Three Takeaways – A crushing Kraken loss to Devils; Burakovsky hurt again?

by Curtis Isacke | Dec 8, 2023 | Three takeaways

If the Seattle Kraken hadn’t just lost their sixth game in a row, we would have left Climate Pledge Arena feeling positive about the way they played Thursday against the Devils. They had a good start to the game, they (briefly) erased a first-period deficit with a goal by Tye Kartye, and they did everything they could to get an equalizer in the third period.

But the Kraken just couldn’t get a second puck past Devils goalie Akira Schmid, despite peppering him with 16 shots in the final frame (38 in total) and racking up 3.53 expected goals on the night, according to Natural Stat Trick.

“We played our tails off tonight,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “I mean, it’s a hard outcome, right? We played against a good hockey team, we played really hard. We made a couple of mistakes. That’s the nature of the beast, and… we’re not getting the benefit of some of the hard work.”

Yeah, that pretty much sums up the night. Oh, and Ryker Evans had some exciting moments in his NHL debut, and Andre Burakovsky returned from injury but… wait for it… got hurt. Again.

Here are our Three Takeaways from a crushing 2-1 Kraken loss to the Devils, their sixth loss in a row.

Takeaway #1 (Darren): Morale is LOW

The way the Kraken typically run their post-game media availability is they open the dressing room within about 10 minutes of the final horn. Before that happens, the players that aren’t requested by media get a chance to get out of their gear and move out of the main area to go on with their recovery processes elsewhere. The players are almost always all gone by the time we get inside, and then we have our press scrums with a select few in the mostly quiet room.

On this night, while we waited to hear from Kartye, Alex Wennberg, and Hakstol, Jared McCann sat quietly in his stall for several minutes, still dressed in his gear from the waist down. He sat in stationary silence, staring dejectedly down at the floor. The Kraken’s leading goal scorer eventually got up and went on with his post-game routine, but he was visibly seething as he exited.

Of all the players on the team, McCann especially had every right to be frustrated after that game. He had at least three prime scoring chances in the third, only to get robbed twice by Schmid and rifle a shot off the crossbar on a short-handed two-on-one rush.

Asked how Hakstol manages that level of frustration from his players, the coach said, “We didn’t talk after the game. We’ll be together in the morning, and you know, we’ve got to live in the moment right now. When you go through these struggles and tough times– I thought our guys did a really good job of that today, not allowing anything that’s in the past or anything that’s coming affect our day or our game today.”

And while Wennberg–who we thought had a strong game, setting up Kartye’s goal and just missing on a rush chance in the second–always projects a positive message when speaking to the media, he too expressed frustration with how things have been going for Seattle.

“It feels like lately, we’ve just been finding ways to lose the game,” Wennberg said. “I mean, obviously we had the opportunities… we hit a couple of posts, and we could have turned this game around. But we’ve got to change something. I mean, obviously we can’t let this just keep going. It’s got to be a different mindset.”

The fact that Seattle played so well and still came up empty made Thursday’s loss an especially bitter pill to swallow. This team is desperate for some good feelings right now.

Takeaway #2 (Curtis): Strong effort not rewarded

The Kraken did a lot of things well in this game. The team needed a strong start to their home stand after a disappointing–and at points “embarrassing”–road trip. And both the effort and execution were there. Unfortunately for the boys in deep sea blue, the goals were not. 

Though the team emerged from each of the first two periods down a goal, Seattle carried the balance of the play through two frames. It generated 22 shots on goal to New Jersey’s 14, including eight high-danger shot attempts to New Jersey’s four.

The Kraken then attacked the third period looking for the equalizing goal and thoroughly dominated. Seattle outshot New Jersey 16-3 in the final frame, with an astounding 10 high-danger attempts.

“You’ve got to like the chances, it’s just a little too little, too late,” Kartye said. “Hopefully we can start the game like that next game and keep it going for a full 60 instead of getting down early and then having to come back again.”

All told, according to Natural Stat Trick, the Kraken generated almost 64.77 percent of the total shot quality in the game. This was the team’s second-highest shot quality share of the entire season, trailing only the 7-1 shellacking of the San Jose Sharks on Nov. 22.

Full credit should be given to New Jersey goaltender Akira Schmid for withstanding several offensive flurries in the final frame.

“He helped us win a hockey game,” Devils coach Lindy Ruff said. “Solid performance. There was a couple opportunities where they could have gained some momentum and he made big saves for us.”

Takeaway #3 (Darren): Is Andre Burakovsky really hurt again?

After missing the second half of last season and all of the Stanley Cup Playoffs with a torn groin, Burakovsky’s return to the lineup to start this season gave hope that the depth of the Seattle Kraken would be restored. But he got hurt again in the team’s sixth game of 2023-24 and went on to miss 20 games before finally returning Thursday with hopes he could help things around.

