The Seattle Kraken lost their fourth game in a row, this time 2-0 to the Chicago Blackhawks, who came into the game with the league’s second-worst record at 27-35-4. Did they look like the second-worst team in the league tonight?
Brother, they weren’t even the worst team at Climate Pledge Arena tonight.
After a scoreless first period, Teuvo Teravainen scored on the power play, which has been a major struggle for Seattle recently. They came out of the Olympic break gangbusters on the PK, but in their last six games they have given up six power play goals on 15 opposing attempts. The league’s second-worst PK continues to bury the Kraken.
The game had a tense, back-and-forth feeling in the first but Chicago turned on the pressure in the second and started to dominate the game. Philipp Grubauer was under siege all night, and eventually Tyler Bertuzzi broke through to give Chicago a 2-0 lead.
Jaden Schwartz gave the home crowd a bit of hope by scoring to make it 2-1 with 10:48 remaining in the game. But, as has been the case all year, it was too little too late. Hope for the game, and really the season, was extinguished with 6:52 remaining when Sacha Boisvert scored his first career NHL goal.
Kaapo Kakko pulled the game within one, but where was this offense all night long? That was all the offense Seattle could muster.
An empty netter by Ilya Mikheyev was the final tally and that’s all she wrote.
Seattle is not technically eliminated, but they need to win their remaining 7 games if they want to realistically get into the postseason. Given that they have lost 8 of their last 9, that reads like science fiction. There’s a better chance Lane Lambert will call on me to be the next starting goalie, and I’ve never played goal.
Seattle goes on the road and plays back-to-back games against Winnipeg and Minnesota starting Monday.