One: Keep the top line firing – The top line of Matty Beniers, Jordan Eberle and Jared McCann has been on quite a roll of late in five games back together as a trio. Beniers has 10 goals this month, McCann has nine and Eberle has five.
But in five games since coming back together, McCann has five goals and four assists for nine points. Beniers has four goals and two assists for six points while Eberle also has six points courtesy of two goals and four assists.
Now, that’s what a top line is supposed to look like.
And as the top line goes, others beneath it often tend to follow. Shane Wright had a pair of third line goals against Toronto while Jaden Schwartz picked up an assist. That line, with Kaapo Kakko, needed a bit of a breakout.
All of a sudden, a Kraken team that struggled all season to score even three goals in a game now has at least four in four of the last five contests. All of those games of four-plus goals were wins, by the way.
Two: Keep removing the “goal” from goaltending – What to say about this netminding stretch by the Kraken, with Philipp Grubauer playing out of his mind and Joey Daccord looking to have shaken off a bit of a mid-season slump. Regardless of who is in goal, the Kraken have been awfully stingy between the pipes. They gave up just 10 goals in that five-game stretch of four victories and even that’s somewhat deceiving as four of them came in a lone game against Anaheim.
Daccord has given up two goals in each of his last two outings, which is more of what he’d shown prior to hitting a bit of a January skid where he’d given up three or more in five consecutive starts.
Grubauer, meanwhile, has given up more than three goals just once in his last 11 outings. He’s allowed two or fewer goals in seven of those 11 games and just one goal in six (!!!) of those contests. You aren’t going to lose many when your goalie gives up just one. Not surprisingly, Grubauer won all six of those. He also won the game where he allowed two goals.
You see where we’re going with this. If the goaltending and defense gives up three or fewer and the offense continues to put up at least three and sometimes four goals – or five – the wins will pile up in a big hurry.
Three: Know the foe – You had a feeling this season might be different when McCann scored a Saturday night overtime winner the second game of the season to beat the Golden Knights 2-1 at Climate Pledge Arena. Hey, there’s an example where a goalie giving up just one – Daccord that night – really helped. Two wouldn’t have cut it that game. Anyhow, where were we? Ah yes, a “different” season. The Kraken, you see, don’t mix very well with the Golden Knights for whatever reason. Size probably has a lot to do with it as Vegas puts pucks to the net and crashes netminders with bigger bodies. They also have some very talented players, starting with points leader Jack Eichel at 61 and last summer’s free agent megastar Mitch Marner right behind him at 54.
The Kraken have played Vegas tight. But close hasn’t cut it as the Kraken are just 4-11-1 when facing their division foe. They’ve also won only once at T-Mobile Arena, which, you’ll remember, is where they played their first game in franchise history and lost late in the final period when current Kraken centerman Chandler Stephenson kicked the…er, directed the puck legally into the net with his skate for the winner. At least that’s how the ruling went down.
Stephenson is here with the Kraken now and piling up the points, sitting third on the team with 32. So, anytime he wants to start putting some pucks in the Vegas net with sticks, skates, body parts or whatever, feel free.
The Golden Knights are on a bit of a downhill trajectory. They’d won seven straight earlier in the month and then traded for Calgary Flames defenseman Rasmus Andersson back on Jan. 18. But since then, they’ve dropped five of six -- albeit picking up points their last two defeats in overtime and a shootout. They lead the NHL now with 14 games extended beyond regulation. Still, their slide has allowed the Kraken to creep closer to the division leaders in the standings than they’d probably figured possible this late in the season.
Should the Kraken win this one, they’d be only three points behind the Golden Knights. Time to get to it, then.
Projected lineup (not official):
McCann-Beniers-Eberle
Catton-Stephenson-Tolvanen
Schwartz-Wright Kakko
Winterton-Gaudreau-Melanson
Dunn-Larsson
Oleksiak-Montour
Lindgren-Evans
Grubauer
