Kraken forward Oliver Bjorkstrand decided to go down fighting in this latest defeat, apparently learning how to protect himself during those 600 games he’s now played in the NHL.
His midgame scrap Thursday night with Simon Benoit, a Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman with a good four inches and 35 pounds on him, typified his team’s 3-1 loss and much of this now completed homestand in general. The Kraken held their own on the scoreboard through games against contending opponents but often had to content themselves with keeping things close rather than landing a knockout blow.
“At times, we’re close to finding some good hockey but I just don’t think we find it consistently enough,” said Bjorkstrand, who drew an assist on his team’s only goal. “So, that’s obviously a problem. You’ve got to be consistent and play good hockey. Especially against good teams.
“So, I don’t know. It’s just too many swings up and down. That’s obviously on us to figure out. So, yeah, it’s a problem we’ve got to solve.”
It was a familiar story throughout, with the Kraken generating limited quality chances and not finishing them off when they did. And down at the other end, goalie Joey Daccord again did whatever he could to keep things close – facing at least 30 shots for the third straight game -- but could not overcome some early bad luck and penalties taken by his team.
Phillippe Myers opened the scoring for Toronto with a first-period point shot that deflected in off Kraken forward Matty Beniers. Bobby McMann and Matthew Knies scored to make it 3-0 in the middle frame before Eeli Tolvanen finally got the Kraken on the board just under six minutes into the third.
Daccord picked up a secondary assist on the goal – his second assist of this season and his career -- but it wasn’t enough for a Kraken team that now heads to Calgary to face the Flames on Saturday night before the two-week mid-winter break for the Four Nations Cup tournament.
Toronto goalie Anthony Stolarz made his first start in two months after knee surgery, turning aside 27 of 28 shots for the win.
The Kraken played nine of their past 10 games at Climate Pledge Arena – the lone exception being a contest in Edmonton last week – and wound up going 4-4-1 that span. Beyond the Top-10 Maple Leafs, the Kraken also faced No. 1 overall Washington, red-hot Detroit, and the playoff-positioned Los Angeles Kings and Flames.
All the games against the playoff contenders were relatively close, despite the Kraken going 1-3-1 in those matchups. Even this contest against Toronto was still in doubt on the scoreboard until the closing minutes despite the Maple Leafs enjoying a vast edge in the overall play.
It was close enough that the Kraken pulled Daccord in the final minutes after being afforded a late power play, but Stolarz and company fended off the 6-on-4 advantage as Toronto improved to 4-0 lifetime at Climate Pledge. The Kraken have now scored only five combined goals facing the Leafs in the four home games.
Bjorkstrand wound up a goal shy of completing a very unlikely “Gordie Howe Hat-Trick” – having already gotten the necessary assist and fight. He’d gotten his elbow up on Benoit – appearing to bloody his nose – when the two of them battled for a loose puck near the Kraken bench.
Next thing Bjorkstrand knew, he was in a rare second fight in just under four weeks. In both cases, including a fight in Buffalo last month against 6-foot-2, 216-pound defenseman Dennis Gilbert, the playmaking Bjorkstrand found himself engaging much bigger guys and held his own.
“You just try to hold on and see if you can throw a few,” said Bjorkstrand, whose two career fights prior to this one were far fewer than the 16 for Benoit in both preseason and regular season according to HockeyFights.com. “I’m obviously not an expert on that, but sometimes it just happens and you just try.”
Bjorkstrand said the last thing he expected the night of his 600th game was to be involved in a fight.
“If somebody bet on that, I’m sure it was a lot of money they got,” he quipped.
Barely a minute after the bout, which featured plenty of fierce wrestling, but no damaging blows landed, the game took a decisive turn on the Knies goal in which he deflected an incoming point shot with a stick up around his shoulder level. But for the second time this week, the Kraken had an ensuing video review go against them while the goal counted.
This time, unlike earlier in the week in a one-goal loss to Calgary, they didn’t get burned by an ensuing power play as the review was generated by the officiating crew and not a Kraken coach's challenge. They had already given up a power play goal by McMann in the first period after a double-minor for high-sticking taken by Chandler Stephenson.
Meanwhile, the Kraken power play didn’t get anywhere in five chances – including a chance fewer than two minutes after the bad-break opening goal Beniers inadvertently deflected in. But while they had a few good cracks at the net on that man advantage, nothing went in.
The Kraken finally broke through on Tolvanen’s fifth goal in his last six games, coming off a 36-foot wrist shot with Cale Fleury driving an opposing defender backward towards the net to screen Stolarz from seeing the puck.
