Three Takeaways – Jaden Schwartz injured, Kraken take “sloppy” loss to Blackhawks

by Darren Brown | Nov 28, 2023 | Three takeaways

That is not the way the Seattle Kraken wanted to start their four-game road trip, dropping a frustrating 4-3 result to a bad Chicago Blackhawks team on a day rife with bizarreness and distractions for that franchise. Seattle practically refused to take advantage, and instead spotted the ’Hawks two separate two-goal leads thanks to some ugly plays and poor goaltending. 

“Our puck play was pretty sloppy through the first two periods,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “That caused us a lot of problems against that team.” 

The sloppy puck management proved costly. It was one of those nights where it seemed like each mistake was ending up in the back of Seattle’s net with Philipp Grubauer—in his first game back from injury—allowing four goals on the first 15 shots he faced in the game. 

The Kraken pushed in the third period and got themselves back within one, but any comeback hopes came up short when a full minute of 5-on-3 time went by the boards in the third period without a goal, and then the Kraken failed to establish any threatening offensive-zone possession in the end-of-game 6-on-5 scenario.

Like we said, it was a frustrating night. Here are our Three Takeaways from a 4-3 Kraken loss to the Blackhawks. 

Takeaway #1 (Curtis): Kraken lost their structure in the first two periods

Most of the first two periods were difficult to watch for anyone interested in scheme discipline and sound hockey from the Kraken. Rather than trusting their breakouts and structure, the Kraken tried to press the play as a group of disconnected individuals. They settled for one-on-one matchups, swiped at the puck rather than playing their check straight up, cheated for offense, and launched hope passes through the neutral zone trying to spring an odd-man rush. 

They looked like a team that believed they were better than their opposition and didn’t respect the matchup enough to bring their typical disciplined style. This could be a carry-over of bad habits from the San Jose game, or it could have arisen in the first few minutes of the game when the play did seem tilted in Seattle’s direction. The Kraken were winning the one-on-one battles and getting quick and easy chances on Chicago’s goal.

Whatever the reason, Seattle’s carelessness cost the team dearly as Chicago took full advantage. In one particularly egregious sequence in the second period, Yanni Gourde’s forward line all got caught cheating up ice when the puck was loose and in dispute at Seattle’s defensive blue line. This allowed a two-on-two break in by Chicago and clean look for (Spokane-native) Tyler Johnson, which he buried.

It’s not acceptable that the Kraken would beat themselves this way, and Hakstol was none too pleased postgame. “When you have shifts that are not crisp, are not sharp, you’re not taking care of the puck and giving opportunities, you’re going to have some ugly things happen,” Hakstol said.

Losing to the lowly Blackhawks is a nadir of the 2023-24 season thus far.

Takeaway #2 (Curtis): Special teams struggles continue

The final score very easily could have looked even worse for Seattle, but for two remarkable goal-saving efforts from Jamie Oleksiak and Adam Larsson on the penalty kill. Chicago’s anemic power play generated a handful of dangerous chances including in scrambles at the net front. Oleksiak and Larsson both blocked point-blank rebound shots that otherwise seemed ticketed for an empty cage behind Grubauer. 

While Chicago did not score on three power plays, Seattle’s penalty kill continues to concede high-danger net-front opportunities at a concerning rate. It is an area that the Kraken need to improve to have any hope of climbing the Western Conference standings.

Perhaps even more significantly, the Kraken power play failed to deliver for the second straight game despite again having many opportunities at important inflection points in the game to deliver. Late in the third period, trailing by only one goal, the Kraken had more than a minute of 5-on-3 time after earning two consecutive power plays. Yet, the Kraken failed to get even one shot on goal in that time.

“[A]s a power play unit, what you want to be able to do is capitalize at key times of the hockey game,” Hakstol said postgame. “You’re not always going to be at your best, but you have  to find ways to capitalize at a key time in the hockey game. We had a couple of those opportunities today and I was disappointed we came up short [and] weren’t able to capitalize–the 5-on-3 being one, but there was a couple of other spots that I would pinpoint as well as critical opportunities for us.”

