this throughout the season.
Seasonality and day of the week
When media people state variances in attendance, they often compare an impartial season to prior completed seasons. They are not wrong, and I am not implying they are being deceptive. I’m just saying it would be more accurate to look at the seasonality in attendance.
The disrupted three seasons of hockey between 2019-20 and 2021-22 made those unfair comps. There are no major takeaways from this graph other than attendance tends to climb a bit in December, January, and February, with a little pop in the low-volume month of April.
This might not come as a surprise to many of you, but the day of the week a game is played can also impact attendance.
The variances do not seem that significant when looking at the league as a whole, but when you look at a team with some more variability in its attendance, it can be significant.
Here are a few examples.
Attendance vs butts in seats
I specifically use the term attendance because that is what is used in NHL game reports. I am aware these numbers do not reflect actual attendance figures, but until teams and the league start sharing the actual butts in seats attendance numbers, this will have to suffice.
Teams’ on-ice success can be very cyclical, and as a fan, you should expect some low-attendance seasons; there was a time that the Coyotes had higher attendance than Boston, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. This is all natural.
I hope you find this info informative, and if you have any specific questions feel free to ask me in the comments section below on twitter.
In the run-up to Halloween, watching the Kraken’s four road games against Detroit, Carolina, Florida, and Tampa Bay sometimes felt more like Groundhog Day. It was virtually the same script for each contest; the Kraken would jump out to a two-goal lead, then let it fade away at varying speeds, before the game would come down to the wire and become a 50-50 crapshoot.
Seattle came home with a 2-1-1 record and five standings points in the end, a successful result, especially considering the quality of competition the team faced. Still, there’s work to be done to keep those slip-ups from happening moving forward.
“I’ve been on many teams where it just feels like every game is going to come down to the wire,” Devin Shore said. “You’re scratching and clawing for every point. It’s great to get out to those leads, but all the other 31 teams in the league are getting paid a lot of money to beat us too, so they’re pretty darn good, and they have the ability to come back.”
What linked the four games together so closely was the fact that at some point in each one, Seattle led by the same pesky margin. Seattle isn’t the first team to blow two-goal leads, though, and it won’t be the last.
There has long been a theory that the two-goal lead is the hardest lead in hockey to maintain, but why is that? Shouldn’t a two-goal lead be easier to keep than a one-goal lead?
“It’s probably all mental”
The theory around the two-goal lead usually has to do with how the leading team plays when it gets that extra cushion between itself and its opponent. Whether it’s a shift in mentality or tactics and whether that shift is happening consciously or subconsciously are two topics that are open for debate.
“I think it’s just that you know you have a two-goal lead, and maybe the mind, in a sense, relaxes, I guess,” Oliver Bjorkstrand said. “Maybe you feel a little too comfortable with the lead, and that gives a little bit of an edge to another team to kind of come back. And they get the one, it’s only a one-goal lead. So, I don’t know, it’s probably all mental. I don’t try to think that way.”
From the Kraken perspective, Jamie Oleksiak believes Seattle can keep any lead, but the group needs to re-learn how to avoid letdowns, regardless of the margin on the scoreboard.
“You have to learn how to win as a team,” Oleksiak said. “I think last year, we got used to and comfortable playing with two-goal leads in playoffs, and that’s a big part of it. Because in playoffs you’re playing a lot of one-goal, two-goal games, and I think we definitely got over the hump last year with that.”
Oleksiak also reiterated that this was a positive trip for the team, and that the group made big strides toward finding its game consistently. “It’s still early in the season. I still think we’re kind of building the confidence and whatnot in our game.”
“I don’t buy it”
Not everyone believes in the two-goal lead hypothesis.
“I don’t really buy that, to be honest,” said Shore. “Like, I’ve heard it a lot before, but I’d rather [have] a two-goal lead than a one-goal lead.”
Instead, Shore thought letting two-goal leads slip is just a factor of momentum. He said that when a team is down two and scores to make it a one-goal game, then the momentum has shifted for that team. So, it’s not so much that the trailing team has an advantage when it gets down by two, it’s just that scoring a goal can turn the tide of a game.
