TAMPA, Florida – One of the more engaged games the Kraken have played all season was exemplified by rookie Berkly Catton engaging in his first NHL fight early in the second period.
But Thursday night’s critical 4-3 overtime win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on a Brandon Montour shot from the bottom of the left circle also saw engagement far beyond Catton’s scrap with defenseman JJ Moser. The Kraken jumped on their opponents for three goals the opening 23-plus minutes of regulation and though the goals by Montour, Kaapo Kakko and Bobby McMann were eventually offset by counters from Anthony Cirelli, Jake Guentzel and Corey Perry, the visitors did a good job of standing up to their opponents and staying in a hard-fought contest.
The Kraken entered having lost four straight times and were 0-2-1 on this six-city road trip with the final Western Conference playoff spot beginning to drift further away. They opted to again go with only 11 forwards and a seventh defenseman for the second game in a row, with Jacob Melanson the odd man out this time around.
Oscar Fisker Molgaard was slotted on to the third line freshly up from AHL Coachella Valley to try to spark some offensive creativity and he indeed helped initiate the game’s opening goal. Molgaard got the puck to Freddy Gaudreau, who hit a streaking Montour in close for a backhanded move upstairs on Andrei Vasilevskiy.
The Lightning tied it fewer than two minutes later when a pass attempt deflected off defender Ryan Lindgren, through traffic and right to Anthony Cirelli at the side of the net for an easy one-timer past Philipp Grubauer.
But the Kraken weren’t done and got rewarded for a strong opening period when Chandler Stephenson beat a defender down the left-wing boards and fed Kakko in the slot to put the Kraken ahead by intermission.
The second period began with a big hit along the boards on Jordan Eberle, who fell and struck his head on the ice. Catton witnessed the play and was incensed, trying to go after two Lightning players before dropping the gloves with the four-inches-taller Moser. Catton had one prior fight during his junior hockey career with the Spokane Chiefs.
While Moser got the better of him, Catton managed to land a punch and did fairly well in avoiding serious damage.
The Kraken took a 3-1 lead almost immediately afterward when McMann made a strong play at the side of the net to corral a loose puck after an initial save and tuck it into the net before Vasilevskiy could respond.
That seemed to wake the much bigger Lightning up a bit and they kept pouring on the hits from there. The Kraken, to their credit, responded in-kind and the remainder of the frame evolved into a series of skirmishes and near fights featuring Kraken players Montour, Vince Dunn and Ryker Evans among others.
Tampa Bay got a goal back fairly quickly after McMann’s tally, with Darren Raddysh hitting Guentzel with a long breakaway pass on a Kraken line change. Guentzel went upstairs on Grubauer to cut the Kraken lead to 3-2.
Evans then took a cross-checking penalty against Perry a couple of minutes later. It would Perry himself notching the equalizer on a pass to the slot at the tail end of the power play.
From there, the two goaltenders took over.
Grubauer made a good stop near the end of the second period off Pontus Holmberg after he was sent in on a partial breakaway down the left side. Then, Eberle had a golden chance in front of Vasilevskiy in the final period but attempted a backhand pass through his legs rather than trying to hoist the puck past the goalie into an open left side.
