One: Keep this rivalry one-sided – Tough to believe this is only the first time the Kraken and Canucks have met this season. The Pacific Northwest rivalry between them has been one-sided of late, with the Kraken going 7-1-2 since the opening months of their playoff season three years ago.
Prior to that, it was all Canucks. But a 5-1 win by Vancouver two years ago at Climate Pledge Arena is the lone regulation victory they’ve managed in the series since October 2022. The Kraken need to keep things that way to build some home momentum heading into the New Year. Right now, the Canucks sport the worst record in the entire NHL and just traded away their best player and captain in defenseman Quinn Hughes.
As mentioned previously, the Kraken need to start making home advantage count. This game and then an upcoming matchup against a Nashville team that’s also struggled near the NHL’s basement most of this season is a great opportunity to do just that.
Two: Maintain the forecheck – Eeli Tolvanen had quite the game Sunday against Philadelphia with two empty net goals and an assist on Chandler Stephenson’s decisive marker that was something to behold. Tolvanen raced the length of the ice to chase after a long dump pass and beat the defender enough that goalie Dan Vladar had to play the puck at the last minute.
But Vladar didn’t play it enough. Tolvanen caught up to the loose puck, then banked it off the back of the net to keep it away from the defender before feeding it out front to Stephenson for the goal.
“The biggest thing about the goal for me was, he’s been doing it all year long,” Kraken head coach Lane Lambert said of Tolvanen’s play. “He got in on the forecheck. He separated the puck from the man and made a heads-up play to Stephenson in the slot. But he’s moving his feet and he’s heavy on the forecheck.”
And that’s how the rest of the Kraken need to play this time around against Vancouver on the latter half of back-to-back contests. The Kraken finally won one of these games last week in Los Angeles, ending a streak of 17 consecutive losses spanning 658 days on the tail end of back to backs.
They’d lost prior such games by not skating and playing aggressively enough. You expect some fatigue to set in with consecutive games, but this Kraken team doesn’t have enough pure offensive firepower to naturally compensate for a lack of aggression.
So, to continue scoring and winning, they need to get in on the forecheck.
“Like I said, I think our forecheck’s getting better here and has been getting better over the last three or four games,” Lambert said on what his team can do to prepare for this finale of the back-to-back. “And certainly, we’ll prepare for Vancouver here. They’re sitting here waiting for us. It’ll be a back-to-back for us here at home and we’re looking forward to the challenge.”
The Kraken have an optional morning skate Monday so we won’t see any lineup changes in advance. But we anticipate some switches, such as in goal with Joey Daccord replacing Philipp Grubauer. There could also be a change or two on the forward lines but we’ll keep those the same in our projections for now and wait until puck drop to see.
Three: Know your foe – The Canucks, as mentioned, traded captain Hughes to the Minnesota Wild just more than two weeks ago – and promptly embarked on their first and only four-game win streak of the season. Go figure. Was it real, or a proverbial ‘Dead cat bounce'? Vancouver has since lost two straight, so the jury is still out.
One of the key pieces received from the Wild in the deal was talented defenseman Zeev Buium, drafted 12th overall by Minnesota in 2024. He appeared in four playoff games last spring and then 31 contests for the Wild this season as a 19-year-old rookie ahead of the deal.
He turned 20 just days before the trade and then scored a goal and added an assist in his Vancouver debut.
The Canucks are said to have made all of their pending unrestricted free agents available on the trade block and 30-year-old gritty forward Kiefer Sherwood is front of the pack on that. He’s got a team-leading 16 goals already after scoring a career high 19 with 40 points a season ago.
Otherwise, the three top Canucks point getters are all tied with 22 in Elias Pettersson, Conor Garland and Filip Hronek, which – for context -- would be good for fourth spot on a Kraken team that’s struggled all season offensively. The Canucks also have the NHL’s second worst defensive numbers at 3.46 goals per game allowed, including the league’s third worst penalty kill at 74.6%.
On that note, the Kraken’s three additional penalty kills Sunday for a fast-improving unit finally allowed them out of the league’s basement on that front, their 71.2% now better than Ottawa’s 70.6%.
Projected lines (not official):
Kakko - Beniers - Eberle
Tolvanen - Stephenson - Gaudreau
Catton - Wright - McCann
Kartye - Meyers – Melanson
Dunn - Larsson
Lindgren - Fleury
Evans - Oleksiak
Daccord
