The Need to Knows
- The Time: 5pm PT (note the early start time!)
- The Place: Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle, WA
- Place to Watch: KHN, KING-5, KONG
- Place to Listen: KJR 93.3-FM via Kraken Audio Network
Know Your Enemy
- This is the first ever meeting between the Kraken and the Utah Hockey Club, who were previously the Arizona Coyotes but are considered an expansion team for the purposes of keeping records. Most of the time it’s not done this way, but the NHL decided to be weird about the whole situation.
- This technically means that the Kraken are no longer the NHL’s newest franchise.
- Utah is currently on a three-game losing streak, kicked off when they blew a 4-1 lead to Anaheim last week.
- The leading scorers on Utah are centers Clayton Keller (13g 23a), Nick Schmaltz (6g 22a), and former Seattle Thunderbird Dylan Guenther (16g 16a). Schmaltz is on a heater with 15 points in his last 16 games. Mikhail Sergachev (8g, 19a) provides some firepower on the blue line.
- Utah goalie Karel Vejmelka has one of the best goalies in the league and has the third highest goals saved above expected (MoneyPuck).
Remember last year when the Winter Classic was in Seattle? The NBA’s Utah Jazz, owned by the same owners of the Utah Hockey Club, leaked the Kraken Winter Classic jerseys by having players wear them before an NBA game in which they were playing. And that was the first time anyone officially saw the beautiful Winter Classic jerseys.

Game Preview
Look, I’m not going to sit here and tell you what to expect from the Kraken because absolutely nobody on earth knows what the Kraken will be on any given night. Maybe they’ll be the sad sack team that got blown out by a terrible Sharks team. Maybe they’ll be the dominant defensive team that shut down Carolina and the Islanders. Maybe they’ll be the scrappy, resurgent team that made a historic comeback against the Canucks the last time we saw them.
Nobody knows.

Both of the following things are true:
- The Kraken had their worst goal-scoring stretch since the inaugural season during their 5-game losing streak, during which they scored only 6 goals.
- The Kraken became only the third team in NHL history to come back down three goals with less than 5 minutes remaining in a regular season game. They also lead the NHL in multi-goal comebacks this season with 5.
This team can’t score. Except when they do, then they score a lot. Or just enough when they’re down. Or they get blown out and look anemic. Or they blow out the Bruins 5-1 and then immediately lose five games. All outcomes are on the table. Hockey is volatile and random and chaotic and every team to some extent goes through these ups and/or downs during the season, but the Kraken are really making “being perplexing” their identity.
Injury updates
There are some things that are more certain. Per Coach Bylsma:
- Chandler Stephenson did not practice Sunday due to “maintenance.” That can mean many things in BylsmaSpeak, and would not elaborate if he would be available for tonight’s game.
- Joey Daccord, who missed the last game with a lower-body injury, did skate on his own but Bylsma said it was “unlikely at this point” that he would be available. So we should expect Philipp Grubauer to start his second consecutive game with Aleš Stezka backing him up.
- André Burakovsky, who missed the last game with an illness, is back practicing.
- It’s not an injury or a lineup change, but tonight is also Oliver Bjorkstrand bobblehead night, given to the first 10,000 fans who show up. If you want a Bjorky bobbly, you’ll want to show up early.
The Kraken are almost certainly out of the playoffs and need to pull off a real miracle to get into the postseason. But the last time we saw them, a miracle was exactly what they pulled off. Sometimes the Kraken are flat, but they have enough tenacity and “yeah we are not giving up”-ness that shows up just often enough that I can’t fully count this team out.
I’m very interested to see how it plays out tonight.