No Quit Kraken Fight For Hard Earned Point

MONTREAL – Kraken forward Jared McCann admitted his team tried “not to get too high” during Tuesday night’s game after battling back throughout and taking a final period lead on his third goal in as many contests.

And that proved prophetic in a 5-4 overtime loss to the Montreal Canadiens in which McCann’s squad surrendered the tying goal in the final three minutes and then the decisive Cole Caufield marker deep in the extra session. Caufield’s second of the game, a top shelf snapper in close on Joey Daccord, sent the Kraken home with a hard-earned point rather than the two they’d seemed poised to steal in the waning minutes of regulation.

“We know they’re a skilled team and obviously they’re going to get their chances,” McCann said. “But we felt positive for the whole game. It felt pretty good. But obviously we can’t give skilled guys like that time and space.”

Knocking off a touted playoff contender the night of their home opener was always going to require the Kraken overcoming obstacles and that’s exactly what they did for most of the first 45 minutes. They overcame three one-goal deficits, twice in the second period on tying markers by Jaden Schwartz in close and Jani Nyman on a deflection and then on a long snap shot strike from Jamie Oleksiak in the third.

McCann then put the Kraken ahead for the first time all night after a clean faceoff win by Matty Beniers, scooping up a loose puck to the left of goalie Samuel Montembeault, spinning and firing it by him with roughly 12 minutes to go. But the Kraken, now 2-0-1, did make mistakes in this one, including costly giveaways and leaving players unmarked, that ultimately came back to haunt.

In McCann’s view: “When you play a team like that who moves around a lot and creates off of interchanges and slipping pucks to the net, I think we can do a better job of boxing out and getting sticks in lanes so they can’t get through easily.”

Ivan Demidov tied things up in the final three minutes of regulation right after the expiration of a Kraken penalty, taking his time holding a puck in close until Daccord committed before slipping it past him into the net. Caufield’s winner with 1:35 to go in overtime came moments after he’d collided with Daccord – which caused a stoppage in play even though the Kraken gathered the puck and were racing back up ice the other way.

The decision to blow the play dead before Montreal touched the puck again was a discretionary one by the referee, though the Kraken were not thrilled about it.

“It’s unfortunate because when the guy went into Joey we had a 2-on-1 going back the other way,” Kraken head coach Lane Lambert said. “So, it could have been a bit of a different story.”

And it was a different story for swaths of this one as the Kraken weathered an early storm and surge of emotion by the Bell Centre crowd and largely outplayed the Canadiens as the game progressed. The fans had already been pumped for Montreal’s first home game since last spring’s playoffs and had the added emotional lead-in of a video tribute to Hall of Fame goalie Ken Dryden, who died from cancer last month at age 78.

Montreal had grabbed an early lead when Demidov hit Alex Newhook with a cross-ice pass at the goalmouth for an easy tap-in just under five minutes into the contest. But from there, with each passing minute, the Kraken defenders went into lockdown mode and the home side struggled to generate momentum.

At one point, the Kraken held Montreal to a lone shot through a 16-minute span of play, buying time for Schwartz to get the first of the three tying Kraken goals on a net front pass from Shane Wright. Later in the period, after a Chandler Stephenson turnover and a Caufield go-ahead goal put Montreal up 2-1, Nyman redirected a Tye Kartye shot for another tying marker that put the teams even heading into the third.

“We were playing hard,” Lambert said. “We were playing hard right from the get-go. If you look at our chances in this game, we had our chances at 5-on-5. I think we did a great job coming in prepared, understanding what we needed to do certainly in the first 10 minutes when they came out hard in their building.

“I thought we battled. I give our guys full credit for battling.”

But less for the way in which they handed back some goals based off “structural and systematic mistakes” Lambert says his team can’t afford.

“We made some mistakes and those mistakes ended up in the back of the net tonight,” Lambert said. “Whereas maybe in games one and two we didn’t.”

Oleksiak agreed, saying: “We obviously could have made a couple of harder plays in the (defensive) zone, but they’re obviously in a home opener and they’re flying and they’re going to play with a lot of energy.”

While Oleksiak also prefers, like McCann, to “not get too high” about the night’s positives and five points in six games to start the season, he’ll still focus on some of the good. That includes his 46-foot snapper finding a way past Montembeault to bring the Kraken from behind yet again after Kirby Dach had regained Montreal’s lead early in the third.

“I think we responded well to adversity,” Oleksiak said. “It’s obviously not the result that we wanted. But we stuck to our guns and fought back hard and there are some good takeaways and things we can clean up as well.”

Words an even-keeled McCann, once again this team’s top goal-scoring producer, won’t find tough to get behind.

“We should be confident,” he said. “We should take the positives out of this but learn from the bad. I know I say that a lot, but that’s the kind of thing we need to do moving forward.”