Attacking From The Deep

Kraken captain Jordan Eberle likely never suspected his season opening goal in Calgary would launch a parade of scoring up and down the roster that now sees his team sporting one of the league’s most balanced offenses.

Nine games into the Kraken season and the team has already had 15 different players score goals, the fourth-highest total in the NHL right behind Boston at 17 and Utah and Washington at 16. Further strengthening the Kraken’s argument for possessing the league’s most balanced attack to-date is that 11 different players have multiple goals thus far, trailing only the dozen to do so for the Vegas Golden Knights.

That’s led to the Kraken owning the NHL’s No. 5 offense overall at 3.78 goals per game. It’s a full goal per game higher than last season and a big reason the Kraken are 5-3-1 heading into a lengthy stretch where six of the next seven games are at Climate Pledge Arena starting Tuesday night against Detroit.

“I thought we were connected,” Eberle would say after the season opening 6-1 win in Calgary on Oct. 1. “I thought we played together and all the lines were going. It was all great.”

Indeed they were as the Kraken got more than a third of the way towards their season’s goal-scorer total with six different players lighting the lamp. Vince Dunn would follow Eberle’s goal with one of his own and then Freddy Gaudreau, Chandler Stephenson, Matty Beniers and Kaapo Kakko would pile on the totals by game’s end.

Gaudreau, who took a Kakko pass out from the corner and wristed it home at the net front for a 3-0 first period lead, has since emerged as one of the biggest early season Kraken stories. The fourth line centerman, age 33, leads the team with five goals, which is only two fewer than he had all of last season.

“That’s kind of how I see our line – it’s the fourth line or whatever, but I don’t think we should think of it that way,” Gaudreau would say a few games later after potting two more goals in a trio with Ryan Winterton and Ben Meyers. “We should think our ourselves as a solid line that can also contribute.”

In any event, that opening night got plenty of Kraken shooters on the scoreboard and they’d add another one two days later when Bobby McMann tallied a tying power play marker in Edmonton. McMann had scored 10 goals for the Kraken in only 18 games last season after a March trade from Toronto ahead of signing a six-year contract extension over the summer.

His goal, at that point giving the Kraken seven players with one apiece on the season, helped carry a tie game into the closing minutes ahead of Leon Draisaitl potting the winner for Edmonton on a lucky bounce out of the corner.

Still, the Kraken were optimistic heading into their next day’s home opener against Calgary, when second year centerman Berkly Catton, third-year forward Shane Wright and newcomer Mackie Samoskevitch became the eighth, ninth and 10^th different players to score for the team in another 6-1 win. The goals all carried weight beyond the game itself. In Catton’s case, he’d gone 27 games without scoring last season ahead of his first NHL goal.

“The first goal of the year, it’s always nice to get it out of the way,” Catton said. “It took a little long last year so, it’s always nice to get that out of the way and kind of keep going from here.” 

Wright is coming off a season in which his production declined, so getting off to a quick scoring start in his case was also big.

For Samoskevich, acquired from Florida over the summer, his goal showcased his elite speed as he raced to the Flames blue line and caught up to a Brandon Montour clearance from the Kraken defensive zone. Flames defender Kevin Bahl stumbled trying to reverse course and Samoskevich grabbed the puck, raced in alone and deked netminder Dustin Wolf in close.

“That’s my game, the speed part of it,” Samoskevich said. “I love skating as fast as I can. When you do that, things like that happen so I’m just going to keep doing it.”

Three games in and the Kraken were already two-thirds of the way to having their current 15 goal scorers. But that’s usually when things start to slow down as team scoring focuses on primary lines where others take a back seat in support roles.

But the Kraken aren’t built around any one line. And that would grow strikingly apparent over the next few games.

The Kraken weren’t very competitive in a 6-2 home loss to Vegas in which they trailed 5-0 after two periods. But Wright would score his second of the season in the final period and then Jared McCann would become the 11^th player to score a Kraken goal by connecting on the power play late.

