Short-handed Kraken fall in OT to Flyers
By Charles Hamaker
Seattle, WA – In their first game in eleven days, the Seattle Kraken put up a good fight against the Philadelphia Flyers, but would ultimately fall in overtime by a score of three to two. Seattle would be down to just six defensemen for this game and the team learned that forward Brandon Tanev suffered a season ending ACL injury just a few days prior, leaving the Kraken without some key contributors.
The third period was the story of this game, beginning with a Jeremy Lauzon goal that would be overturned after a coach’s challenge by Philadelphia. The officials would decide that Seattle’s Jaden Schwartz would interfere with Flyer’s goaltender Martin Jones to draw an interference foul, taking away the goal. The call may have been critical in the long run, as the teams would go into overtime after trading goals late. The Flyer’s Ivan Provorov would use his stick skills to maneuver past Kraken goaltender Philipp Grubauer on a breakaway, dealing Seattle the overtime loss.
Seattle’s defensive issues continue to linger, as their goals allowed in this game could be attributed to not marking the shooter and giving up the breakaway in overtime These are issues that we have grown used to. The Kraken did come out this game and put up a solid overall effort, outshooting Philadelphia and limiting the chances that the Flyers got. With that being said, the few times that slipped through the cracks would ultimately doom Seattle, which is also a trend that we continue to see in the franchise’s inaugural season.
The team is still dealing with some COVID related issues, as Mason Appleton, Ryan Donato, and Vince Dunn also missed today’s game in addition to Adam Larsson being added late to the lineup. Head coach Dave Hakstol would speak on Larsson returning on the morning of the game.
“Obviously he’s coming out of a fairly extensive protocol, so we’ll take a look at everything here and what makes the most sense for Larsson and our team here,” Hakstol remarked in response to being asked about the defensemen’s status for the game. After several game postponements, Hakstol would also speak about getting back to a sense of normal with games, saying “We’re obviously in a bit of a new area here and that has become the norm, some of that uncertainty. I feel none of that today whatsoever, we’ve had a couple good focus days of practice, everyone has learned to be a little bit flexible, and I don’t believe that has any bearing on our preparation.”
Defensemen Jeremy Lauzon, who scored his first goal of the season tonight, spoke on what he thinks the teams needed to do to win this game and what may help the Kraken going forward.
“I think overall we played a really good game; down the stretch we need to tighten things up. We’ve seen that happen too many times, and moving forward that is something we need to take pride in, winning tight games and play good defensively like we did tonight. Most of the times it should go in our favor.”
The Kraken have shown flashes of good play, but they too often get overshadowed by the lapses that are the biggest hinderance to this team. Seattle gets an instant chance to rebound in their next game on December 30th against the Calgary Flames at Climate Pledge Arena with a 7PM PST puck drop.