Daccord Gets Second Straight Start, Delivers
The Kraken had earned five standings points going into Thursday’s inter-conference tilt and Joey Daccord was in net for all three games. Though Philipp Grubauer has three quality starts of his own, Dave Hakstol and goalie coach Steve Briere tabbed Daccord to keep this road trip humming.
Daccord stopped 30 of 31 shots on goal through the first 40 minutes, the only blemish a late-first period Carolina score that was prompted by SEA defenseman Brian Dumoulin losing his footing behind the goal line attempting to retrieve a puck that Daccord had banked off the end board. Carolina’s Martin Necas subsequently scored off a scrambled play.
Per Natural Stat Trick, Daccord faced nine Grade-A scoring chances in the first two periods (eight in the first 20 minutes), including a breakaway stop on Seth Jarvis. Daccord stymied Jarvis all night, saving all four shots on goal from the former Western Hockey League Portland Winterhawks star.
Another big stop was Carolina star Sebastian Aho attempting a breakaway during a second-period power play. Daccord poke-checked the puck away from an on-rushing Aho, who had beaten Kraken D-man Vince Dunn (late in his shift).
Daccord succeeded all night in not giving up rebound chances and was getting plenty of attaboy stick taps on his leg pads from the likes of stalwart D-men Jamie Oleksiak and Adam Larsson. Daccord finished with a franchise-record 42 saves.
Carolina is a shot-volume team and peppered Daccord with 13 more shots on goal in the third period. The Hurricanes finally broke through to tie matters at 2-2 with under five minutes remaining when Jesperi Kotkaniemi scored his fourth goal of the season on a gorgeous feed from the aforementioned Necas. Jordan Eberle had lost the puck in the offensive zone with linemates Tye Kartye and Matty Beniers even deeper in the Carolina end.
The resulting rush featured four Hurricanes bearing down on Daccord and two defensemen. Coach Dave Hakstol referred to it calmly as one of the few mistakes of the night.
“Our eyes got a little bit too big there, trying to do a little too much offensively,” said Hakstol. “We ended up with four guys probably below the tops of the circles and that's a tough play to track [back to the defensive zone].”
Bjorkstrand Opens the Scoring, Stays Hot
When Kraken GM Ron Francis acquired Oliver Bjorkstrand in a trade in the summer of 2022, he praised the Danish forward’s “creativity and hockey sense” while looking for Bjorkstrand to build off a career-best offensive season posted during his last year with the Columbus Blue Jackets.
As it turned out, Bjorkstrand’s production during the first half of 2022-23 was slowed by an off-season surgery. But Bjorkstrand scored 16 of his 20 goals on the season after the All-Star break, adding four more in the playoffs (including both goals in the Game 7 win against Colorado). By March, Francis paused one day outside his office to confer on how much he admired Bjorkstrand as a “really good hockey player.”
The slow-start thing? It’s looking rear-view mirror for Bjorkstrand, who scored the Kraken’s first goal Thursday and assisted on the second score to set up AHL call-up and NHL-tested veteran Devin Shore, all in the first 20 minutes. He now has six points (two goals, four assists) in the last four games and seven points on the season.
On the first goal, Bjorkstrand took a feed from Jaden Schwartz (his first assist of the year to go with his team-leading four goals). Bjorkstrand then worked one-on-one against veteran mountain-man, er, defenseman Brent Burns, first a deke, followed by putting on the brakes and quick-releasing a shot before Burns could reverse his own footwork. Michael Jordan, a Carolina guy, would have recognized the move and appreciated Bjorkstrand’s work.