The Kraken are now 0-for-9 on the power play over their last two games–both losses.

Takeaway #3 (Darren): Jaden Schwartz injured

Throwing a big dash of salt into the festering wound that was this game, Jaden Schwartz left after one shift in the third period and was quickly ruled out with a lower-body injury. We didn’t see anything obvious on the broadcast that would have caused the injury, but in the below clip, you can see that he’s floating around, in and out of the frame, and not skating with his normal stride. 

At the very end, Schwartz appears to be limping as he struggles back onto the bench.

Losing Schwartz for any period of time could be disastrous for the Kraken. They’re already banged up with Andre Burakovsky still in a red non-contact jersey, working his way back from a long-term upper-body injury, and Brandon Tanev missed Tuesday’s game with the lower-body injury he suffered thanks to a big Nils Hoglander hit in Friday’s game. 

Those are two injuries to key players, but Schwartz would arguably be an even bigger loss. He has been one of Seattle’s best players this season, serving as one of a very select few that consistently gets to the top of the crease to create havoc for opposing defenses and goalies. 

Seattle needs Jaden Schwartz in its lineup. Keep your fingers crossed for good news in the coming days on this front. 

Three Takeaways – Tanev hurt again, Canucks run away from Kraken

by Curtis Isacke | Nov 25, 2023 | Three takeaways

At Friday’s morning skate, Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said this: “Most importantly, it’s the start of the hockey game. The beginning of the game gives us an opportunity to build a 60-minute performance.” But after a 5-1 loss to the Vancouver Canucks, the Kraken bench boss was not happy with the way his group got out of the gates.

“It’s not an effort issue, it’s a readiness issue,” Hakstol said after the game. “They were the more ready team at the drop of the puck, and you saw that in our execution in the first five minutes of the hockey game. Once you start that way, it’s really hard to catch up in terms of your overall performance.”

Hakstol didn’t mince words in his evaluation. “We had too many guys below the bar tonight, and that’s the bottom line,” he said. “This is not a part-time league. It’s a full 60-minute league.”

Here are our Three Takeaways from a 5-1 Kraken loss to the Canucks.

Takeaway #1 (Curtis): Slow start on the power play

Like so many Americans, the Kraken were a step slower than usual on this day after Thanksgiving, at least to start. Vancouver piled up the first four shot attempts at even strength and seemed to be outworking the boys from Seattle. 

Fortunately for the Kraken, though, the team drew the first penalty at 3:23 in the first period, a holding call against Nils Hoglander behind Seattle’s net (Rick Tocchet must have loved that).

And the calls against the Canucks didn’t stop there. J.T. Miller tripped Jaden Schwartz three minutes later, and then Tyler Myers got his stick into Jordan Eberle’s face (with a double-whammy friendly fire on Miller) at 11:33 in the period for a double-minor penalty.

These plays–none of which were particularly “earned” by Seattle–gifted the Kraken eight minutes of first-period manpower advantage time. 

These power plays should have been enough to give the Kraken a jolt and get them on the board. Coming into the game, the Kraken were tied for seventh in the league with a 25 percent conversion rate on the man advantage. And the Canucks’ penalty kill has struggled, conceding goals on 23.4 percent of opponent opportunities, 10th worst in the league.

Unfortunately for the Kraken, just the opposite happened. On the team’s first power play, the group seemed disorganized and sluggish, conceding two breakaway counterstrikes to the Canucks penalty killers–the second of which found the back of the goal off Teddy Blueger’s stick.

“The first foot out there, we gave up two short-handed breakaways,” Hakstol said. “Obviously not good enough.” 