McCann getting on the season scoreboard was huge. He feels fully healthy after battling lower body issues throughout the past two campaigns and did score 20 last season despite playing only 52 games. The only 40-goal scorer in Kraken history is now tied for the team lead with Stephenson at eight points apiece and would score a much bigger goal a few nights later in Washington, D.C., netting the game winner in the final six minutes.

That road trip to D.C., Detroit, Philadelphia, Tampa Bay and Florida is where the Kraken truly separated from the league pack in the diversity of their scoring.

It started in the trip’s opener in Detroit, where Gaudreau and the fourth line burst on the scene as the season’s biggest early offensive story. While Gaudreau scored a pair, linemates Winterton and Ben Meyers each used their speed in setting up his goals to turn a tight game into an eventual 6-3 win.

Meyers would break open a 4-2 game late in the second period by stepping out of the penalty box, racing in 2-on-1 with Wright and snapping the puck upstairs on goalie John Gibson to become the 12^th player to get a goal in only the fifth Kraken game. On that goal, plus his work on setting up another Gaudreau marker two nights later against the Capitals, Meyers used his speed to create opportunity.

“I think it’s kind of everything for us,” Meyers said of he and linemate Winterton each using their above average speed to turn the fourth line into a scoring unit. “If we’re skating on to pucks with speed, that’s how you put pressure on teams.”

His line continued pressuring the entire trip, finishing the five road games with seven goals, nine assists as the Kraken went 3-1-1. Winterton two nights later against the Capitals became the 13^th different Kraken player to score a goal, adding a critical insurance marker on a breakaway after McCann’s eventual winner in a 5-3 victory.

“We’ve been together for a bit now and we feel we’re one of the better fourth lines in the league and that we can be the best fourth line in the league,” Winterton had said the day prior to that game. “So, I think it’s just a confidence thing.”

That confidence indeed seemed contagious as the Kraken, fresh off their victory over the Capitals, rolled into Philadelphia and kept on winning. This time, it would be defensemen getting on the scoreboard more as Dunn’s two goals by that point had been the only Kraken tallies by blueliners.

But after McMann scored his third of the season to open things against the Flyers, defenseman Ville Ottavainen would put a wrist shot through traffic from the right point for his first career NHL goal.

“It’s like a surreal moment,” Ottavainen said after becoming the 14^th Kraken player to score a goal this season in his team’s eventual 3-2 shootout win. “Everything kind of freezes for a second after I shot that puck. And then you just see the net go off and it’s like, ‘Oh!’ I don’t know, it’s a great feeling.”

Great indeed as the Kraken, now guaranteed a winning road trip, headed to Tampa Bay to face the Lightning. That game, a 4-3 overtime loss, would be the only one of the nine thus far not to feature a Kraken player getting his first goal of the season.

Instead, Winterton and Beniers would score their second goals and McCann his third of the campaign. Winterton’s game-opening goal gave the Kraken their 10^th multi-goal scorer of the season to put the Kraken one ahead of Colorado at the time for the NHL lead.

Beniers would then make it 11 multi-goal scorers with his second of the season – and 200^th career point – to tie the game late and snag the Kraken a point on the eventual overtime defeat. 

One game later, in an 8-3 loss to the Florida Panthers, Wright would score his third goal of the season, Gaudreau his fifth and then Ryker Evans would become the third Kraken defenseman and 15^th player overall to produce a tally.

Every forward on the team has scored except for Jacob Melanson – injured in the season opener and out indefinitely – and Curtis Douglas, who has played only twice.

The Kraken are now also tied with Vegas for the second-most players with at least three goals at six, which sits one behind Colorado’s seven.

Beyond Gaudreau’s five goals, McCann, Wright, Eberle, McMann and Samoskevich have three apiece. For Eberle, who scored a huge tying goal against the Capitals right at the end of the first period, it’s the all-around contributions making an early difference.

“We’ve had great depth so far as far as guys scoring up and down the lineup,” he said. “We just need to continue that.”