PHILADELPHIA – This was never going to be a cakewalk for the Kraken despite spending most of the opening 40 minutes here frustrating the home side and firing up the boo-birds in the stands.
With the Philadelphia Flyers off to the worst start in franchise history and staring at seemingly inevitable defeat once again, they staged a desperation third period rally Tuesday night to tie the game up and set the Kraken on their heels. But the Kraken nonetheless prevailed 3-2 in a six-round shootout as Bobby McMann, who’d scored the game’s opening goal, wristed the winner behind goalie Dan Vladar.
Kraken goalie Philipp Grubauer stopped five of six attempts on the shootout as his team won its third straight to start this five-city road trip.
The Kraken had a chance to win this in overtime when the Flyers were penalized for too-many-men on the ice, giving the visitors a 4-on-3 advantage for a full two minutes. They are now 3-0-0 to start a trip that finishes with a game in Tampa on Thursday night and another on Saturday against Florida.
The Kraken midway through this contest were already leading by a pair after a first period power play goal by McMann and then the first career NHL goal by Ville Ottavainen in the middle frame. That’s when the Flyers, now 0-5-3, began crashing the net with more desperation and frequency and saw normally mild-mannered goalie Grubauer twice take shoves at forward Trevor Zegras minutes apart.
Christian Dvorak finally got the home team on the board six minutes into the final period by burying a cross-zone pass upstairs on Grubauer. Zegras would then exact some revenge on the goalie just 73 seconds later by taking a drop pass on an odd-man rush and wristing it past Grubauer for the game-tying goal.
The prior period’s exchange between Zegras and Grubauer epitomized what the Kraken as a team have done in starting this season at 5-2-0 with a “take no nonsense” attitude. They’ve had each other’s backs and stood up for themselves throughout times opponents have come at them a little too aggressively.
Zegras, who entered the night with only two assists after signing a lucrative contract extension this past summer, began crashing the net and getting in Grubauer’s face a bit too often for the goalie’s liking.
At one point, on a goalmouth scramble, Grubauer had corralled the puck when Zegras slashed the netminder’s glove and caused it to pop loose. The whistle had already blown by the time the Flyers put the puck in a net vacated when Grubauer left it to take a running shove at the Philadelphia winger.
Zegras wound up penalized for his slash. Then, when he stepped out of the box two minutes later, he had a chance down the right side that Grubauer easily snared.
With play halted, Grubauer, still irked by the shove, then slowly and theatrically underhanded the puck in Zegras’ direction in “Here you go” fashion while staring at the forward. Zegras took exception and skated right up to the goalie to say something, which prompted Grubauer to shove Zegras yet again as players from both teams raced over for a lengthy scrum
This time, the penalties were offsetting.
Goaltending has been a key part of this Kraken run, with Grubauer and Joey Daccord keeping their team in games despite a plethora of high danger chances by opponents. The Kraken initially did a better job of limiting those in this game and seemed content to take what the Flyers gave them.
One thing given was an opening period power play opportunity in which a puck in the air came back to ice level in the slot when McMann immediately whacked a rifle shot past goalie Vladar.
The Kraken had a chance to add to that early in the second period when Jordan Eberle was awarded a penalty shot. Eberle moved in and appeared to have the goalie deked after Vladar missed on a pokecheck attempt, but the Kraken captain was unable to backhand it over the netminder’s pads.
But Ottavainen helped make up for the miss fewer than three minutes later by firing a shot through a screen from the right point for the first goal of his career.
The fireworks between Grubauer and Zegras came about five minutes after that. The Kraken, after the initial McMann power play goal, had numerous other chances with the man advantage to increase their lead – including a brief 5-on-3 situation.
But they went 0-for-4 from there and finished 1-for-5 on the night.
