Final Buzzer: Kraken Drop OT Heartbreaker

On a night with puck luck in short supply for the Kraken, Winnipeg backup goalie David Rittich won the goalie duel over the stellar-yet-again, Martin Jones, in a 3-2 overtime heartbreaker for Kraken players and faithful alike.
With the Kraken holding a 2-1 lead from the mid-third period, the visiting Jets scored on a Blake Wheeler rebound shot with 5.2 seconds remaining to tie the game and squander another outstanding night of work from Jones. Winnipeg star Mark Scheifele scored the game-winner during the first minute of 3-on-3 overtime, notching his second goal of the night and 10th of the season. The Kraken had to settle for a single standings point and an 8-5-3 record.
After hitting the crossbar on a shorthanded breakaway attempt earlier in this thriller - Kraken players clanged iron three times on the night - fan favorite Brandon Tanev scored a tiebreaker goal mid-third period to thundering noise. But it wasn't enough.

"Boy, we wasted a good performance there [from Jones]," said cool, collected, but disappointed Kraken coach Dave Hakstol. "His performance was good enough to get us two points."

Penalty-palooza Staggers Kraken

The third period didn't start the way any Kraken fan would prefer. Winnipeg embarked on its fifth power play of the night and the fourth killed off by Kraken penalty killers. The Jets received a sixth two-minute man advantage late in the third period, but couldn't convert.
Then, with 26 seconds left, Carson Soucy was whistled off for a roughing penalty, drawn by Jets forward Pierre-Luc Dubois. Along with fans watching and booing the officials at Climate Pledge Arena, Kraken broadcaster Eddie Olczyk was equally baffled about what prompted Soucy to take umbrage with Dubois.
Hakstol told a post-game media scrum he was confused about why the whistle was blown to stop play since Seattle had not touched the puck, which is typically what prompts officials to call the penalty. Hakstol said he thought it meant both Soucy and Dubois were going off with no man-advantage situation for what was already 6-on-5 play with a WPG empty net. We all know what happened from there with Blake Wheeler (primary of a second-period melee described below) rapping in a rebound to spoil the Seattle night.
While some media types and no doubt fans too were speculating about two or three second-period penalty calls that might not be seen the same by other NHL referees, Hakstol said his focus was the third-period penalties and, make no mistake, he didn't approve of Soucy's actions to go to the penalty box in the final half-minute of regulation.
"I'm more focused on the third period, right?" he said when asked about the eight SEA penalties called with seven power plays as a result. "We had two stick penalties [in the final period then on the last one, however you want to unpack it, like I said, [we will] go back and look at it again. It's an undisciplined penalty on our part.
"That's the piece we can fix. The rest of it, I am a little confused at how that whole sequence happened and why the play was blown down when it was if both guys weren't going to the box. But that's not something that I control. My focus is with 30 seconds to go. We just need to close that game out. We don't need to settle any scores at that point in time."

Melee and Missed Opportunity

On the first night the Kraken wore their special Reverse Retro jerseys, an old-school melee broke out shortly after Jets leading scorer Mark Schefiele tied this game in mid-second period at one goal apiece on a fortunate ricochet off the back boards.
There were several fights and fists flying that you would need to watch a replay to identify the various combatants and who got the best of whom. Even the referees required more than a few minutes to sort it out. The result was a four-minute 5-on-4 advantage for Seattle with two Jets in the penalty box (Winnipeg forward Blake Wheeler was the biggest offender, tagged with a double-minor for roughing) and Will Borgen in the Kraken pen for a matching roughing penalty.
The Kraken couldn't solve WPG backup goalie David Rittich during the four minutes, though Jared McCann's laser shot from the left point beat Rittich but hit the post instead of the net. Then Wheeler, just out of the box, almost made things even more frustrating with a mini-break on Martin Jones, who made a big stop on the puck and the Jets' momentum.
Winnipeg applied pressure from there for the rest of the middle frame. Jones made several more big stops on close-range shots to keep it 1-1 after 40 minutes. Winnipeg attempted 45 shots toward Jones' net in the first two periods and finished with 28 saves.