The second power play seemed to start well when Matty Beniers rifled the puck past Canucks goaltender Thatcher Demko, but the play was ruled offside on the zone entry after a successful Vancouver challenge. From there, the Kraken could never quite find an opening against Demko over the remaining five-plus minutes of power-play time in the first period. The result was a net minus-one on the scoreboard in eight minutes five-on-four.

Kraken defenseman Vince Dunn agreed with Hakstol’s assessment. “It’s awful on all of our parts. Both units will have to take a look at where we were going wrong and come to a quick fix… The foundation of what we were doing out there was not executed well. We made things a lot more complicated than we needed to.”

Takeaway #2 (Darren): Missed opportunities in second period

I agree, Curtis, that the first-period power-play miscues were a big issue on this night. But it’s funny to think that if the Kraken hadn’t been offside some 18ish seconds before Beniers scored an apparent equalizer, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The negated goal changed that narrative dramatically and probably altered the course of the game. Such is life.

The other thing that altered the course of the game was Seattle’s inability to score in the opening eight minutes of the second period, when the Kraken came to life and tilted the ice. In that time, they put eight shots on Thatcher Demko without allowing a shot to Vancouver, and they had a few great looks that Demko shut down.

When a team has a stretch like that, it has to capitalize, because the momentum will eventually swing back the other way. Sure enough, a sloppy-looking play in Seattle’s end led to Conor Garland whacking a loose puck toward Joey Daccord, and Dakota Joshua cleaning up the rebound to make it 2-0.

Tye Kartye scored the Kraken’s lone goal of the night (his first goal in exactly a month), but Seattle didn’t build off of it in the third period, and Vancouver eventually ran away with it.

Takeaway #3 (Darren): Tanev hurt, late response

With 2:46 left in the first period, Tanev got caught off balance in the neutral zone and got lit up by Hoglander with a high, hard (clean) hit. Hoglander had the puck, turned it over to Tanev, and the moment Tanev touched it, Hoglander crushed him. Tanev slammed to the ice with all his weight coming down on his left leg and had to get helped to the bench by linesman Brian Gibbons.

Visibly in pain, Tanev stayed on the bench for the remainder of the first and came out to test the leg at the start of the second. But he determined he couldn’t go, went back to the dressing room, and was officially ruled out with a lower-body injury.

A second issue happened in this game that was arguably worse than the hit on Tanev, when Tyler Myers—the same guy that injured Matty Beniers with a cheap shot last season—delivered a high hit on Oliver Bjorkstrand in the third period and appeared to make contact with his head. Sam Lafferty scored to make it 3-1 just moments after this hit that shook up Bjorkstrand.

Before I make this point, I want to be clear that I’m not a big proponent of fighting. I think it’s fine in some scenarios, but if it got removed from the game altogether, I wouldn’t be sad about it. I also don’t think signing or trading for a tough guy or calling up John Hayden is the end-all answer for the lack of response a lot of people think it would be. (Although, to be fair, Hayden did drop the gloves with the 6-foot-8 Myers in pre-season.)

I do think it’s important, though, that players stick up for one another and minimally show opposing teams they’re not willing to accept their teammates getting hurt, regardless of if the hit that causes the injury is technically clean or dirty.

I asked Hakstol if he wants to see a physical response when a key player gets injured on a big hit, and he said, “Depends on the situation. I won’t get into that one.” Fair enough. It’s a sticky subject, and getting into the details of how he wants his team to respond doesn’t benefit Hakstol or his players.

Without trying to guess how I think Hakstol wants his team to handle these issues, the way I view it is that having a physical response doesn’t have to mean somebody squares off in a bare-knuckle boxing match at center ice. But there should be *some* immediate reaction that makes a guy like Hoglander think twice about taking the exact same run at Brandon Tanev that Brett Howden took at him on opening night in Vegas. (I will refrain from saying somebody should immediately jump Myers in this scenario, because I wouldn’t want to go after a guy twice my size either.)

