Haydn Fluery’s first two goals, Phillipp Grubauer’s brilliance leads Kraken past Wild 4-1
Now that they’ve moved into their palace, the Kraken are playing more like kings.
Haydn Fleury scored his first two goals of the season to erase Seattle’s early 1-0 deficit, and Phillip Grubauer kept the roaring crowd at sold-out-again Climate Pledge Arena serenading him with long chants. “Gruuuuuuuu!” repeatedly turned away Minnesota in the Kraken’s 4-1 win in their third-ever home game Thursday night.
Leading scorer Brandon Tanev scored his sixth goal of the season with 1 minute left into an empty net, and captain Mark Giordano added another empty-netter in the final seconds. The 17,151 in the new house at Seattle Center roared some more at the team’s second win in three nights, and at game stars Fleury and Grubauer throwing stuffed salmon over the glass into the crowd after the win.
“We’re getting there,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said.
His new team is showing its first signs of consistency. They are starting to stack performances. They are starting to wear out defenses with persistent pressing offensively, as they did in a wowing second period Thursday. That was after Minnesota took it to the Kraken at the start.
And they are getting stellar goaltending from Grubauer.
The Kraken allowed three goals in the final 7 minutes of their franchise home debut Saturday in losing 4-2 to Vancouver, a game they felt they should have won. Since then the Kraken have beaten Montreal, which played the Stanley Cup Final to end last season, 5-1 on Tuesday and now Minnesota. The Wild, a playoff team last season, entered Thursday having won five of six games this season.
In the last two games in their impressive, new, $1.15 billion arena, the Kraken have doubled their win total for the season.
Their 1-3-1 road-trip debut is way behind them.
“We don’t want to be win one, lose one, win one, lose one,” said Grubauer, who has stopped 53 of 55 shots in Seattle’s two wins this midweek. “Last game, Montreal game, we headed in the right direction. This game, we didn’t come out as strong as we did in the Montreal game.
“But I think the second period was incredible, one of the best periods I’ve ever seen,” the 29-year-old veteran of 221 NHL games with Washington, Colorado and now six with Seattle.
That second period was by Hakstol’s design. More on that in a minute.
The Kraken improved to 3-4-1.
By comparison, the last NHL expansion team, the 2017-18 Vegas Golden Knights, were 7-1 after their first eight games on their way to the Stanley Cup Final.
The Kraken have started their franchise differently, by approach and in results.
This is a younger team built for a longer haul. Seattle is less reliant on expensive veterans. The league’s other more-established teams learned from the Vegas expansion about side deals and getting fleeced of top talent by the new guys.
For instance, Vegas made 10 trades at their expansion draft. This summer, the Kraken made none.
Of the 23 players on Seattle’s active roster, 12 are 27 years old or younger. Nine are 25 or younger.
After 23 saves on 24 shots in Seattle’s win over Montreal two night earlier, Grubauer stopped 30 shots by Minnesota.
The German goaltender who has played seven of Seattle’s eight games kept the Kraken from falling behind more than 1-0 early. He made four brilliant saves in the first period.
With 18 seconds left in the second and Seattle leading 2-1 thanks to Fleury, Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov stole a puck at Seattle’s blue line from the Kraken’s Yanni Gourde. Kaprizov raced in alone on Grubauer from the left. Grubauer held his ground as Kaprizov shot from deep into face-off circle. He made a pad save on the breakaway to keep the Kraken ahead 2-1 into the third period.
“Massive,” said Gourde, who won consecutive Stanley Cups with Tampa Bay the previous two seasons. “Terrible turnover by me. That’s unacceptable.
“Gruby just came up big.
Hakstol called Grubauer’s theft of Kaprizov to end the second a “huge, huge save, at a key time.”
“And Gruby was phenomenal in the third period, obviously,” Gourde said.
With 11:28 left in the game, Minnesota’s Jon Lizotte was open at the top of the right face-off circle and fired a quick wrist shot. Grubauer calmly gloved that like he was playing catch in his backyard.
Fleury then took an interference penalty. Grubauer made five saves from in close on the Wild’s power play, including a pad one of Joel Eriksoon Ek. Ek’s rebound slid past the unknowing Grubauer, off the bottom of the left post and out with 9:30 to play, and Seattle’s lead survived.
Second, by design
The Kraken went on a shooting spree in the second period, firing 17 shots at Minnesota goaltender Cam Talbot. Seattle had 30 shots to Minnesota’s 15 through two periods, and finished with 38. The 30 shots through two was three shots more than what the Kraken were averaging for an entire game coming into Thursday.
