ST. LOUIS – There really are no more easy games for Morgan Geekie and his Kraken teammates despite their latest opponent’s continued dismantling of its championship roster from four years ago.
That was Kraken coach Dave Hakstol’s message heading into this needed 5-3 road win by his team and the on-ice comportment of the feisty St. Louis Blues proved him correct throughout Tuesday’s affair. But Geekie and company also showed up for work, with the fourth-line centerman collecting a pair of goals, including the go-ahead marker in the second period that finally put the Kraken up for good.
Jamie Oleksiak would add some insurance midway through the final frame on a shot from the right point through traffic that eluded Blues goalie Jordan Binnington. Pavel Buchnevich drew the Blues back within a goal on a one-timer off a pass out front with under six minutes to go, but Brandon Tanev notched an empty-net marker in the final seconds to clinch it.
Jared McCann also scored for a Kraken squad that entered having dropped three in a row, including their last two against a couple of the NHL’s best teams in Boston and Toronto. Martin Jones shook off a couple of soft-looking second-period goals and made some key stops afterward for his first victory since Jan. 25.
It would have been easy to assume the Blues represented a tonic for all that ailed the inconsistent Kraken, with St. Louis having recently dealt away core championship pieces from 2019 in Vladimir Tarasenko, Ryan O’Reilly and Ivan Barbashev before Friday’s trade deadline.
But the Blues wouldn’t go away quietly in front of their Enterprise Center fans on a night the Kraken kept taking and retaking the lead. To the Kraken’s credit, they didn’t go away either and secured two points badly needed on multiple fronts: the biggest being an expanded six-point gap with the Calgary Flames for the final Western Conference playoff spot.
Not only that, but the win also vaulted the Kraken out of a wild-card position and back into a third-place tie with the Edmonton Oilers in the Pacific Division. The Kraken are technically ahead of the Oilers given they hold a game in-hand and they’re also just two points behind second-place Los Angeles with two games in-hand in a division race that had become too crowded for their liking of late.
In many ways, the Kraken negated any breathing room for so-called easier games by virtue of their inconsistency since the All-Star break. They’d been badly outplayed by lowly San Jose in another supposed shoo-in contest last week that quickly morphed into the three-game losing streak once the vastly superior Bruins and Maple Leafs came to town.
With just three wins the entire month before Tuesday, Hakstol had preached the need to revert to basics and the Kraken did that from the outset, with Geekie opening the scoring on a nice snap shot that beat Binnington from the left faceoff circle at the 9:30 mark.
But the Kraken, after carrying play for much of the opening frame, found themselves tied early in the second as Robert Thomas unleashed a rather harmless looking snapper from the left circle that eluded Jones for a short-handed goal.
McCann helped regain the lead at the tail end of the same power play, slapping home his 27th goal of the season – tying his team-leading output from the prior campaign. The goal came just 1:46 after Thomas tied it, meaning the Kraken appeared to be in good shape up 2-1.
But the Blues tied it again not long after as Brandon Saad took a stretch pass and unfurled a shot from atop the left circle that eluded Jones from 45 feet away with nobody screening him. Those are the types of goals that often deflate teams but the Kraken, to their credit, didn’t stop pushing.
And it would be Geekie getting a pivotal go-ahead goal with 6:28 remaining in the frame, digging for a rebound off a Daniel Sprong shot and poking it by Binnington from the net front. Sprong, inserted back in the lineup by Hakstol after being a healthy scratch in consecutive games, collected his second assist of the night on the play – doubling his points output for the entire month.