After all, Howden’s hit cost Tanev the first month of the season, and the pesky forward has been showing just how important he is to this team in his seven games since returning from that injury. Now he’s potentially gone again, and still, nobody immediately went after Hoglander, just like how nobody went after Howden, nobody went after Andrew Mangiapane when he smashed Jared McCann’s face into the ice, and nobody went after Jacob Trouba when he cost Andre Burakovsky six-to-eight weeks on the shelf.

It is worth noting that Kartye did seem to be challenging Hoglander late in the game when he got his 10-minute misconduct, and Yanni Gourde dropped the gloves with Blueger. Were those instances related to the hits on Tanev and Bjorkstrand? Perhaps. But those challenges came at the very end of the game when Seattle was already down 5-1.

Anecdotally, I seem to recall that last season almost anyone on the team (heck, Ryan Donato seemed to do it semi-regularly, and he is not known for his toughness) would jump on an offending player, sometimes getting his own clock cleaned in the process. What happened to that mindset? It’s not about having guys that will stand toe-to-toe and get their faces punched in, but rather having a pack mentality that simply doesn’t accept opposing teams taking liberties with your players.

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Three Takeaways – Kraken swim past Sharks with a 7-1 splashing

by Darren Brown | Nov 23, 2023 | Three takeaways

That was a markedly easy win for the Seattle Kraken over the San Jose Sharks in the season’s first battle of the sea creatures. The Kraken came out flying, scored four goals in the first, and for much of the game the Sharks looked like they didn’t even belong on the same ice.

“We were ready to go at the drop of the puck,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “We came out, we scored early, but just the way we played from the drop of the puck, I thought, really, it put the momentum where we needed it to be.” 

It was a big night offensively for several Kraken players, especially Oliver Bjorkstrand, who had a goal and three assists, and Eeli Tolvanen, who had two goals and one assist. Their line with Yanni Gourde combined for four goals and nine total points on the night. Brandon Tanev, Jared McCann, and Adam Larsson also had goals, and Jamie Oleksiak had two assists.

Here are our Three Takeaways from a 7-1 Kraken shellackin’ of the Sharks.

Takeaway #1 (Darren): Good Kraken or bad Sharks?

It was hard tell if this game was a product of the Kraken putting together an exceptional performance or if it was more about a bad Sharks team playing even worse than usual. We think it was a mix of the two.

Seattle really did overwhelm the Sharks and managed to pen their inferior opponents into their zone for long stretches of the first two periods. When that happened, the San Jose defenders would all collapse down into a clump in front of the goal, leaving oodles of space for Seattle to work around the perimeter.

Case in point, this Yanni Gourde goal that made it 4-0:

We asked Tolvanen if he sensed there was more time and space in the offensive zone in this one. “Oh, yeah,” Tolvanen said emphatically. “I think we did a really good job changing. They had tired guys out there, and we were able to change, then we’d get fresh guys out there. So I think that’s going to make it easier, and you don’t get tired when you play in the offensive zone.”

The Kraken had a whopping 82 percent of the shot quality in this game, another indicator that both teams very much got what they deserved.

From the San Jose perspective, their coach and players were seething after the game, and coach David Quinn said the effort was “embarrassing.”

“We weren’t ready to play,” Quinn said. “Two breakaways in the first minute and a half – just absolutely embarrassing. We lost every single battle, got beat off the walls, and every time there was a 50-50 puck battle, we were fishing for pucks and got on the wrong side of it.”

He had very strong words throughout his presser, which tells us this level of ineptitude was appalling, even for a historically bad team.

Still, take nothing away from Seattle, because the team did exactly what it was supposed to do against a bad team.

Takeaway #2 (Curtis): Best defense is a good (puck control) offense

Not to be lost in the Kraken’s scoring outburst was the team’s defensive performance. Seattle suppressed San Jose’s offense Wednesday night to an extent quite literally unprecedented in franchise history. 

