The Need to Knows:
- The Time: 7pm PT
- The Place: Rogers Arena, Vancouver, BC
- Place to Watch: KONG, KHN (available on Amazon Prime if you’re in Washington, Oregon, or Alaska)
- Place to Listen: Kraken Audio network, as held on KJR 93.3fm
It’s preseason and that means we need to remember some rules here:
- The goal of preseason isn’t to win the game. It’s to evaluate the players and give them time playing together and to give an NHL experience to players who otherwise probably would never get the chance.
- Early preseason with a new coach is going to involve working out the kinks. And based on what we’ve seen so far, there are a lot of kinks.
- Early preseason also involves kids playing against NHLers, and those kids are going to make mistakes.
- That means it’s gonna be sloppy, and the poor goalies are not going to look good when that happens.
- A lot of the players you will likely see tonight are not going to be on the Kraken roster when the season starts.
The Kraken made some cuts in camp between Sunday’s game against Calgary and today. They are:
- Kaden Hammell
- Julius Miettinen
- Ollie Josephson
- Clarke Caswell
- Caden Price
- Tyson Jugnauth
- Lukas Dragicevic
- Jakub Fibigr
- Andrei Loshko
- Alexis Bernier
Dragicevic is the only one who even played against Calgary. So there’s still a lot of youth and churn to get through.
Right now the Kraken training camp roster is down to “only” 50 players. By the time the season starts, the Kraken will be down to around 21-23 players*.
The result of the game has no predictive value. My recommendation is to pick a player or two and laser focus on them every time they are on the ice and see what they look like. Even if you don’t know what you’re looking at, it’s interesting and informative to see what players do and don’t do and what seems to work for them. And if they Kraken do win, it’s still fun!
(I’m not saying don’t have fun. Just don’t be sad if you don’t have fun.)
Throughout training camp, the Kraken have divided the camp into three teams. We saw Team A against Calgary on Sunday, so we’ll probably see mostly Team B.
Assuming it’s team B, here are the things I’ll be looking for:
Brandon Montour’s skating
I couldn’t find anything on YouTube that displayed what a fast, fluid, buttery smooth skater Montour is. I want the fundamentals, damnit!
Jani Nyman…????
Nyman was listed on Team A but didn’t play against Calgary. I’m hoping we see him tonight. He’s got a cannon of a shot and he’s one of the more intriguing prospects the Kraken have. Just putting that out into the Janiverse.
John Hayden
Hayden has a real shot at making the final roster, especially if, say, a roster spot on the 4th line were to open up for some reason…he would play a similar 4th line role on a much cheaper contract.
The Kraken Hockey Network broadcast
Okay, this one doesn’t depend on it being Team B. Since I was at Climate Pledge on Sunday, I didn’t get a chance to see the new broadcast. I heard tale that the bells and whistles and the really fancy stuff (and Linda Cohn!) won’t be unveiled until the season starts or maybe the final preseason game. But it’s still John and JT and Eddie and Piper and Alison and a lot of the ROOT production people behind the scenes who made the broadcast great, and I’m interested to see what differences — if any — there are.
* The Kraken currently only have the salary cap space for 21 players instead of the normal 23, which affords them very little wiggle room in case of injury, which means someone’s probably going to have to get moved in order to make room. This is going to be a difficult conversation when it happens.