Kraken Drop Another Two Points To Blues

Kraken defenseman Vince Dunn was sitting in a silent Kraken locker room Wednesday night expressing frustration at blowing a second game in less than a week to a team going nowhere fast in any playoff races.

Dunn’s team, meanwhile, still has a three-point edge on any playoff pursuers despite a 3-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues in which the home team’s skating and pressure seemed to vanish for a prolonged swath of time after an opening five-minute flurry. It was an initial rebound goal by Jaden Schwartz just 31 seconds in off a harmless looking Adam Larsson point shot that Dunn was particularly interested in dissecting as part of what the Kraken stopped doing enough of.

“That’s probably one of the worst shots on net you can have as a defenseman,” Dunn said with somewhat amusing candor about a defensive partner he’s usually highly complementary of. “You get nothing on it and it’s just the commitment of the guys going to the net and you get rewarded. So, that’s the way that goals are scored right now. There’s nothing pretty to it. If that’s the way we’re going to win games, by scoring goals like that, then so be it. We’re going to have to work even harder to get more like that.”

Blues netminder Joel Hofer seemed handcuffed by the slower-than-usual shot and made a last-second kick save that created a very long rebound Schwartz pounced on. The Kraken threw several more pucks towards the St. Louis net and had five shots on goal the opening five minutes of the contest.

But it dried up from there as the Blues tied it on a Logan Mailloux wraparound chance seven minutes in and outshot the Kraken 14-5 the remainder of the period. They kept the Kraken in-check the opening half of the second period as well, getting a Dylan Holloway power play goal on a net front tap-in of a Brayden Schenn pass that put the Blues ahead to stay.

Robert Thomas then beat Philipp Grubauer on a wrist shot just 1:33 into the final frame before Dunn got the Kraken back within a goal with six minutes to go off a shot from the high slot. 

The Blues took a delay of game penalty for putting the puck over the glass with 2:35 remaining, effectively giving the Kraken a power play the remainder of the contest. They pulled Grubauer for a 6-on-4 edge and peppered the St. Louis net with shots but could not get another by Hofer and saw a team record five-game win streak at Climate Pledge Arena come to a disappointing end. 

“We want to be a team that’s competitive and a team that’s pushing for the playoffs,” Dunn said after the Kraken’s second loss in six days to a Blues squad that beat them 5-1 in St. Louis last week. “When you slip a little bit at this time of the year, it’s not a good feeling from top to bottom.”

The Kraken remained in the second wild-card spot three points up on idle San Jose and stayed five points ahead of Los Angeles and Nashville as well. But they missed a chance at again leapfrogging Edmonton for third place in the Pacific Division after the Oilers had passed them Wednesday with a late comeback win. 

Schwartz felt the Kraken played “faster” and with “more energy” against the Blues in this game than the contest last week.

“In their rink they played well, and I don’t think we generated enough and they had quite a few chances,” Schwartz said. “But tonight, we were just more aggressive, played quicker with the puck and we had our looks. We had our chances.”

Unfortunately, the vast majority of those came after Holloway’s go-ahead marker for St. Louis at the 7:40 mark of the second.

A visibly perturbed Kraken head coach Lane Lambert again seemed dumbfounded at his team’s inability to continue building off the early lead and 5-0 edge in shots by the game’s five-minute mark.

“I don’t think it was anything they were doing,” he said of the Blues. “We just didn’t continue with our pressure. There’s no excuse for it. I have no answer for you.”

Lambert agreed with Schwartz that the team had its chances and played better in the second and third periods.

“We had enough chances to win the hockey game,” he said. “There’s no question about it. But their goaltender played well. You’ve got to give him credit.”

But that credit to Hofer aside, Lambert wasn’t quite ready to let his team off the proverbial hook for failing to build off their opening salvo.

“The fact that we didn’t sustain after our good start for a lull, so to speak – we just can’t do that,” he said. “You can’t do that if you’re going to be a playoff hockey team. You’ve got to play a consistent 60 minutes. We’ve played that a lot this year. But that was disappointing.”

Dunn felt his team reverted to “too much east-west” passing after the initial surge of getting pucks straight to the net. He felt things improved as the night wore on, particularly in its latter stages, but admitted that dropping a winnable game such as this one does particularly sting given the closeness of the standings.

“It’s unfortunate,” he said. “Especially in games where we give ourselves a chance to win and we’re so close. By no means was that like the St. Louis game we played before. You could see it was really close all the way to the end and we had some good looks.

“But at the end of the day, if you don’t score and you’re not assertive from the start of the game all through three periods it’s tough to win.”