“You don’t want that to become too much of a trend. But [comebacks are] gonna happen, and it’s more how you respond and how you stick to playing the right way and not letting it faze you.”
Avoiding the letdowns
Going through game scenarios like this early in the season should help the Kraken down the line. And considering they still managed to come home feeling good about themselves, despite the blown leads in all four games, makes it a relatively inexpensive lesson.
But how does the team avoid these letdowns moving forward?
We heard Jared McCann say during the trip that the Kraken need to keep playing offense in those situations, and Bjorkstrand shared similar sentiments.
“I think we just need to bear down a little bit more and not change the way we play,” Bjorkstrand said. “I mean, we know how we play best, and that’s skating, being aggressive, and battles, all that stuff. So if [we have] a two-goal lead, we’ve got to keep going.”
“Sometimes when you think defense too much, you’re kind of sitting back, and it gives too much space and time for another team.”
Coach Dave Hakstol also offered a simple remedy to the problem for his team. “For us, it’s keep playing the same way and try and make it a three-goal lead, plain and simple.”
Other tidbits: Shore finding a role
Shore, a veteran of 426 NHL games, did not break training camp with the Kraken. Instead, he was placed on waivers and assigned to AHL Coachella Valley to start the season. He wasn’t there long, though, before Brandon Tanev and Andre Burakovsky both went down with long-term injuries, creating a hole in Seattle’s forward corps. Shore got the first call-up of the season.
“It’s a privilege to be up here, and I’m enjoying every second,” Shore said.
After Tanev went down on opening night in Vegas, Tye Kartye slid into his spot after being a healthy scratch against the Golden Knights. Once Burakovsky got hurt, Kartye was elevated to a top-six role, and in came Shore to backfill on the fourth line. He played all four games of the road trip and averaged 8:17 of ice time per game.
“There are a ton of different ways to contribute in a hockey game,” Shore said. “A lot of them are doing the little things and stuff that might go unnoticed by others, but never the guys on the bench, which is really important. But if you can chip in on the score sheet, all the better.”
Shore did that in spectacular fashion against Carolina to get his first goal and point as a Kraken. Bjorkstrand hit him with a 100-foot, waist-high pass that Shore somehow batted down at the blue line, before he raced in, deked, and scored on a breakaway.
Where does that goal rank in terms of the prettiest goals Shore has scored in his career?
“It might be No. 1, for sure,” he said. “They all count as one, though, so I’ll take ’em any way I can get ’em. But it was nice to see that one go in.”
Ummmmmmmmm…. Ok, Devin Shore.
Wait for the third replay. He took Bjorkstrand's stretch pass right out of the air. Heckuva way to get your first goal with a new team.
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.
The boys recorded the latest episode of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast on Halloween night, so there’s a slightly spookier mood to this one than usual.
And while the mood in BarrDown Studios is spooky, the mood surrounding the Kraken has gotten a bit brighter after their 2-1-1 road trip.
John, Darren, and Curtis break down the games against Carolina, Florida, and Tampa Bay. They then head Down on the Farm before jumping into their regular segments.
The Kraken didn’t make it easy on themselves on this road trip, but in the end, they’re coming home with a positive 2-1-1 result after a four-game gauntlet that brought them meetings with a red-hot Red Wings team, then scary matchups against the Hurricanes, Panthers, and Lightning.
In a game that felt eerily familiar to the previous two losses, the Kraken again let a two-goal lead slip against Tampa Bay but this time found a way to get the second point in overtime.
“We’ve had kind of a similar theme to a couple of games on this road trip, and for the most part, we really liked the way we played in the third period,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “We got through the next four or five minutes [after the tying goal], and then did a good job in the OT to execute on the power play.”
“It makes a six-hour plane ride [back to Seattle] a lot easier, for sure,” said Jared McCann.
Here are our Three Takeaways from an important Kraken win.