Burakovsky looked solid in the game through (almost) two periods and helped create Kartye’s goal by sticking with the puck after initially losing it.

But then he didn’t look solid anymore.

With six minutes left in the second period, Burakovsky took a hard hit from Kevin Bahl in the same corner where Jacob Trouba decked him nearly two months ago. It seemed like Burakovsky may have been wincing when he went to the bench.

He returned for one more short shift that period, but then went down the tunnel. He was back to start the third but only played two shifts and was then glued to the bench the rest of the game.

Hakstol confirmed Burakovsky was “unavailable” after those two shifts. “We’ll have to evaluate that as we go into tomorrow morning.”

It’s promising that Burakovsky A.) returned for the third after surely being checked out by the team’s medical staff during the second intermission and B.) remained on the bench after trying to gut it out.

Still, seeing him in discomfort after so many injury woes for this one important player was disconcerting.

Bonus Takeaway (Darren): Strong debut for Ryker Evans

Seattle’s top defensive prospect, Ryker Evans, had a strong showing in his first NHL game after being called up Tuesday from Coachella Valley. He replaced Justin Schultz, who was a healthy scratch for the first time this season.

“The impetus to call [Evans] up was the fact that Ryker is ready to take on the opportunity, and he has earned the opportunity,” Hakstol said. “As we continue to grow and move forward as a team, as an organization, the development of our youth is extremely important. As we all saw tonight, Ryker is ready for this league. One day does not make a career, but he played very well tonight.”

From the jump, he showed his offensive prowess, making a pass to his buddy, Kartye, and then joining a rush on his very first shift.

“That’s part of what he does, right?” Hakstol said. “And we want him to do the things that come naturally to him that he’s good at. He doesn’t do it at risk defensively. He’s a pretty intelligent player in that way.”

Our favorite Ryker play of the evening came with seven minutes left in the third period when the Kraken were pushing. He fought through an Ondrej Palat check on the half wall and maintained possession. Then he carried the puck down low and slammed on the brakes, bumping the puck behind his back and sending Palat flying. Reversing course, he tried to stuff the puck in behind Schmid, but the goalie read the play and was solid on his post.

Now, it wasn’t perfect. Evans got walked in the first period and had a few scrambles and mishandles, but all in, it was exactly the kind of debut the Kraken would have wanted out of their smooth-skating 21-year-old blueliner.

Three Takeaways – PANIC BUTTON TIME – Kraken lose fifth straight to Canadiens

by Darren Brown | Dec 4, 2023 | Three takeaways

If you are losing faith or have lost faith in this Seattle Kraken team, you are not alone, based on what we’ve seen in our Twitter mentions the last few days. Things are not good right now, plain and simple. The Kraken are turning the puck over in terrible spots, they can’t score, and they’ve lost five straight games with three of those losses coming against teams we don’t expect to be in the playoffs at the end of the season. 

Seattle’s latest defeat, a 4-2 stinger at the hands of the Montreal Canadiens, was avoidable, but the Kraken had a horrible start and never recovered. 

“I mean, it’s four losses, so we probably shouldn’t take too much away from it,” Vince Dunn said. “It’s really unacceptable to come out with nothing… Being close doesn’t cut it, doesn’t win you games. It needs to be complete.”

We’re officially hitting the panic button. Here are our Three Takeaways.

Takeaway #1 (Curtis): Slow starts defined the road trip

Seattle never held a lead at any point during this critical four-game trip. Not only that, the Kraken found themselves trailing in the first period in each and every game. On the first night of the trip in Chicago, Seattle managed to level the score at 2-2 and escape the first period tied, but over the last three games, the team found itself down a goal at the first intermission each time.

“It feels like we do this every time–we’re chasing the game,” Jared McCann said. “We’re all frustrated right now because we know we have better.”

On Monday night, the Kraken didn’t play with enough pace or discipline with the puck to break Montreal’s forechecking pressure effectively early on. Seattle repeatedly turned the puck over and conceded high-danger chances to the Canadiens.

At 4:00 in the first period, Jamie Oleksiak had full possession of the puck behind Philipp Grubauer but was slow to breakout and allowed Jake Evans to close on him, causing a weak turnover to an unguarded Josh Anderson in the right circle. From there, Anderson found Sean Monahan low beside Grubauer for an easy tap-in goal.

“[Montreal] didn’t do anything special. They worked hard,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “We didn’t handle that pressure well enough early in the game.”

McCann was more direct: “The first period was pretty embarrassing.”

For me, the first period effort was reminiscent of the team’s flat start in Toronto. That led me to think that a heavy push could come from the Kraken early in the second period. But that didn’t happen. 

Seattle’s sloppy play and parade of turnovers continued for the first 10 minutes of the second period. Before fans could catch their breath, Montreal was up 3-0. That’s too deep of a hole to dig, even against a truly mediocre Habs team.

