The Need to Knows
- Time: 7:00 pm PT / 10:00 pm ET
- Place: Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle, WA
- Where to watch: ROOT Sports NW, Sportsnet PIT, ESPN+
- Where to listen: KJR 93.3 FM
- Opposing viewpoint: Tux Pucks
Know Your Enemy
The last time the Kraken faced the Penguins, I dove in to the many ways this Pittsburgh team has been performing below expectations. In the month and a half since that first game out in Pittsburgh (where the Kraken lost in a 3-0 shut out), that really hasn’t changed. To make matters worse, now the team’s best winger, Jake Guentzel, is out with injury and won’t be back until at least March 10 due to placement on long-term injured reserve.
The Penguins continue to sit outside of a playoff spot, and if they want in, they have to close the gap between their 62 points and Tampa Bay’s 69 points. Now, most teams are hovering around 60 or so games played, and the Penguins have only played 56. It’s not impossible for them to amass points to close that gap. They just have to win a lot more hockey games than they have been for a while to avoid seeing the previously-mentioned injured winger get shipped off in a trade.
Over the past three games, the Penguins seem to have realized how dire the situation is becoming, because they’re starting to finally put together a bit of a win streak. The Penguins haven’t gone on many winning streaks this season — they strung five wins in a row back in November, and then three in December, so consistency hasn’t been the team’s strong suit. In this current streak, the Penguins first won 4-1 over the Montreal Canadiens, then put up 7 goals in a wild back-and-forth contest with the Philadelphia Flyers. Now, the Canadiens are still rebuilding, and the Penguins let the Flyers dump 6 goals on them in return, so neither of those wins necessarily feel impressive on their own. The third game they’ve won in a row, though, was an overtime contest against the Vancouver Canucks. Vancouver currently sits tied with the New York Rangers for most standings points in the league, so fighting back to win against them feels like a sign that the Penguins are gaining their resiliency back.
For the Pittsburgh Penguins, March has historically been when the team — and especially their captain — hunker down and power through whatever adversity comes their way to push themselves into a playoff spot. The calendar may still say February for one last day, but with the ground they still have to cover, I think they’re already in that mode. Sidney Crosby especially has been carrying the team on his back, such as completing a 4-point performance against the Flyers. Kris Letang and Rickard Rakell have also been picking up in the scoring department as of late. If the Kraken want to split the season series, they’ll need to come prepared against a team that’s working to shift into that next gear to keep their season’s hopes alive.
Game Preview
The Kraken and the Penguins this season seem to share a trait where it’s unclear which version of the team is going to show up on any given night. Sometimes the Kraken come to play with extreme motivation, or they at least show the ability to dig deep through less-than-stellar play. Other times, the Kraken flounder out on the ice looking like a team that’s still working through preseason kinks instead of having 58 games under their belt.
In some ways, the Kraken’s losses are a skill issue. I was certainly one of the believers that the Kraken’s performance last season wouldn’t be a fluke, but there’s a reason many statistical models were down on the team. Some individual performances were the result of unsustainable levels of play that haven’t been replicable this season. There’s also been issues such as bad injury luck, with André Burakovsky being especially unlucky. The forward was not at practice on Wednesday morning, and while Dave Hakstol mentioned it was a maintenance day, it was also shared that he’ll be evaluated before the game. So, the Kraken could be without Burakovsky again.
However, it doesn’t all come down to skill. After Saturday’s loss against the Wild, Jordan Eberle notably said that “This time of the year, mistakes and lack of concentration cannot happen.” Now, mistakes are harder to necessarily clamp down on in a game that moves as fast as hockey does, and learning to minimize them is a career-long journey. However, pointing out a lack of concentration is where I see a red flag has just gone up. In an 82-game season, this is the time of year that truly tests what teams are made of. The legs aren’t fresh anymore, players are likely playing through more aches and pains than anyone realizes, and yet the intensity of the game only gets higher. This is especially the case for those teams that are clawing to get into a playoff spot. The Kraken have to close a similar gap as the Penguins do if they want to get in the playoffs: Seattle has 61 points to the Nashville Predators’ 68. The dream isn’t dead yet, but they have to show a level of resiliency that hasn’t truly been tapped into yet this year. They have to dig deep against a team like the Penguins who have a core that has mastered the art of powering through this stretch of the season.
Maybe the Kraken can figure out how to flip the switch that pushes them through, but even if they do, there’s still a chance that they figured it out too late.
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