by | Dec 1, 2024 | 2 comments
Whoa. That was two very bad days of no-good, rotten hockey from the Seattle Kraken. For months, we viewed this latest four-game stretch of the schedule as a chance for them to make hay against two bad teams and perhaps snag a playoff position—just in time for a gauntlet of tough opponents that runs through most of December.
At Sound Of Hockey, we figured that with the Kraken playing two of the NHL’s worst teams for four consecutive games, they needed to rack up at least six standings points to feel like they had taken care of business. Realistically, they should have earned all eight. Seattle managed just two points out of the four games.
Two. Lousy. Points.
The Kraken capped it off by getting swept by the Sharks, who hung 12 goals on Seattle—the most San Jose has scored in any two-game stretch since 2021.
I’m an optimist to a fault, but even I am struggling to find optimism about this team right now. The vibes are bad.
Here are Three Takeaways from a miserable weekend of hockey, in which the Kraken lost 8-5 at San Jose on Friday and 4-2 at home to those same Sharks on Saturday.
One bright spot for much of this season has been Seattle’s goaltending, led by Joey Daccord, who has been stellar most nights. Kudos to John Barr, who sounded the alarm on the latest Sound Of Hockey Podcast, saying he was worried the Kraken were leaning on Daccord too heavily and that overuse could lead to cracks in his play.
Indeed, Joey’s last two outings—against Anaheim on Wednesday and San Jose on Saturday—were statistically his two worst of the season, with save percentages of .848 and .826, respectively.
But what choice does coach Dan Bylsma have other than to keep leaning on Daccord? He tried giving Daccord a rest during the first game of the back-to-backs, and Philipp Grubauer had perhaps his worst outing ever as a Kraken, allowing seven goals on 26 shots for a dismal .731 save percentage.
My regular readers and listeners know I empathize with goaltenders because I am one. I’ve probably felt something similar to what Grubi felt on Friday: one of those dreaded nights where it seems like you can’t stop anything. This was evident in Ethan Cardwell’s first career goal—San Jose’s seventh of the game—where Grubauer flat-out whiffed on an easy glove save.
Oof. 7-5 Sharks.
Ethan Cardwell’s first NHL goal.
Oof. #SeaKraken pic.twitter.com/0RUqKVH6cW
I recognize that the “full-time backup” role is new to Grubauer, but if he’s not going to demand the starter role, he needs to learn how to be reliable as the second-stringer. At this point, the only way he ever gets back to being a full-time starter is by playing outstanding hockey as the backup. If the Kraken can’t even rely on him to take one game of a back-to-back against arguably the worst team in the league… Well, I just don’t know.
After that performance, Grubauer is now 1-7-0 on the season, with a .862 save percentage and a 3.62 goals-against average—both the worst of his 13-year NHL career.
I don’t want to make it seem like Seattle’s issues revolve solely around goaltending, because that’s definitely not the case. While the Kraken generated plenty of shots on Saturday, they were outplayed by a confident Sharks team for the first half of the game. By the time they woke up, they were staring at an insurmountable 4-0 deficit.
Still, there’s something to be said for how confident a team looks when its goalies are playing well. When the goalies are sharp, the skaters play looser and freer than they did this week. As Jared McCann said after Saturday’s game, “We turn the puck over, and it just always seems to go in the back of our net.”
When it became clear on Saturday that Vince Dunn—who had missed 19 games with a “mid-body” injury—I regained a smidgeon of hope that this team might begin to find its form soon. After all, as Blaiz Grubic pointed out on this very website last week, Seattle has historically been a much better team with Dunn in the lineup than without him.
I’m still somewhat hopeful (more on that in Takeaway #3) that this will prove true and that the ship can be righted soon. After all, we’ve only seen Dunn and Brandon Montour together in the lineup for five total games, including Saturday.
Dunn looked solid in his first game since Oct. 17, logging a whopping 26:15 of ice time—the most he’s played in a game this season. He also spent time on the power play with Montour, an intriguing look with two defensemen, although that really didn’t seem to work. Dunn and Montour also shared a few shifts at 5-on-5 when Seattle was trying to rally.
“I thought I felt pretty good,” Dunn said. “Honestly, my legs were good, my execution was pretty good. I think, obviously, missing six weeks is a long time. It goes by pretty slowly, but I thought it was ok for the most part.”
Dunn’s return is a positive step, but it feels like just a drop in the bucket for a team that has looked broken in its last three games.
While one key player returned to the lineup, another exited Saturday, as Chandler Stephenson missed the contest due to illness. He was replaced by Mitchell Stephens, who looked solid in his Kraken debut and helped create some energy with the fourth line.
The Stephenson illness concerns me slightly, given last season’s experience when a bug swept through the team during an East Coast road trip and largely derailed the season. The team heads out on a similar East Coast road trip Sunday, so hopefully the guys are getting plenty of Vitamin C.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m usually an optimist. But this is a rough, rough moment for the Kraken. They needed points this last week because now they’re headed on a historically tough road trip. And when they return from facing Carolina and the three New York/New Jersey teams, they’ll face the Panthers, Bruins, and Lightning at home. If the Kraken don’t find themselves quickly, they could effectively put themselves out of the playoff race in a few weeks.
I asked Bylsma how he plans to rebuild his team’s confidence during this difficult stretch. He said:
“I think you look at the schedule a lot of different ways. But when you look at the schedule, and you say, ‘This is a team we may believe we can have, or should have success against,’ it changes your mindset a little bit. I think I welcome the difficult opponents because that will help us change our mindset a little bit and understand how we need to play to have success in the game.”
So, there’s that.
Thankfully, the Kraken have a full practice scheduled for Monday in Carolina before kicking off their four-game swing against the Hurricanes on Tuesday.
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.
Here is what I previously posted several days ago:
“Chuck Holmes on November 26, 2024 at 8:37 am
After seeing Celebrini, Smith and Eklund, plus now Askarov play yesterday, I would not assume the Sharks games are a walkover. And the Ducks are going to come to town pissed about the Carlsson hit, so that is going to be tough sledding as well. And remember PG has to play at least one if not two of the games. Yikes!”
I make that as 3 correct predictions out of 3
For my next prediction, I expect Francis, to keep the increasingly tenuous hold on his job, makes trades. Because these are made out of desperation, he loses the trades.
There are over 200 possible combinations to make a group of 3 from a pool of 12 and I thought we were going to see all of them with the forward lines…but it was interesting to see some different looks.
Playing on different lines for much of the game, I liked the energy that Kartye, Gourde and Tanev were each able to bring to their own lines. Gourde gave McCann some good chances, Tanev and Wright were well-matched for speed and Kartye got in 4 shots and 6 more hits despite the beating he took this week.
Though the glimpse was brief, of all the forwards that have come up from Coachella this year, Stephens was the first one who didn’t look completely overmatched. If Stephenson’s able to bounce back from his illness (and it doesn’t spread), this seems like the best opportunity to scratch Beniers for a game or two.
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