Kraken Don’t Get The Calls Or The Goals

Kraken forward Kaapo Kakko knew his team had already lost a video review game of inches by a country mile Sunday night before he and some others made a contest of things on the scoreboard.

Kakko finally got the Kraken on the board while down by three late in the second period of this 3-2 loss to the Calgary Flames, triggering a home side push that saw Brandon Tanev score early in the third to make it a one-goal affair. But the final surge fell just short of overcoming a bizarre sequence of events that left the Kraken trailing by a three-spot in an opening period that only a Flames fan or a Twilight Zone episode writer could love.

“That was a weird start,” Kakko said after the Kraken fell 10 points behind Calgary in their quest for the final Western Conference wild card spot. “I mean, you’ve just got to keep playing. It was a hard first 20 minutes…so, you get back to the locker room and just start again. We were just down by three.”

That critical first period saw an opening goal by Jaden Schwartz eliminated by a successful goaltender interference challenge, followed soon after by the Flames scoring first instead.

But the night turned decisively on a second Calgary goal, by Yegor Sharangovich, that snowballed into a series of disastrous events before the ensuing faceoff and soon found the Kraken down three.

The goal itself was nothing special, with Sharangovich getting in alone on Joey Daccord and attempting a deke move only to have the puck roll off his stick and continue on through the netminder’s pads and over the goal line. That put the Kraken in a 2-0 hole, but things went from bad to worse on multiple fronts before the ensuing faceoff and the game quickly spiraled away from them.

The Kraken had already gotten a raw deal a few minutes prior when Calgary defender Brayden Pachal absolutely leveled Andre Burakovsky with a dangerous-looking, but legal, open ice hit. The Kraken rightly responded by going after Pachal in droves, with Jared McCann getting hold of the defenseman and unloading with some punches to the helmet.

Pachal actually “turtled” on the play – covering his head while on the ice and refusing to engage in any combat – which resulted in McCann getting an extra minor for roughing.

That penalty was still being served when Sharangovich scored his goal. And unfortunately for the Kraken, defenseman Jamie Oleksiak happened to slash Sharangovich a split-second before the goal -- resulting in a delayed penalty.

At even strength, the Oleksiak delayed penalty would have automatically been negated by the goal. But with the McCann penalty yet to expire, his infraction got negated by the Sharangovich power play marker instead while Oleksiak’s penalty still counted – as rules don’t allow multiple penalties to be canceled out by a lone goal in such fashion.

It was at that point, confusion abounding as a puzzled Oleksiak headed to the box, that the Kraken opted to challenge that Sharangovich’s stick had made contact with Daccord’s right before his goal went in the net.

After a lengthy review, the officials ruled the goal was good and gave the Kraken a delay of game penalty for the unsuccessful challenge that put them shorthanded 5-on-3 for two full minutes given the Oleksiak penalty already called.

The Kraken gamely held the Flames off through a minute of that, but eventually, the two-man advantage led to a one-timed goal by Jonathan Huberdeau that made it 3-0 with two minutes to go in the first.

Kakko said it was “a tough start” to have Schwartz’s goal overturned and then the Sharangovich marker upheld despite a similar occurrence of contact in both cases.

“I don’t know what the difference is,” Kakko said of the video reviews. “But that’s not my job. And, I mean, that was two minutes (advantage for Calgary) at 5-on-3. So, usually, teams are going to score on that. So, that was a hard first 20.”

Harder still for Kraken players getting flattened and dumped in the neutral zone on multiple occasions without penalties called. Burakovsky was knocked to the ice again in the second period with no call, prompting him to protest loudly to officials after a stoppage in play.

And then Kakko was dumped in the neutral zone just ahead of his goal. He got back up, followed an odd-man rush up the ice later that shift, and converted a cross-ice pass by Schwartz with a one-timer past goalie Dan Vladar.

“I was not happy that was not a penalty,” Kakko said. “But I mean, you’ve got to keep playing.”

Schwartz wasn’t happy in the opening period when his power play goal was overturned. He’d made a nice net front play on a loose puck and fired it home after an initial Matty Beniers shot.

But upon review, officials ruled he’d made contact with Vladar in the crease moments before gathering in the loose puck and had left the goalie off-balance.

“You never know with these calls, right?” Schwartz said. “I don’t know if it’s the (off-ice) people from Toronto. Both of the refs told me it was probably a goal but it was out of their hands and the people from Toronto called it. So, I’m not sure what they’re watching. I think it was a bad call. (Vladar) put a stick in my skates and then I went out of the crease.

“So, it was just a tough break.”

Schwartz said he was pleased with how the Kraken battled back after the opening period and got within a goal when Tanev was the last person to redirect a Beniers shot that changed course several times.

“It was a strange period,” Schwartz said of the opening 20 minutes. “But there’s nothing you can do at that point. You can’t go back in time so you’ve just got to go forward and regroup.”

Kraken coach Dan Bylsma admitted he might have drifted back in time to the Schwartz goal being nullified when deciding whether to challenge the Sharangovich marker given the brief contact with goalies on both plays ahead of pucks going in.

“It was my judgment the stick hitting our goalie’s stick in the blue paint was a factor for our goalie being able to make the save,” Bylsma said.

But the argument went nowhere. Bylsma said officials told him the Sharangovich stick reaching back and hitting Daccord’s as he skated on by the net was a “continuation play” in which the forward went after a loose puck in the crease.

“I think a lot of events in that period were not how we wanted them to go,” Bylsma said. “From the calls to the goals. And yeah, we had to reset.”

And that the Kraken finally did once Kakko shook off his mid-ice hit and broke the scoring ice. They just ran out of time to complete the job, with McCann nearly deflecting a shot past Vladar at the goal mouth in the final seconds.

“That was weird and not easy,” Kakko said of how the game began. “But I think we did a good job after that and got a couple of goals. It was not enough today but it was a good battle after the first period.”