The Kraken allowed the Sharks only 14 shots on goal, which is tied for fewest in franchise history–matching the total Ottawa had on April 18, 2022. And the shots tended to be of the low-danger variety. According to Natural Stat Trick, San Jose generated shot quality expected to create just .75 goals. This is .31 goals lower than Seattle’s stingiest defensive performance before Wednesday night–a Dec. 29, 2021, 3-2 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers. 

Of course, the Sharks have struggled to score this season. Entering Wednesday night, the Sharks had scored just 27 goals, by far the fewest in the league. Stung by poor finishing and perhaps some bad luck, the Sharks had generated shot quality expected to create 45 goals over 18 games (2.5 per game). The team’s weakest offensive showing came Nov. 10 against Vegas, when San Jose was shut out on shots worth 1.43 expected goals. 

In other words, when looking at shot quality, Wednesday’s offensive showing from San Jose was almost 50 percent worse than the team’s previous worst in the 2023-24 season. That says something for Seattle’s defensive effort, even over a struggling Sharks team.

How did Seattle achieve it? Kraken defenders turned in strong work defending the high-danger areas of their own zone, conceding only two shot attempts from the slot all game. 

But, more importantly, Seattle prevented San Jose from logging much time in the offensive zone in the first place. As Darren noted above, Seattle dominated possession through the neutral zone and into the Kraken offensive zone. One sequence in particular in the second period stood out when the Kraken kept the puck in the San Jose defensive zone for almost two full consecutive shifts. The sequence did not directly lead to a goal but it helped stretch out 18 minutes in the second period during which San Jose didn’t get even a single shot on goal.

As the saying goes–the best defense is a good offense. For the Kraken on Wednesday, it was.

Takeaway #3 (Darren): Top three lines all going

With a huge night from the Tolvanen/Gourde/Bjorkstrand line, all three of Seattle’s top-three forward lines are working well together right now. That third line was the big producer Wednesday, but the top two also chipped in on Larsson’s goal (Eberle and McCann assisted), and Tanev had the early icebreaker after a nice breakout pass by Alex Wennberg.

“I think we’re feeling it,” Bjorkstrand said of his line. “Maybe a few lucky bounces off the glass, but we like playing together, and I think it just kind of went our way today.”

We’ve also really liked the Jaden Schwartz/Wennberg/Tanev line, which has been excellent since Tanev returned from injury.

“It might be a bit of an odd look on a line chart when [Tanev] is on the right side there with Wenny,” Hakstol said. “But it’s been a good fit because he brings that pace, he gets you up ice, he gets you into the offensive zone.”

Seeing all three lines cooking at once gives reason for optimism that the Kraken can continue to build. The players are saying all the right things right now, recognizing that their game has improved since a miserable start to the season, but they don’t seem satisfied with where they sit.

* * *

While the Kraken won Wednesday night, Pacific Division competitors Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, and Anaheim all lost. This puts Seattle is in a playoff spot on Thanksgiving, an important checkpoint on a team’s playoff chances. Can Seattle keep building on these good feelings to climb more securely into that playoff picture? What do you think?

Three Takeaways – Kraken blow late lead again, lose in OT to Flames

by Darren Brown | Nov 21, 2023 | Three takeaways

For some reason, this 4-3 Seattle Kraken loss to the Calgary Flames in overtime didn’t sting *quite* as badly as the loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Nov. 15. Trying to wrap our heads around why that is, we think it’s because Seattle was coming off a big 60-minute win against the Canucks on Saturday, and this was the fourth consecutive game in which the Kraken earned a point. Plus, this was a one-goal lead instead of the two-goal lead the Kraken held against the Oilers before Evander Kane took them to the woodshed that night.

Perhaps the Kraken have given fans just enough good feelings lately to be more tolerant of late-game slip-ups. Still, victory was again right there for Seattle, but Andrew Mangiapane—the guy who smashed Jared McCann’s face into the ice on Nov. 4—tied it at 15:53 of the third, and Rasmus Andersson won it in overtime.

