Oh we’re gonna be doing the Goaltending “thing” again, aren’t we.
Behold, what I am required to call “Highlights”
Game Notes
- Your TOI leader was Brandon Montour with 24:49 of ice time.
- Well, you could definitely tell this was a back-to-back for one team. The Kraken started very, very slow, and as a result a rolling Dallas squad got right after them; hammering them with shots in the first period, and took ample advantage of the Kraken’s iffy net-front defense…among a host of other things. Even if the Kraken got their act together after the 2nd period, it ultimately came too late, and all Jake Oettinger had to to do was hold the fort. It’s a terrible shame, because they did improve over time…it just didn’t come quick enough like last game. Nor did it face a goaltender that was so willing to give it up.
- That said, these defensive miscues are gonna kill this team over and over if they can’t clamp down on them. Dallas made mincemeat of the sloppy passing in their own end, as well as from the point. They should be extremely happy this didn’t end up being worse than it was.
- The Kraken have already played three games this year and already the officiating in all of these games has been…interesting. Both for the team and the opponent. If you can believe it; neither side got a power play tally in tonight’s game…which was probably for the best.
- Philipp Grubauer…whoo boy. Dearest Grubert had a night to forget followed up almost entirely by two periods where he spent the better part of them making big save after big save, finishing with a .913 SV%. If anything from the last couple of seasons didn’t need to come back, it was a bad couple of goals followed up by zero goal support from Seattle. I imagine we’ll be having the “Who is actually the starter” argument for the next couple of weeks as the team actually rounds itself into form, but if there’s anything you can take from tonight…only one of the two goals was one he probably would’ve wanted back.
Was there anything good about tonight’s game?
Well…hm.
- Josh Mahura did a decent job as a fill-in tonight. Didn’t get completely overwhelmed. Good on you, kid!
- Brandon Montour led the entire team in shots with 5. Probably not great when a defenseman leads your shooting for the night, but he put in work tonight.
- The Kraken didn’t give up an Empty Netter in a losing effort. You might expect that to be damning with faint praise, but given how much of a nightmare that’s been over the past couple of years to figure out…this is actually a pretty significant development. Still gonna need that situation to be paid off with a tied game every once in a while, but it’s progress for Seattle!
The Charts from NaturalStatTrick.com
The Kraken’s road trip ends in Nashville, as they face the Predators in Music City at 5pm PT.
We’ll see you there, and as always:
Keep Calm, and Post Zoidberg When We Win