“Starting from behind, and working and playing from behind, no matter how well you might feel you play in the third period, you can’t pat yourself on the back in any way for that,” Hakstol said. “We came up short in the beginning of this hockey game to match the necessary sharpness and intensity to handle the pressure.”

Said McCann, “We have some veteran guys in this room who [said] something after the first period, [but] we can’t get to that point. We need to come out a lot harder, a lot stronger.”

Takeaway #2 (Darren): Scoring is too hard right now

This iteration of the Seattle Kraken feels more like the inaugural season version than the Year 2 version that practically scored at will and got contributions from every corner of its roster. The 2023-24 Kraken work hard and mostly play within a sound structure, but they have doozy turnovers that end up in the back of their net, while goals at the other end of the ice are too hard to come by to overcome those defensive gaffes. 

Struggling to score isn’t something that just recently started for this team, but it has been magnified on this five-game skid. All four of these road games against Chicago, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal have been winnable. But putting the puck in the net has felt like catching lightning in a bottle, while opposing teams just need one screw-up from the Kraken, and they capitalize. 

It has been well documented that the Kraken’s shooting percentage was through the roof last season at 11.6 percent, just 0.2 percentage points behind Edmonton for tops in the NHL. This season, Seattle is hovering at 7.46 percent, good for 27th in the league, and its goals for above expected is a shabby -3.48, good for 22nd according to MoneyPuck.

This is a very anecdotal/eye-ball test observation to go with those statistics, but I can’t help wondering if a lack of shooting mentality earlier in the season has led to an overcorrection by Seattle’s players, where now they’re erring on the side of just getting pucks on net.

Shooting more is generally a good thing, and the Kraken have put 72 shots on goal the last two games. But have they now swung the pendulum too far to where they’re sacrificing precision on their shots and perhaps not being selective enough?

Again, this is just what I’ve been seeing, and I don’t have a good stat to back this up, but I’ve felt that too many of Seattle’s shots are right into the opposing goalie’s midsection, where not only does the puck have almost no chance of going in, but also where a rebound is highly unlikely. 

From this game, I can remember two well-placed shots, just inside the posts; one by Jared McCann and one by Vince Dunn. And those both went in the net. 

Takeaway #3 (Darren): Panic button time

These are officially dire times for this Kraken group, and the players know it. There are several veterans who could be on the trade block in the coming months if things don’t turn around quickly, and every passing loss makes a Trade Deadline fire sale more likely.  

“Coming [into Montreal] we had some good confidence, but maybe we need to take a step back and look in the mirror,” McCann said. 

If the Kraken want to save their season, something has to change. They’ve been banged up, no doubt, but they can’t keep losing to beatable teams if they want any hope at making the playoffs, which are slipping farther and farther from reality. 

Now, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching NHL hockey most of my life, it’s that an 82-game season is a LONG season. Teams go through stretches where fans think they will never win again, only for the team to find a win or two, get some good feelings, and suddenly a 10-game heater makes everything feel right in the world. 

But I’ve also found there needs to be some sort of catalyst to get things going back in the right direction.

One particular season jumps to mind, but before I tell this tale of campaigns past, note that I’m not implying Seattle should trade for a goalie, because A.) Philipp Grubauer isn’t going anywhere (he played well Monday, by the way, though he still somehow finished the night slightly below a .900 save percentage) and B.) Joey Daccord has generally been solid in his outings. 

Ok, here’s the story. As Sound Of Hockey Podcast listeners will know, I grew up a Wild fan, watching almost every game from their inception in 2000 until the arrival of the Kraken. In the 2014-15 season, Minnesota had an awful—and I mean awful—mid-season slump where they lost 12 of 14 games and couldn’t get a save from either Darcy Kuemper or Niklas Backstrom. 

In a desperation move, then-GM Chuck Fletcher traded a third-round pick for Devan Dubnyk, who had been backing up Mike Smith in Arizona. Dubnyk came in, won his first game against Buffalo, and the entire Wild organization and fanbase breathed a big sigh of relief. Then Dubnyk caught fire, pulled Minnesota out of the abyss, and the Wild went on to make the playoffs. They even won a playoff round against the St. Louis Blues before getting swept by the eventual Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks. 

Heck, even last season, the Kraken claimed Eeli Tolvanen and put him in the lineup for the first time after three consecutive losses and an 11-game stretch where they went 3-7-1. Tolvanen scored in his first game for Seattle, and the Kraken then went on an eight-game win streak to practically cement themselves as a playoff team.

The point is that sometimes a personnel change is needed to bring a fresh perspective and inject positivity into the dressing room.

