The Need to Knows
- The Time: 7:00pm
- The Place:ย Beautiful Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle, Washington
- Place to Watch:ย KING-5, KONG, KHN Network, NBC Sports-California, Amazon Prime (Local)
- Place to Listen:ย KJR 93.3-FM via Kraken Audio Network
- An Opposing Viewpoint:ย Fear the Fin
Know Your Enemy
If you saw yesterday’s game and thought, “I want to see more of the San Jose Sharks, and soon!” I have great news for you. They get another shot at the Sharks and have a chance to put Friday’s game behind them.
“Where we went wrong and what we didn’t do,” Coach Bylsma said, “you can put to bed real quickly with an opportunity tomorrow night.”
The Sharks are young, they have some really good young talent in Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith (both of whom scored yesterday), and overall aren’t very good.
Giving up 8 goals to any team is bad*, but giving 8 goals, tying a franchise record, to this team? That’s especially humiliating.
(Hilariously, the other game the Kraken gave up 8 goals was a game they won, two years to the day before yesterday’s Sharks game.)
Game Notes
The power play is back! Maybe. After going 0 for their last 22 on the power play, Shane Wright got them off the schneid with not one, but two power play goals. (If you’re curious, the record is 51 straight without a goal. It’s not even the longest power play drought in the last year, as the Penguins went 37 games without one last season. Sidney Crosby led 37 straight ineffective power plays. I’m just saying it could get a lot worse and now we don’t have to worry about the streak.)
Shane Wright was healthy scratched for three games to get his head right, and while I don’t think Shane was playing poorly before the benching, he’s unlocked this aggressive, attacking player.
The story yesterday was Philipp Grubauer having the worst night of his Kraken career by giving up 7 goals on 26 shots, but couldn’t be realistically pulled because Daccord starts tonight. I think there is way too much being made of this one performance for Grubauer, and a lot of the anger directed at him is a byproduct of the Kraken offense completely disappearing whenever he’s in net. It’s really unfortunate that Grubauer picked this game to have a bad game, because this is one of the few times the Kraken offense has shown up.
Put it this way: the Kraken skaters have let Grubauer down more than Grubauer has let the skaters down.
Why does this matter if Daccord is starting tonight? Because the problems that led to so many goals against both San Jose and Anaheim came off turnovers. Bad, bad, turnovers. Yes, your goalie should be able to make the save on some of those, but they shouldn’t have happened in the first place. And if the Kraken continue to play this way, they’re going to hang Daccord out to dry.
In fact, Daniel Sprong was a healthy scratch in favor of Ryan Winterton, and I suspect it has to do with the plethora of horrific turnovers he’s had in the short time he’s played in Seattle. Look at how #91 just gives the puck away and it goes the other way. Th
I don’t know how they will respond to yesterday, but it would be foolish to assume this is all a goaltending issue and with Daccord in net, everything is fine. Bylsma didn’t even mention Grubauer in his postgame press conference, instead focusing on the turnovers and poor play by the skaters, which I think was the right approach.
Losing to bad teams like Anaheim and San Jose will not get you very far when trying to make the playoffs. Those are the easy points you’re supposed to collect while eking out the wins against the better teams.
Let’s hope they get this figured out soon.
*I like to be brave with my proclamations