Kraken Game 65 RECAP: Kraken can’t hang, snap winning streak in 5-4 boondoggle.

They got so infuriatingly close.

If you can stand it, here are the Highlights:

Game Notes:

• The win streak ended tonight on some of the most exasperating displays of defense ever shown. Normally this team is pretty good at limiting shots for their goalies (or at least, one of them), but this was a performance in backchecking that was timid, hazy, prone to puckwatching, and by the end were just trying not to make things worse in a way that almost guaranteed it. This started bad and ended worse.
• Partially why it ended worse is because they genuinely got their act together and looked like a much better team in the 2nd period and into the 3rd! They got some goalscoring, they got the Sens off their game, they even overcame the 3-0 hole they started the game in entirely! Then they rimmed the puck around in the defensive end. There is a very interesting bit of individual analysis currently going around right now that re-iterates that this is in fact a very bad thing to do, and Claude Giroux (and then Alex DeBrincat) proved that. I am sending this article to the front office in order to hopefully spare us another game of that.
• Of course starting your game with the kind of night Grubauer did didn’t help, but frankly with how the defense played (and continues to play in front of him) that’s at least understandable, if acceptable isn’t possible.
• On the bright side, Jared McCann is probably going to push for 40 goals this year. That’ll be fun. I wish the rest of the Kraken could’ve done that tonight.
• Once again, the Kraken are tied with the Oilers in points. How lovely.
• This is not the end of the Kraken’s possible trevails, as the weekend brings the team that just dumped 10 goals on Buffalo. And then again on Monday. We might have a repeat of the 9-8 game in order to keep up.
• Has the NHL just decided that hitting Vince Dunn in the face is cool, now? What is up with people coming to Climate Pledge to pop him in the jaw?
• Keep Calm, and Post Zoidberg when we win.

Let’s all fume at some charts from NaturalStatTrick.com:

Grid View

• Seriously if they were just gonna blow it at the last minute like that I’d have preferred the blowout. NaturalStatTrick.com
• Unrelenting pain NaturalStatTrick.com

NaturalStatTrick.com

Next up, the Kraken will have a home and home with the Dallas Stars, starting at Climate Pledge on Saturday. That game drops the puck at 7pm PT.

It’ll be a hell of a test. Let’s see if the Squids can capitalize.