Takeaway #1: Schwartz and Yamamoto led the way
Two players really stood out for the Kraken in this one. One (Jaden Schwartz) was no surprise, based on how he has been performing this season and especially on the road trip. The other (Kailer Yamamoto) erupted for easily his best game with the club so far.
Schwartz has been Seattle’s most consistent player this season, bar none. He’s playing a fast, simple game, in which he just outworks his opponent at seemingly every turn. Monday, he was all over the top of the Lightning goal crease, and his presence there played a part in three of Seattle’s four goals.
He helped get the Kraken on the board first when he sprinted to retrieve a rebound, keeping the play alive for Brian Dumoulin to eventually net his first goal with Seattle.
DUMO DOES IT! 🚨
Great retrieval by Schwartz, big blast by Schultz, open net for Dumoulin, his first as a #SeaKraken.
He also was right there, whacking away to create a secondary rebound for Yamamoto’s goal, and he was in Jonas Johansson’s grill on McCann’s four-on-three power-play winner.
Yamamoto, meanwhile, looked dynamic and confident throughout the game, and he was rewarded with a goal and an assist. His marker came on the power play, again, after some hacking and whacking by Schwartz, and his assist was a beautiful backhand sauce to Yanni Gourde, who Yamamoto found streaking down the slot.
“I thought today was [Yamamoto’s] best game,” said Hakstol. “I mean, he had a ton of energy tonight, five-on-five, power play, everything. I thought he was involved in every part of the game.”
“I think I’m just using my speed around the net,” Yamamoto said. “Those guys are bigger, so I’m gonna use my speed around the net and try to beat them to the puck.”
After the Kraken lost a lot of fourth-line offensive firepower in the offseason, there was hope Yamamoto could replace some of that. He showed Monday he can be a key component for this team, so let’s see if he can continue to build as he gets more and more comfortable in his new surroundings.
Takeaway #2: Worst lead in hockey
An old adage says the two-goal lead is the worst lead in hockey, and we do firmly believe this. There’s almost always a little slump in play that inherently happens from the team that’s up, because they start to feel subconsciously comfortable with their position in the game and might shift to a defensive posture. And the team that’s down tends to play looser and more aggressive, knowing they have ground to cover.
The Kraken all but proved the theory on this trip, watching two-goal leads vanish in all four of the games they played.
On Monday, they led by two on two separate occasions. Dumoulin and Gourde scored at 12:08 and 13:08 of the first period to make it 2-0, but Tanner Jeannot responded at 13:37 to make it 2-1. Then Yamamoto reinstated the two-goal lead at 15:52, and from there, things slowly started to shift toward another Seattle collapse.
“When you’re playing with a lead, sometimes you think about just sitting back on your heels and letting them skate into you and skate by you,” McCann said. “But I think we need to play a little bit more offense when we’re up, and we need to keep our feet moving, stay on their D.”
The Kraken aren’t the only team that has struggled at keeping two-goal leads; it really is an oddly difficult lead to keep in hockey. But maybe they should strive for more three-goal leads moving forward.
Takeaway #3: Just how they drew it up
McCann’s game-winner was a thing of beauty. You could tell it was the exact play Seattle’s coaching staff had drawn up during the timeout Hakstol called moments before the goal.
McCann walked the puck up the halfwall and switched spots with Oliver Bjorkstrand at the point, bringing the top defender in the triangle closer to the blue line. That opened the seam for Bjorkstrand to pass across to Vince Dunn. That pass drew the same top defender back down and created space for McCann to get rolling downhill (as he loves to do) and lean into his one-timer.
4-on-3 is a huge advantage, but this a beautiful setup by the #SeaKraken for the OT game winner.
Player movement, one-touch passing, and a perfect shot by McCann.
The boys needed that one. It wasn't always pretty, but that's an enormous win. pic.twitter.com/56NuOVaTIG
It was beautifully designed and beautifully executed. We also love the reaction from Hakstol on the bench.
