Grubauer makes 19 saves, Kraken shut out Islanders

ELMONT, N.Y. --Philipp Grubauer made 19 saves for the first shutout in Seattle Kraken history, a 3-0 win against the New York Islanders at UBS Arena on Wednesday.

It was Grubauer's first shutout since May 12, when he made 18 saves for the Colorado Avalanche in a 6-0 victory against the Los Angeles Kings. He signed a six-year contract with Seattle on July 28.
"It's a great game from everybody," Grubauer said. "I don't think I had too many great chances (against) when you compare this to like other games we've played, like breakaways, 2-on-1s. I think like today it's been like the least scoring chances we've given up like in a long, long time."
Jared McCann scored the go-ahead goal in the third period for the Kraken (15-27-4), who had lost two straight, including 3-2 at the Boston Bruins on Tuesday, but salvaged a split of their four-game road trip (2-2-0).
"At this time of year, these are the kind of games everybody's going to be involved in," Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said. "Really, we had four in a row on this road trip. We knew that's the kind of road trip it was going to be. For the guys, it's a good reward. Really rewarding for them to finish off this road trip 2-2. We probably feel like we deserved a little bit better in the two games in-between, but you throw all of that aside. We had the opportunity in front of us tonight to get a good win, and we were able to do that."

Semyon Varlamov made 28 saves for the Islanders (16-17-6), who have lost three of their past four games and were shut out for the fourth time at home this season.
After playing 14 of its past 15 games at home, New York will play nine of its next 11 on the road.
"To me, it's one of the more disappointing games that I've coached as an Islander coach, to be honest with you," Islanders coach Barry Trotz said. "It was quite disappointing. We've had some games where we've got taken apart by a really good hockey team, but the effort's there, maybe we made some mistakes, but I just didn't think that our level of desire today was very good.
"I'm [ticked] off right now, plain and simple, and I'll let the emotion hopefully go away. I'll reassess our team. We're going to need more. We're going on the road, playing good teams and we've got to put in a better effort. We've had some great efforts and we didn't get a win. I thought we had a really good effort obviously against Minnesota (a 4-3 loss on Sunday), but we didn't get any points. But this one, we didn't deserve any points. If we would've, we would've stole it."
McCann gave the Kraken a 1-0 lead at 6:04 of the third period. Jordan Eberle outmuscled Scott Mayfield for the puck behind the net and sent a pass to McCann, who quickly shot off the left arm of Varlamov for his team-leading 19th goal of the season.
"I just feel like things this year are going well and I'm getting put into good situations to score," McCann said. "I'm just trying to take advantage of it. Obviously, I'm playing with two great players (Eberle, Marcus Johansson), and obviously, that helps a lot, too."

Vince Dunn scored 2:31 later when he worked his way around Anders Lee and scored on a backhand from the edge of the right face-off circle at 8:35 to make it 2-0.
Mason Appleton scored an empty-net goal with two seconds left for the 3-0 final.
"We had an opportunity to win a hockey game with 20 minutes to go, and we go out there and there's just a few minutes of dud hockey," Lee said. "That's not good enough and our standards."
Grubauer kept the game scoreless at 13:09 of the second period when he slid across his crease to make a pad save on Zach Parise's one-timer.
"It's been a good road trip," Grubauer said. "I think we could've gotten a point or two points in New York (a 3-2 loss at the Rangers on Sunday) and gotten a point or two points yesterday. It would've been an unbelievable road trip, but we found a way to win and close it out today and got a couple of days off now."
NOTES: It was the final game for each team before the 2022 Honda NHL All-Star Weekend. … McCann and Appleton each had a goal and an assist. … Eberle played against the Islanders for the first time since being selected by Seattle in the 2021 NHL Expansion Draft. He scored 169 points (76 goals, 93 assists) in 272 games with New York from 2017-21. … Islanders forward Josh Bailey was minus-3 and did not have a shot on goal in 16:14 of ice time. … Varlamov is 3-5-1 with a 2.11 goals-against average and .933 save percentage in nine starts since Dec. 1. In those nine starts, New York has scored 16 goals.