Welcome back to playoff contention!
For a couple of days, anyway. Time to hit the road!
But First? The Highlights!
Game Notes
- Your TOI Leader was Adam Larsson, who played 23:16 tonight.
- The Kraken started slow, but allowed themselves the opportunity to stretch Ottawa’s defense, something they very much did not care for, into opening lanes for their skaters. Given who they were facing? It worked out perfectly. First Gourdo got the opening tally, and then the second period they really opened them up like fresh crab. A business-like day of hockey for the Kraken, whose recent games have had a lot of that energy from last year.
- Part of the reason they’ve started to get that energy back comes from the fact that the team is finally getting their depth, their top six, their 4th line, their defense, everybody, involved in the scoring. 12 skaters in the last 6 games have scored a combined 16 goals.
- The Kraken’s penalty kill was once again phenomenal, and it had to be; Seattle was taken a bit out of their game by Ottawa and ended up with twice as many PIMs as the Sens did. Mercifully, nobody scored on the man advantage, to the point that Silver Sens on Twitter just began pleading the Sens to decline power plays. It’s rough out there in our northern neighbor’s capital.
- Y’know you hear about teams having bad defense, but you never quite believe it until Yanni Gourde gets a goal by scrambling to the net pretty much completely unhindered. The Sens were awful with the puck tonight, even with all the chances they get.
- Joey Daccord could probably run for dictator of Seattle and win at this rate. He’s been on another level. It helps that while the Sens did get shots away, they couldn’t prioritize the net-front, and it’s been a welcome reprieve!
- Yes, you read that right; after nearly two months of struggling to do much of anything, the Kraken are at long last back in a playoff spot and two games above .500! Will this last? Well, the Kraken have about a week off for uh…schedule reasons, I don’t exactly expect that to be true. But it’s nice to see they’re finally getting their act together. They’re gonna have to do well on that road trip though; Edmonton, Calgary, St. Louis to a lesser extent, and Arizona are all right up next to them.
Lets Give A Hand To…
- Yanni Gourde! Gourdo got the opening tally after making a mad scramble for the net-front after just about uh…every single Senator on the ice. Good work!
- Jordan Eberle AND Andre Burakovsky! For doing the essentially same lead pass through a Senator to create a scoring chance on the exact same side of the ice. Burky even more so, because his pass ended up on his own stick for him to get back on the board for the first time in over a year, nearly to the day. That’s just awesome. Ebs also had two points tonight!
- Vinnie Dunn! Not just for having two points, but also for scoring an actual honest to god I had to call someone to let them know it wasn’t fake actual empty net goal. That was a mountain this team has had to climb for a good long time and I’m glad we got there.
- Tomáš Tatar! The Recipient of Ebs’ lead pass through an Ottawa skater absolutely buried a highlight reel tally, and he improves to three points in his last 5 games. Not too bad a pickup for a 5th rounder!
- Joey Daccord! Another good night at the office for the Big Dac; 32 saves, .970 SV%, and the only goal he gave up was so late in the game it almost didn’t matter. Your starter in Deep Blue is simply superlative.
The NaturalStatTrick.com Charts!
Actually a little closer than it felt, but all the really important quality shots were Seattles…right up until the 5 minute mark of the third otherwise GREAT job keeping the shots out of Joey’s hair.
So! After all of that…the Kraken are off for five days. They begin a two week road trip on Tuesday, starting in Buffalo. That game starts at 4pm PT.
Meanwhile, we hope you have a good weekend, and as always….
Keep Calm, and Post Zoidberg When We Win
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