Bonus Takeaway: Thank you, goalposts
The Kraken got some terrible puck luck against the Panthers, losing on a bounce off a stanchion. In this game against the Lightning, they again had an unfortunate carom on the tying goal in the third period when a Brandon Hagel pass deflected off Alex Wennberg’s skate and through Philipp Grubauer’s pads.
But Seattle had the lion’s share of good breaks in this game, as the Lightning had to have hit the post five times throughout the night, including two that looked like sure goals.
How did Jeannot miss with 29 seconds left in the third period?
The hockey gods taketh, the hockey gods giveth back.
Then Nikita Kucherov had what looked like a sure goal with 3:17 left in overtime, when Brayden Point found him off a two-on-one rush for an easy tap-in. Yet, Kucherov somehow shoveled it off the iron.
Grubauer was very good and deserved his first win of the season. But he also had a little bit of luck on his side, and sometimes that’s what you need to get a monkey off your back.
Historically, it has been hard to get a good read on a team until about the 10-game mark of the NHL season. Well, the 10th game of the 2023-24 Seattle Kraken campaign will be played Monday night against the Tampa Bay Lightning, a team the Kraken have never beaten before.
I have been preaching patience through the first several weeks of the season, and I have liked what I have seen over the last week of games. But the team has only locked up three out of a possible six points on this trip and six out of a possible 18 on the season. That is a lower point total than they had at this spot during the inaugural season (seven points).
Of course, the optimist in me could still say, Well, they are only two points off where they were last season (eight points), so stop freaking out.
We are all guilty of human biases in our day-to-day lives, and analyzing hockey teams is no different. I often need to ask myself if I am being critical enough about the team this season, and do I have a fair and accurate read of the current Kraken expectations? To answer that question, I am going to do my best to be more objective in this week’s Monday Musings to analyze the team’s performance to date and project if this group can make the playoffs again.
Shooting and scoring
One area the team has obviously struggled with over the season is scoring. Seattle is ranked 28th in the league with 2.22 goals per game, and they had 3.33 goals per game at this point last season. The easy thing to point out is their low shooting percentage of 7.2 percent which is also 28th in the league. This has been turning around a bit, with Seattle clocking in at 11.3 percent over the last five games, and if you isolate the high-danger shooting percentage, that is also showing signs of a turnaround.
I looked at some of the volume metrics such as shot attempts and high-danger shots over the last five games, and the Kraken are at or above league average in most categories.
So, what is the issue? In my opinion, the Kraken are still feeling the impact of the first four games of the season. The team was ice cold at shooting the puck, and it made analysts and fans alike latch onto what was being said coming into the season that we should expect a regression out of this Kraken team. It still may be true that the Kraken are regressing, but if those first four games hadn’t played out so poorly for Seattle, we would be having a different conversation right now, even with the mixed results on this road trip. Despite their record, I feel confident that the Kraken are at least an average hockey team.
The goalie situation
Both Philipp Grubauer and Joey Daccord have been playing fine between the pipes this season. I was a little surprised to see Joey get the call three games in a row, but I liked coach Dave Hakstol’s explanation after the Florida game. “Both our guys are playing well, so [Joey’s] had a little bit of momentum here, and that’s why I went back with him tonight. And he gave us every opportunity to win the game.”
Over the last two seasons, Daccord has done everything he could in the AHL and just needed some regular reps in the NHL to see if he can truly be an everyday NHL goalie. Although it is early, you can see his confidence growing every game. I think he is on his way.
Grubauer has been mostly good in his outings, but he has gotten almost no goal support. More on that in a bit.
Other hockey thoughts from around the Northwest
It is easy to look at some of the goals scored against the Kraken over the last few games and just blame it on bad luck, but good teams do not put themselves in a position to be beaten by a bad bounce or two. It is part of playing the games, and you can’t expect to get all the breaks. Seattle had some good bounce against Florida too, so it’s hard to hang the entire loss on a ricochet off a stanchion.
The Kraken have scored first in six of their first nine games of the season. They have only won one of those games.
He has not scored a goal yet, but Will Borgen has played great this season.
