First thing’s first.
“[To] stop taking penalties would help a lot,” defenseman Adam Larsson said Monday morning.
It’s very early, but while half of the Seattle Kraken special teams is off to a hot start — the power play scored in each of the first four games — the Kraken have only killed off penalties a little over half the time.
The penalty kill made it through the first period unscathed Monday against the Carolina Hurricanes. Try as the first PK unit might, Larsson and his teammates couldn’t get that necessary clear until the end of a long and chaotic shift.
Defenseman Carson Soucy sent it around the boards and out of the zone as soon as he and the second unit hopped on.
Jordan Eberle whacked at the Hurricanes’ Andrei Svechnikov with Seattle goaltender Philipp Grubauer down and out in the middle period, earning a call, then headed right back to the penalty box 27 seconds after emerging. The Kraken couldn’t kill the latter penalty.
Carolina scored again 10 seconds into another man advantage. Make that a 7-for-16 start, with multiple power-play goals allowed in three of four games. Three of the seven goals given up by the PK came in the first 10 seconds of the penalty.
Another example came in Seattle’s home opener. With the Kraken still reeling from Keegan Kolesar’s goal 12 seconds in Saturday against the Vegas Golden Knights, Alex Wennberg took a high-sticking penalty at 2:02 of the first period. Vegas scored again and the Kraken were in for a long night.
“Obviously we have to improve our PK, but if we take less penalties, it gives all the guys better rhythm in the game,” said Larsson, who spent just shy of three minutes on the kill Saturday.
“There’s so many skilled players in this league right now that pretty much every PP … if you take that many penalties, they’re eventually going to score.”
Still down 2-0 Saturday during the second period and growing frustrated, the Kraken lost the initial faceoff of a Vegas power play. Jamie Oleksiak disrupted Mark Stone’s initial shot attempt in the crease, but Vegas teammate Reilly Smith was behind him, waiting to score eight seconds into the man advantage.
“Structurally, we didn’t play it the right way,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said.
His team actually won the faceoff on an even quicker conversion in the previous game in Los Angeles. Morgan Geekie won the faceoff cleanly back to Larsson, who tried to send it around the boards to Oleksiak. The puck took an odd skip toward Martin Jones in the Kraken net, watched closely by eventual Kings goal scorer Alex Iafallo. It all went down in four seconds.
“It really puts the emphasis on how important those clears are when you have opportunities, especially off that opening draw,” Hakstol said.
According to statmuse.com, the Kraken were toward the bottom of the league in penalties taken per game last season with an average of 3.41 through 82 games.
Get that number back and shore up the fail-safe and the Seattle special teams can call it a promising start, no asterisk or “but.”
They’ still implementing new ideas, Soucy said.
“The mistakes right now — almost everything leads to a goal,” Soucy said. “I think that’ll change throughout the season.
“They’re pretty big mistakes right now, but once we get comfortable with some new personnel out there, I think it’s going to come.”