EDMONTON, AB – Those looking for positives out of this Kraken defensive debacle will note that the visitors at least started putting some pucks in the net.
That one of the scorers was Jared McCann, notching his first goal in more than six weeks after a long injury absence, certainly bodes well for future games even if it wasn’t going to impact this 9-4 loss to the Edmonton Oilers. Thursday night’s walk on the defensive wild side by the Kraken was certainly atypical not only because they yielded a franchise record number of goals, but also in the way they kept giving those markers up.
The defensively stout team kept yielding breakaways and partial breakaways seemingly out of nowhere as the rock-solid systems imposed by head coach Lane Lambert apparently took an early Christmas holiday in the team’s fourth consecutive defeat. Of all the chances given the Oilers in alone on Kraken netminders Joey Daccord and Philipp Grubauer in this game, the costliest proved to be on Matt Savoie’s shorthanded breakaway goal just eight seconds after the start of a Kraken power play early in the second period.
Connor McDavid, who had a hat trick in this one, would break things open shortly after Savoie’s goal by scoring his second of the night to spell the end for Daccord and bring on Grubauer. Zach Hyman then got around a defender and in alone minutes later for another Oilers goal before the second period ended. Mattias Janmark scored in the third after Jani Nyman gave the puck away with a failed clearance attempt up the side boards. McDavid then scored the third power play of the game for Edmonton and Savoie the fourth soon after on his second goal of the night to wrap up the home team scoring.
Nyman scored a fourth Kraken goal in the closing seconds of the contest.
The nine goals allowed set a new and dubious Kraken record, surpassing the prior eight given up to Los Angeles in a 9-8 overtime win in November 2022.
McCann’s goal came late in the second with the game already out of reach. But a pair of prior Kraken goals late in the first period from Eeli Tolvanen and Freddy Gaudreau cut into a big Edmonton lead and appeared, for a brief moment at least, to give the visitors a shot in a game in which they’d been badly outplayed to that point.
Edmonton had jumped ahead 3-0 midway through the opening frame on goals 17 seconds apart by McDavid and Vasily Podkolzin and then Leon Draisaitl popping the third Oilers power play strike in as many chances facing the Kraken the past week. The Oilers nearly had a fourth goal that period only to see it waved off via replay after a shot by Andrew Mangiapane beat Daccord and rang off both goal posts without crossing the line.
Still, the Kraken appeared dead on arrival before Tolvanen buried a power play goal of his own with a slap shot behind goalie Calvin Pickard with under four minutes to go in the period and just one second ahead of the expiration of an Edmonton penalty. The Kraken hadn’t scored at all on Oilers netminder Stuart Skinner last Saturday, so Tolvanen’s strike was a step in the right direction as was an ensuing Gaudreau breakaway marker that cut the Kraken deficit to just 3-2 with 27 seconds remaining in the frame.
But then came Savoie’s breakaway that restored Edmonton’s two goal cushion. The Kraken’s final chance to get back in it came moments later when afforded a second 5-on-3 power play chance in two games against the Oilers.
Alas, the Kraken couldn’t score during their 37 seconds up two men, then nearly yielded another shorthanded breakaway chance to Janmark just 15 seconds after the first of the penalties expired. Brandon Montour was forced to take a slashing call to slow him down and McDavid wound up with his second goal of the game through Daccord’s legs on the power play.
McCann would score his goal with the Kraken down 6-2, firing home a long rebound after an off-balance Pickard had made an initial shot stop. It was McCann’s first goal since Oct. 14 in Montreal, which, at the time was already his third of the season in his team’s third game.
He would play only twice more after that before being sidelined just ahead of an Oct. 20 game in Philadelphia. This was only his third game back since then, with the Kraken hoping he starts finding the net more often to bolster a team that hopefully will figure out its rare defensive lapse in short order as well.