Matty Beniers has looked good at times this season, but I would really like to see him find the back of the net. He is also dead last in the league in +/- with a -12. +/- is a stat that isn’t widely used anymore, but still, you never want to see one of your top players ranking last in anything. Let’s get Matty going.
Both Ryan Winterton and Jacob Melanson scored their first career professional goals on Saturday in an 8-2 victory for the Coachella Valley Firebirds.
Chris Driedger started the first four games this season for the Firebirds and has a save percentage of .948 and a goals-against average of 1.52 per game. If he was disappointed to be sent down to the AHL after training camp, he isn’t showing it with his play.
The Seattle Thunderbirds are retiring Patrick Marleau’s jersey on Friday. It reminds me how often the late great Andy Eide and I used to argue about who was the greatest Seattle Thunderbird of all time. I was on Team Marleau, Andy always went to bat for Glen Goodall. Andy was always right, since he saw them both play for the T-Birds. I just chose Marleau since I was once a Sharks fan.
Speaking of the Thunderbirds, I had Gracyn Sawchyn on my radar for one of the best player performances of the week. Sawchyn had two goals and three assists in the T-Birds’ 5-2 win against the Red Deer Rebels on Tuesday. Sawychn missed two games over the weekend due to a lower-body injury.
Player performance
Jagger Firkus (Moose Jaw Warriors, WHL) – This is not a mistake. Firkus was on top of our list last week and continues his blistering pace in the WHL this season. After six points in three games two weeks ago, Firkus had nine points over four games in the last week, including a hat-trick on Sunday. Firkus now has 29 points in 14 games for Moose Jaw this season. The Warriors will come through the US division in late February and March.
Jaden Schwartz (SEA) – Schwartz had two goals and two assists over the last three games this past week for the Kraken. The points are great, but he has also been impressing me in the face-off circle during the power play. He only took five face-offs on the power play over the last week, but he won four of them. That goes a long way to help the Kraken improve their possession time on the manpower advantage.
Joey Daccord (SEA) – He went 1-1-1 for the Kraken over the last week and set a franchise record and a career high on Thursday when he made 45 saves.
Chart of the week
A Sound Of Hockey Patreon member asked us on a Mailbag podcast episode last week if we had any thoughts on the lack of goal support for Grubauer over the last few seasons. We believe it is too early to confirm if this is actually a trend this season, but it is stunning to see the difference in support, even if it is just nine games.
Goal of the week
This was easy. The Devin Shore sequence and goal from the Carolina game was incredible.
Ummmmmmmmm…. Ok, Devin Shore.
Wait for the third replay. He took Bjorkstrand's stretch pass right out of the air. Heckuva way to get your first goal with a new team.
I’m using a deeper cut for this honorable mention goal of the week, but Seattle Kraken seventh-round selection from the 2023 NHL Draft, Zaccharya Wisdom, scored his third goal of the season for Colorado College with this nifty backhander.
It would be an exaggeration to call this week a critical week for the Kraken, but I think this week will go a long way in determining how good this team could be. They have the game on Monday night against the Tampa Bay Lightning, then have two home games against the Nashville Predators – a team that beat them in the second game of the season – and then finish this week with a game against the Calgary Flames.
Any points against Tampa Bay will be a pleasant surprise. Andrei Vasilevskiy has been out all season, but backup goaltender Jonas Johansson has back-to-back shutouts over his last two games, so getting a point is looking challenging. Although Nashville is better than a lot of people expected this season, they are beatable, and the Kraken have been playing better since the Kraken lost 3-0 in Nashville in the last meeting between those teams.
The big game might be Saturday against the Calgary Flames. Before the season started, I circled the Flames game as a game of note. I thought Calgary would be a team contending with the Kraken for a playoff spot in the Pacific Division this season. Neither the Kraken nor the Flames have looked like playoff teams so far, but Saturday could be devastating for either team to lose in regulation.
This is not a do-or-die scenario for the Kraken this week, but the hole they’re digging is getting deeper and deeper, so showing some resemblance of a playoff team would go a long way right now. Ideally, this means the Kraken get four out of a possible six points this week.
