Preseason hockey is about the journey, not the destination. The Kraken are trying to figure out which pieces work where with a new coach and where over half the remaining roster (currently at 50 players) will be cut by the time the season starts on October 8th.
Who played?
None of the players who played Seattle’s first preseason game Sunday against Calgary played tonight. This was expected. Camp has so far been broken into three groups of players (with a mix of veterans and young players), and after this game it will be collapsed down to two.
Joey Daccord was in net for the first two periods and Aleลก Stezka played the third.
They had a completely different 20 players suit up for this game and they still haven’t gotten everyone into a game. Preseason is a lot of “let’s see what we have and give them practice together.”
Man in the box
Players wanting to make an impression will often have a little extra juice to their game during the preseason, and just like the game against Calgary, things got physical. But unlike the game against Calgary on Sunday, the Kraken seemed more proactive than reactive, something Coach Bylsma talked about after the game.
John Hayden and Brandon Tanev both got majors for fighting while defending a teammate. Will Borgen got a double minor for roughing Tyler Myers and Nils Hรถglander. There was a crosscheck by Seattle’s Ben Meyers at the end of the first period that wasn’t called, Vancouver’s Tyler Myers was being a real PITA as he always is, and there was a lot of pushing and shoving and hitting.
But the Kraken also committed three unforced errors: they were called twice for having too many men on the ice. One too many men is too many; two too many men is twice too many.
In addition, Joey Daccord was penalized for playing the puck outside the trapezoid, a very rare penalty.
It was, as tends to be in preseason with a new coach, not an entirely un-sloppy affair.
What about the score?
Vancouver went up 2-0 on two power play goals with the Kraken taking so many penalties. Ben Meyers got one back on a beautiful setup by Jaden Schwartz to pull within one just 10 seconds into the third period.
Seattle was able to move the puck and create chances, but Vancouver goalie Arturs Silovs was feeling it and robbed Jaden Schwartz and Andrรฉ Burakovsky on two separate occasions in the third.
I don’t really care about the score in preseason, and the Kraken looked much better and cohesive tonight.
How much of that is a function of the players getting a little bit more time together before the game tonight and how much was it just being a different set of players playing better? We’ll get a better sense of this as the preseason goes on.
Mo’ Canada
The Kraken have four preseason games remaining. They play the Canucks again on Friday, this time at home. They play the Oilers twice (one home, one away) and play the Flames again on the road. Maybe the schedule makers really like the metric system.
Another preseason game in the books and the Kraken are inching closer to their final form. But as Dan Bylsma says, it takes 21 days to build a habit. We have couple of more weeks to go before the games actually count, and the habits will hopefully be in place by the season’s start.