Fists are far from a hallmark trait of this– or any– iteration of the Seattle Kraken. Retribution laid grounds for an exception Monday night.
Four, five, six lightning fast knuckles, and the referees were forced to pry rookie Tye Kartye off Calgary’s Martin Pospisil before he could feed the cowering opposing centerman another punch. Satisfied with his work, Kartye escorted himself to the penalty box. Similar displays of accountability could not be said of Pospisil.
Mere seconds into the game, Pospisil had dealt a flying hipcheck to Seattle’s Adam Larsson, crunching him head-first into the boards, legs airborne. No injury was sustained, but Vince Dunn was not so lucky.
Pospisil delivered a matching hit as the defenseman fetched the puck behind his own net in the third period with such force his head and neck folded in on themselves. Immediately Dunn exited the game, hightailing it off the ice and down the tunnel with a hand pressed to the right side of his head– the same spot which had been hit with a puck earlier.
Officials granted a five-minute major and game misconduct to Pospisil, who hunkered down when Matty Beniers, Jaden Schwartz, and Larsson swooped in to defend their fallen teammate. Head coach Dave Hakstol did not provide an update on his status, calling the hit “garbage” and noting that both hits “were about as bad as [it] gets.”
Dunn missed the last seven minutes of the game.
“Not a whole lot different than the first hit six, seven seconds into the game,” Hakstol said of the play that injured Dunn. “If you’re going to run around like that, you probably need to answer when somebody comes at you man-to-man. And that didn’t happen, either. From there, I’ll leave it to the league.”
And the league is happy to take over. Tuesday morning the Department of Player Safety announced a “boarding” hearing for Pospisil scheduled for Wednesday; the impact was initially ruled “checking from behind.”
As for Seattle’s skirting under the authority of Player Safety, the Kraken were justified in their response to hits from Pospisil they “didn’t really agree with.” Jared McCann relented that the locker room “can’t expect [fights] out of the young guys,” but acknowledged it “takes a lot of courage” to step up as Kartye did.
“It just shows that we’re a tight-knit group and we’re gonna stick up for each other.”
Hakstol didn’t appear pleased that it was Kartye who took up the fight, either. “We talked about that, we talked about that. I’ll leave that alone. That’s for inside our locker room.”
Correlation rarely equals causation. But Monday night the Kraken pulled off a 4-2 win over one of their biggest Wild Card rivals so hearty, so spirited, one has to wonder if the sudden display of physicality was part of the recipe for success.
Seattle staked their claim over 55.89% of the total shot quality, an advantage largely constructed out of a dominant first period. Goals came from throughout the roster– by Yanni Gourde, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Larsson, and McCann– demonstrating an ease of chemistry unaffected by line shufflings necessary after Alex Wennberg was pulled from the lineup for “trade-related issues.”
Unrelated to the Pospisil drama, Brandon Tanev and Blake Coleman fought their own battle after exchanging trips and slashes. Linesman Michael Cormier had to wrangle Tanev to the penalty box, still barking at Coleman, with a two-handed grip on the forward’s jersey to keep him contained.
Tanev failed to score but did record his first point in 11 games, an assist on Gourde’s game-opener, and blocked three massive shots, earning him the Davy Jones’ Hat. Philipp Grubauer made 35 of 37 saves for a .946 SV% on the night.
Seattle still sits seven points out of the second Wild Card, held by the Nashville Predators, but will meet the Winnipeg Jets Tuesday for the second half of a back-to-back.
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