High Flying Kraken Grounded In Anaheim

ANAHEIM – Kraken captain Jordan Eberle wasn’t about to get enthused about two late goals by his team to make Tuesday night’s final score more respectable, even if the first of those helped him reach the 20-mark for the first time in three seasons.

Eberle has been around long enough to know the difference between moral victories and shallow window dressing this late into a playoff push. And with the Winter Olympic break looming, a 4-2 loss to the Anaheim Ducks was going to sting regardless of how good or bad the final score actually looked.

“We’ve been playing, in my opinion, playoff hockey for the last month,” Eberle said after his team’s win streak was snapped at four. “Every game, every point is huge. This was another one that was massive tonight. And tomorrow we have another one. So, we need to regroup here and get refocused.”

That next game Wednesday night, across town in Los Angeles, is against a Kings team sitting one point back of Eberle’s squad. The Kraken then won’t play again until late this month following the 2026 Winter Olympic Games Milano Cortina ahead of a final sprint to the playoff finish line.

That playoff push took a hit here, with the Ducks moving two points ahead of the Kraken and knocking them out of third place in the Pacific Division and down into the second Western Conference wild card spot with the Kings knocking on the door. Anaheim moved just one point behind division leaders Vegas and Edmonton by breaking open what had been a 1-0 game with just 35 seconds to go until the second intermission.

That’s when Jacob Trouba blew a long slap shot through a screen and past Philipp Grubauer from right inside the Kraken blue line and next to what appeared to be a pair of extra Anaheim skaters trying to get off the ice to the Ducks’ bench. The Kraken argued for a too-many-men penalty, but to no avail, and then Alex Killorn scored a third Anaheim goal through Grubauer’s pads just 24 seconds into the third, and it was pretty much game over.

Grubauer had been screened on the first goal of the game by Cutter Gauthier early in the second period and bothered in front by Ryan Poehling just ahead of the Killorn shot he let get through. But Grubauer then flat out lost the puck behind his net with six minutes to go, and Ryan Johnston put it into a deserted cage out front for a 4-0 lead.

That’s when the Kraken scored twice in the final five minutes, first with Eberle redirecting Jared McCann’s shot followed by Wright having a puck go in off his body on a goalmouth scramble with Grubauer pulled. The Kraken managed 10 shots after giving up the fourth goal, but Eberle shrugged it off as “desperation” and “urgency” more than any sustained cohesive strategy, and “too little, too late” on the clock.

“I thought we had some pushback in the second (period),” Eberle said. “We had some opportunities to make it 1-1 no question. We had some 2-on-1 breaks that we didn’t execute on, and then they get that one late in the second and it kind of stings. And then that third one, obviously, was the same thing.”

The Kraken were still seething about the extra Anaheim men on the ice ahead of Trouba’s goal when Jacob Melanson took the spirited rivalry between these clubs up an extra notch in intensity with a hit on Troy Terry right at the second intermission buzzer. That set off a wild scrum involving all 10 position players on the ice.

It took a while to restore order as Melanson was escorted briskly off the ice by officials amid a bevy of threats being directed his way by Anaheim players. Ryan Lindgren was right in the middle of the scrum pile and did his share of physical and verbal jousting with opponents all around him.

Despite that emotional flare-up, Kraken coach Lane Lambert felt his team didn’t show enough sustained intensity and execution and lost too many close puck battles. Like Eberle, he also bemoaned the missed odd-man-rush chances in what was still a 1-0 game at the time.

“Then obviously the late (Trouba) goal and the early goal in the third that they scored, that turned the game around,” Lambert said. “I wouldn’t say turned it around, but certainly it took us almost out of the game.”

Kraken defenseman Brandon Montour said the closeness in the standings between the teams has ratcheted up the importance of these games. He felt his team came out “a little sleepy, a little slow off the start” but had picked things up in the latter part of the second period ahead of Trouba’s late goal.

As for his team’s own late push, he agreed there was “not enough time” to come back from four goals down, even though the Kraken nearly scored a third marker with Grubauer again pulled, only to have a puck hit the post. He also agreed that the game against the Kings now becomes huge, and it “doesn’t matter” that the Kraken are facing a rested Los Angeles squad while they are finishing a back-to-back set.

“It’s just one game right before the break,” he said. “You want to end off on a good note. We lose points tonight, which obviously sucks, but we move on now, clean up what we have to clean up, and tomorrow’s game is just as important.”

As for Eberle, with his ninth 20-goal season now in the books at age 35, he knows just how quickly a win in LA could shift momentum back in the Kraken’s favor.

“In this league right now, you win four in a row and lose one and you’re out of the playoffs,” he said. “It’s just that simple. We’ve been playing playoff hockey for the last month. Every game is just that important. Especially against a divisional team and they (Anaheim) just jumped ahead of us.

“So, that’s the mindset that we’ve had and we have to continue having. It’s going to be the same way all the way through the rest of the year.”