Seattle has tried a series of call-ups from Coachella Valley, and that hasn’t worked. Is there a waiver claim out there? Is there a low-risk trade that doesn’t cost the team too much in terms of leveraging the future? I don’t know what the answer is, but I would like to see this club try something to create a spark before it’s too late and the only thing left to do is sell veterans for draft picks. 

Worth noting, Andre Burakovsky skated in a regular jersey at Monday’s morning skate, shedding the red non-contact sweater for the first time since suffering his upper-body injury on Oct. 21. Could his impending return be a catalyst for a turnaround? 

Bonus Takeaway (Darren)

I really wanted to put this as Takeaway #1 with no words explaining it, but John and Curtis talked me out of it. So, here it is as a Bonus Takeaway.

I’ll show myself out.

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Three Takeaways – Missteps and lack of scoring doom Kraken against Senators

by Darren Brown | Dec 3, 2023 | Three takeaways

This is becoming a terrible road trip for the Seattle Kraken, who sunk to 0-3-1 in their last four with a 2-0 shutout loss to the Ottawa Senators Saturday. Like the Chicago loss, this felt like a winnable game for Seattle. But for as many shots as the Kraken threw at Anton Forsberg (39 in total), the Senators netminder never appeared all that stressed and cruised to his first shutout of the season.

“We generated some good chances, but we didn’t get the second pucks,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “They did a nice job getting in shot lanes. They were committed in terms of blocking shots, and they battled hard in front of their net.”

At the other end, a couple hiccups resulted in goals against, and that was all Ottawa needed.

Here are our Three Takeaways from Seattle’s fourth loss in a row.

Takeaway #1 (Darren): Missteps and miscommunications proved costly

Two bad breaks for the Kraken ended up in the back of their net. On the first one, Matty Beniers tried to carry the puck up through the slot, but he lost an edge, fell, and handed the puck to Mathieu Joseph in prime scoring position. The result was an easy goal for Joseph and a 1-0 deficit at 17:21 of the first period.

The other miscue came 13 minutes into the second period, soon after a blown 4-on-1 rush at the other end that concluded with Beniers handcuffing Jordan Eberle, who then couldn’t get a real shot away. 

The puck went deep into Seattle’s zone. Joey Daccord corralled it and left it behind the net for Will Borgen. Borgen looked like he was expecting Daccord to rim it around, though, and stopped at the net front, leaving a loose puck for Vladimir Tarasenko to pounce on. Tarasenko passed to Tim Stutzle, who passed to Drake Batherson for an open net. 

Hakstol had an interesting breakdown of the second goal.

“The second goal against is unfortunately, again, it’s a play that [Daccord is] going to learn from,” Hakstol said. “It’s a right decision by him to get out and to stop that rim. It becomes a dirty puck when it hops on him, and at that point in time, with good communication around him, that’s a time where you just want to make a real decisive play with that puck and get it out of the danger area. Unfortunately we weren’t able to do that.”

Here was Daccord’s side of what happened:

“The rim came, and it just hit my stick and bounced up in the air, took a really bad bounce,” Daccord said. “I was trying to corral it, couldn’t corral it, and then I saw Borgey coming, so I thought he was coming to pick it up. And then we just had a little miscommunication.”

Mishaps happen, and Daccord is more aggressive with his puck play, which has been well documented. Still, two bobbles in a hockey game shouldn’t be enough to cost you the result.

When you aren’t scoring goals at the offensive end of the ice, those slip ups become deadly. 

Takeaway #2 (John): Lack of quality shots on net

If you look at the box score, it appears as if the Kraken peppered Ottawa with shots and just came up empty. Even advanced analytics sites like Evolving Hockey had more expected goals at all strengths for the Kraken (2.99) than Ottawa (2.75).

However, my eye balls told me a slightly different story. The Kraken absolutely had a lot of shots, but I never felt as if the Kraken were getting heaps of Grade-A scoring opportunities. Ottawa did well to limit the shot attempts to the outside, which really lowered the quality of the Kraken shots.

I would also say that although Forsberg played well, he did not steal that game from Seattle. Even as shots were getting through to the goalie, most of the offerings seemed to hit Forsberg squarely in the chest.

According to NaturalStatTrick.com, the Kraken had six high-danger shots on goal, which is right at their season average. A more damning stat is that Seattle did not have any high-danger shots on six minutes of power play time.

Takeaway #3 (John): Penalty kill showing improvement as of late

Let us end on a positive note, because we need one right now. The penalty kill has been showing some drastic improvements as of late with one power-play goal against versus Toronto as the only blemish on the record over the last five games.

This is a vast improvement over the stretch of games from Game 9 to Game 20 where their penalty kill averaged just 65 percent. Over the last five games, they have killed 92 percent of their manpower disadvantages.

In my eyes, there have not been any structural changes to Seattle’s approach, but the execution has been much better. They’re getting to loose pucks and clearing the defensive zone when they’re getting the opportunity to do so. This will be something we hope continues.