Fleury had all six of his shots for the game in the first two periods. That set a season high for any Kraken player for an entire game.
The game-turning second began with Seattle on a 4-minute power play, thanks to a high-sticking double minor on Minnesota Marcus Foligno.
Seattle had four shots on that man advantage, plus a wrister from the slot by winger Jordan Eberle that somehow went wide of the net from close in. That left the Kraken 3 for 22 (13.6%) on the power play this season. They were 24th in the 32-team NHL on the power play entering Thursday.
So the game stayed tied at 1. For a couple minutes.
Then Fleury scored his second goal of the night and season at 7:33 of Seattle’s runaway second. The defenseman collected the rebound of his own shot from the deep left into the side of the net then glided free with the puck behind the net for the wrap-around put-back past Talbot.
The Washington State Ferry MV Hyak’s horn went off. Nirvana’s “Lithium,” the Kraken’s goal song, blared again. And Fleury was ahead of Minnesota 2-1.
Seattle repeatedly pinned the Wild in their own end in that second 20 minutes that so wowed Grubauer. Hakstol emphasizes to the Kraken aggressive forechecking and pressure in the second period, when line shifts are longer because play is at the opposite end of each team’s benches that period. When the puck stays in a defense’s own zone for extended periods, the defending team’s players can’t as easily get off the ice for line changes.
Some of Minnesota’s shifts in the second period Thursday approached 2 minutes. That’s how the Kraken earned a 17-5 edge in shots and decisively turned the game.
With Grubauer’s excellence, that period was all Seattle needed to win.
“I thought the response was really good,” Hakstol said. “We had a bad start, had to get going. ...
“We did it against a very good team. That’s a hard-nosed, team, a competitive team. There’s no easy ice with them.”
There is lucky ice with them, though.
Fluery’s first goal came in the opening period, off a fortuitous bounce of the puck for Seattle.
Minnesota had taken a 1-0 lead 6 minutes in on a one-timer goal point-blank by Ryan Hartman and controlled most of the first period. Then with 7 minutes left in the period Seattle’s Jaden Schwartz whistled a wild shot wide left of the goal from in close. The shot was so hard it caromed off the back boards all the way out to the blue line, to the surprised Fleury. He became the latest Kraken defenseman to score a goal when he fired the gift puck from the point past Talbot to tie the game at 1.
“I got a lucky bounce,” Fleury said.
The Wild were playing without top scorer Mats Zuccarello. The 34-year-old winger was in the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol.
Well-distributed
Fleury became the 19th Kraken player to record a point (a goal or an assist) this season. Only St. Louis (20), Minnesota (19) and Pittsburgh had more point-getters entering Thursday.
Four of the seven Kraken defensemen to play this season have scored. Only Adam Larsson, Jamie Oleksiak and Jeremy Lauzon have not. Each of them have two assists through eight games.
Hakstol said that is key to consistent scoring, and winning, having defensemen who are scoring and assisting.
“If you have a three-man attack (with just three forwards offensively minded)...you are going to have a tough time offensively,” the coach said.
No free looks
The black curtains were up behind the north goal for the first time in three home games, blocking what had been views through the giant windows from street level for those outside to watch the Kraken on the big screen with the lower bowl and ice below street level.
Fans were three deep across the windows watch the first home game in Kraken history from outside on Saturday night, Seattle’s home-opener against the Canucks.
A Kraken spokesperson told The News Tribune the curtains were closed Thursday night for “light testing and calibrating,” part of ongoing testing of the new arena. The team said it hopes to keep them open for future games, and loves when fans outside can see in.
Happy Birthday Lenny Wilkens
Earlier Wednesday, NBA Hall of Famer and Sonics legend Lenny Wikens had a street re-named for him outside Climate Pledge Arena.
Wednesday night, Wilken was inside the new palace. Kraken fans sang “Happy Birthday” during a break in the first period.
Wilkens is 84 years young.
Avril, Frei in the house
The Kraken continued to host Seattle sports celebrities at their third home game.
Former Seahawks Super Bowl-winning and Pro Bowl defensive end Cliff Avril watched rinkside wearing a blue Kraken home sweater with his old 56 jersey number and a wide smile.
Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei was exhorting the fans to roar at the start of the second period while in a Kraken 24 sweater, to match his soccer number.
This story was originally published October 28, 2021 at 9:39 PM with the headline "Haydn Fluery’s first two goals, Phillipp Grubauer’s brilliance leads Kraken past Wild 4-1."