Worth noting, the Kraken have still never beaten the Flames at home and are now 0-5-1 at Climate Pledge Arena.

Here are our Three Takeaways from a tough 4-3 Kraken overtime loss to the Flames.

Takeaway #1: Grubi down?

Philipp Grubauer didn’t have a great first period, allowing two goals on seven shots, including a Jonathan Huberdeau power-play wrister from beyond the top of the left circle that squeezed under his arm. Joey Daccord took the ice to start the second, and our initial thought was that coach Dave Hakstol had just given Grubi a quick hook because he didn’t seem to be tracking the puck.

But then Grubauer didn’t emerge from the tunnel for a few minutes, and that made it clear his exit from the game was out of necessity.

Hakstol confirmed the departure was due to injury but wouldn’t give any more specifics on what happened, other than saying a couple plays contributed to the goaltender’s injury. We’re thinking one of those may have been the negated goal by Martin Pospisil early in the first, when Pospisil ran over Grubauer. We heard there was a second shot that caused Grubauer to hunch over a bit, but we didn’t notice that one.

In any case, Grubauer stayed on the bench for the remainder of the game, so at first glance, the injury didn’t seem too serious. We shall see.

Daccord played well in relief, stopping the first 16 Calgary shots he faced before Mangiapane tied it. He did overcommit on the overtime goal, which led to Andersson going for the wraparound on the other side, but that was his only real mistake of the game (and to be fair, he recovered in time to make the initial save and got no help on the rebound).

Takeaway #2: Bad, good, bad

Seattle’s puck management was sloppy in the first period, and that led to a 2-1 deficit after 20 minutes. The team came out flying in the second period, though, and tilted the ice as much as we’ve seen all season, firing 17 pucks at Dan Vladar, scoring twice, and grabbing 80 percent of the shot quality in the frame.

Jordan Eberle tied it 2-2 for Seattle at 8:21 of the second with a backhander that somehow squeezed through the pads of Vladar. Then Jared McCann gave the Kraken a 3-2 lead at 10:25 with a great tip of an Adam Larsson shot out of the air.

The Kraken needed to get at least one more in that period. They were cooking, and the Flames were on their heels, but Seattle couldn’t get another one by Vladar and took a tenuous 3-2 lead to the third period.

As we’ve seen repeatedly this season, the Kraken got way too defensive in the third, letting the play come to them instead of keeping their foot on the gas pedal. The tables turned once again, and now Calgary was in the driver’s seat, peppering Daccord with 16 shots in the final 20. With the way the game was going at that point, everyone in the building knew the tying goal was coming.

“We played gritty,” McCann said. “But we’ve got to learn from our mistakes here and learn how to finish games off.”

We still can’t explain Seattle’s struggles at maintaining leads this season, other than there’s an obvious shift to defensive hockey once the team gets ahead. We don’t think this is an intentional change in tactics, but once the momentum shifts, they aren’t finding ways to get it back.

The good thing here is that as fixable trends have appeared for this team over the past two seasons, Hakstol and his staff have typically found ways to fix them. Protecting leads is an issue that’s continuously costing the Kraken standings points, so here’s hoping they can figure this one out.

Takeaway #3: Kraken in a “playoff” spot

There’s an old theory that Thanksgiving is an important marker for NHL teams, because statistically, those in playoff spots at the holiday make the postseason more often than not. Well, if the Kraken can beat the lowly 3-14-1 Sharks on Wednesday, they will officially be in a playoff spot on Thanksgiving, no matter what happens with other teams in the Western Conference.

There’s some voodoo accounting happening to get them into said spot, because as of the writing of this story, they’ve played two more games than the Ducks, Coyotes, and Flames, and those three teams are all within two points of Seattle.

Still, being this close should bring a small sigh of relief for Kraken fans. With the way the team started its season, this position by Thanksgiving seemed farfetched just a few weeks ago. Things continue to trend in the right direction, even if the results in games continue to be maddening at times.

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.

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