Kraken Back On Ice Ahead of ‘Sprint’ To Finish

Kraken forward Jared McCann stepped off the ice for the first time in nearly two weeks Tuesday and quipped about it feeling “just like training camp again.”

But McCann was much more serious in the dressing room minutes later, his team having finished its first practice since the Winter Olympic break began, in describing the challenge ahead. The Kraken have the rest of this week to practice and prepare ahead of flying to Dallas next Monday and resuming their season two days later against the Stars to launch a 26-game final playoff push.

“Mentally, it’s getting your mindset back,” McCann said. “And saying, ‘Look, we’re in a good spot here and we’ve got to keep winning games.”

The Kraken went 15-6-3 their last two-dozen matchups ahead of the three-week pause in action for the 2026 Winter Olympic Games Milano Cortina. Play that way over roughly the same span before season’s end and will likely find themselves in the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the second time in the franchise’s five season existence.

McCann knows how rare these opportunities are.

“I’ve been in the playoffs, and I’ve been out of it,” McCann said. “I mean, you want to play for something. And I feel like everybody in here’s got that mindset now where it’s like, ‘OK, we’ve got the opportunity to do something pretty cool.’ And you’ve just got to take advantage of it. Because you never know. I’ve missed the playoffs for a couple of years, and it sucks.

“You want to play for something,” he added. “That’s why we do it.”

The only Kraken players not on the ice were forwards Eeli Tolvanen and Kaapo Kakko and goalie Philipp Grubauer. All three are still in Milan and will play in Olympic quarterfinal action on Wednesday, with Tolvanen and Kakko suiting up for Finland against Switzerland while Grubauer’s Team Germany plays Slovakia.

“I’ve been watching the boys,” McCann said, adding he caught some of the games while he and his wife, Val, vacationed in Anguilla. “Tolvy and Kaapo – he’s been doing well. Grubi, I watched him once. The reception over there in the hotel wasn’t very good.”

Kraken defenseman Brandon Montour has caught portions of the games as well after being invited to a star-studded Team Canada orientation camp last summer but not making the final roster. Canada has breezed through the opening three games undefeated, and Montour considers it an honor just to have been considered as an injury replacement option.

“Obviously, it’s Team Canada – you could put two or three of those teams in the tournament,” he said. “It was obviously a tough team to crack. Pick any of the 12 or 13 of us D-men who were kind of in the mix and you could pick or choose any of them.”

Montour plans to pay much closer attention to the games now that the playoff rounds have begun.

And he’s looking forward to a chance at a playoff berth of his own if the Kraken can continue the pace that now sees them third in the Pacific Division, one point out of second place. Montour won a Stanley Cup with Florida ahead of joining the Kraken last season and knows what it takes to get beyond regular season play.

“Once we start, it’s six weeks right to the end,” he said. “So, it is a sprint. We’re in a time now where it’s got to be a playoff mentality right to the end. Obviously, it’s going to be a tough schedule for everyone. But you win one, then you wipe it clean and you’ve got to go on to the next one. You lose one, you’ve got to forget about it and just keep going. That’s how it works.”

Kraken head coach Lane Lambert is walking a fine line between wanting his players ready and pushing them too hard as he would in training camp. Clearly, he said, they are in mid-season shape right now compared to last September and the trick will be to get them warmed back up from the break and then “steadily ramp up” until next week in Dallas when it will be full throttle ahead.

“It is a sprint,” Lambert said. “Because before you know it, you’re all of a sudden going to have under 20 games left and then after that, you’re going to be down in the 10 range. And so, it’s an important stretch of practice and then the sprint is on.”

Those practices will involve what Lambert termed “competition in some tight areas and stuff’’ and “game like situations” so they won’t be going in cold against the Stars and then the St. Louis Blues the very next night.

McCann said he’s confident his teammates are up to the challenge.

“We talked about it before (practice) – we need to get refocused here very quickly,” McCann said. “Obviously we’re going to be playing a lot of back to backs, which is pretty challenging in itself. The mindset is, we’ve got to come in and we’ve got to play every game like it’s our last.”