The Sharks mustered just eight shots in the first two periods. Their third period (13 shots in the first 17 minutes) showed why the lowly outfit was 3-1-1 in their last five games going into Tuesday. The return of stalwart captain Logan Couture coincided with the SJS surge and they managed to get the “W’ without injured leading scorer Tomas Hertl.
Blackwood made 32 saves on the night and got a bit of puck luck when Jared McCann’s late third-period shot rang off the crossbar. San Jose added an empty-net goal in the final minute to douse any Kraken rally.
The Kraken proffered 13 shots on goal in the first period and limited the home squad to just three shots on Seattle starter Joey Daccord. San Jose didn’t manage any shots on goal for the first eleven-and-a-half minutes of the middle period, then logged two Grade-A chances among five shots in the final eight-plus minutes while the Kraken finished the middle stanza with another four high-danger chances.
‘Playoff Hunt’ is On...
Post-game, coach Dave Hakstol said his squad worked hard and just met up with an elite goaltender performance. He wasn’t of the mind the team needed to dwell on the lost opportunity of Tuesday’s road loss.
“We lost the hockey game, we're disappointed,” said Hakstol. “The fact is over the last 23 games we've dug ourselves out of a deep hole and we put ourselves in a spot where we come back [Feb. 10 in Philadelphia] and over the next 32 games we control our own destiny.
“Our guys worked hard tonight. We've worked extremely hard over the last couple of months, digging in and doing some good things to put ourselves in a position where we meet back on Feb. 8 to touch the ice for the first time before we play on the 10th. It's going to be a sprint to the finish from there. It's a 32-game playoff hunt.”
What He Has Done Lately
Sharks goalie Mackenzie Blackwood carried a sub-.900 save percentage into Tuesday’s divisional matchup. But a closer look reveals the former New Jersey goaltender (drafted 2015, second round, No. 42 overall) has righted whatever was going wrong. He has been in net for three wins and an overtime loss in his last five games with a save-percentage string of .935, .912., .960, and .943.
Blackwood’s night put a damper on the Kraken’s intentions to push into a Western Conference wild-card spot. It started when he stopped all 13 Seattle shots in the opening period, including three Grade-A chances as per Natural Stat Trick. Brandon Tanev had a solo break, arguably the best opportunity of the first period and All-Star-Weekend-bound Oliver Bjorkstrand just missed from a deep goal-line angle (a shooting location favored by Edmonton superstar Leon Draisaitl). Bjorkstrand has another tantalizing chance in the second period that if converted would have been another tic-tac-goal from the Yanni Gourde line.
Knowing Their Lines
With two Kraken forward lines rolling and producing, Dave Hakstol and his coaching staff tweaked their lines for this finale game before NHL All-Star festivities and an ensuing bye week. The Yanni Gourde line with Eeli Tolvanen and Oliver Bjorkstrand is in their second calendar year of playing together with the two wings both at 13 goals for this season. The much more recent combo of Jared McCann centering Jordan Eberle and Tomas Tatar is contributing clutch scoring and revisits three-season chemistry between Kraken originals McCann and Eberle.
When the puck dropped Tuesday, Jaden Schwartz had moved from playing alongside Alex Wennberg and Andre Burakovsky to join Matty Beniers and rookie Tye Kartye. The aforementioned Tanev flipped places with Schwartz. As is habit of many NHL coaches, looking at the line switches still keeps pairs together, such as Beniers and Kartye, Wennberg and Burakovsky (the latter loves playing with the former) and even Wennberg and Tanev know their moves from their penalty-kill partnership.
