Final Buzzer: Kraken Drop Season Finale

All eyes of the NHL world descended upon Winnipeg on Sunday for a matinee affair, the only game on the schedule and the finale of the 2021-22 season.

And like it has in so many games since the Kraken's opening night, Seattle played its usual one-goal, tightly contested way.
The Jets caught fire for three goals in a little more than four minutes during the third period to snatch the game away from the Kraken. Blake Wheeler and Dominic Toninato scored before Kyle Connor tallied his 47th goal of the season to send the Kraken to a 4-3 loss at Canada Life Centre in Winnipeg.
The finale was another one-goal loss, same as the opener Oct. 12 in Vegas (also a 4-3 loss) and a defining characteristic of this inaugural season.
The Kraken finished the season with a 27-49-6 record. This team did not play as poorly as its record indicates.
"It's not the way you want to end the season. It's going to weigh on you going into next year, but at the same time I feel like it was a learning experience for the entire organization. We have a bright future and it's just going to go up from here," leading scorer Jared McCann said post-game.

A season with 50-plus total losses could spell despair, but not for this franchise. When the final horn sounded on Sunday, the overwhelming sense surrounding this Seattle club is one of hope and great optimism.
This team has forged an identity as a resilient, hard-to-play-against squad. More than half of the Kraken's 55 losses this season were by one goal when opponents' empty-net scores are subtracted. The margin between winning and losing in the NHL is razor thin.
The final stretch of games this season offered plenty of reminders for Kraken fans of what this club is building, and how close it might be to getting over the hump. That includes contributors in this season finale in Winnipeg.
"Our play since the trade deadline and a couple weeks before has been really sound, really solid. We've been real competitive each and every game, doesn't really matter who the opponent is this time of year," coach Dave Hakstol said.
The 32nd NHL team's power play came into the game ranked 29th in the league. Matty Beniers continues to show his potential to transform the unit for years to come.
His tenacity earned a puck in the corner. Beniers won a puck battle, emerged from the boards and found McCann with a cross-ice pass. McCann collected and waited just a tick before dishing to Alex Wennberg in front of the net.
Wennberg needed only to tap the puck past Jets goalie Eric Comrie, finishing a slick tic-tac-toe play to tie the game 1-1 about six minutes into the second period. It was Wennberg's 11th goal of the season.

Beniers has nine points in his first 10 games with the Kraken, lighting a spark in this Seattle squad over the final stretch of the season. Four of those points came on the power play.
"It's not the points that stand out for me, it's his overall play," Hakstol said of Beniers after the game. "When you look at his 200-foot game and his play in all different situations, whether it's his poise on the power play, his intelligence defensively without the puck, all of those areas have been impressive."
With the primary assist, McCann became the Kraken's representative in the 50-point club (27 goals, 23 assists).
Wennberg's power-play goal set the stage for the Kraken to take over this game, and they did so at least temporarily, later in the period in the span of less than a minute.
First, Daniel Sprong unleashed his signature wrist shot for a 2-1 lead at 12:24 of the period. Derrick Pouliot crossed the blue line and sent the puck to Sprong, who had slipped past the defense and streaked down the middle all alone. Sprong slotted back into the lineup for a scratched Jordan Eberle.
Dennis Cholowski also assisted on the play. The Kraken acquired Sprong at the trade deadline, Pouliot off waivers at that time and called up Cholowski from American Hockey League-affiliate Charlotte Checkers last week.
Sprong's goal was his 14th of the season, tying a career high for the Dutch forward.

Wennberg earned his second point of the game when he sent an impressive cross-ice pass to a net-front Riley Sheahan, who scored the first Kraken goal in the team's first exhibition game in late September. Sheahan buried Seattle's third and final goal of the game 55 seconds later after Sprong's tally. Joonas Donskoi picked up his 20th assist on the goal. Then, the Jets took over in the third period.
Chris Driedger put together a stout performance in the season finale, stopping 23 shots in his hometown a game after earning his first shutout with the Kraken. Driedger finished his season with a 9-13-0 record in his 23 starts with a 2.93 goals against average and .901 save percentage.
Adam Larsson played all 82 games, one of 15 NHL defensemen to do so this season.
The rest of NHL regular-season action concluded Friday, but this lone matchup was rescheduled just prior to the playoffs. The original April 13 date was postponed due to a blizzard in Manitoba. It was the only NHL game postponement not caused by COVID-19 this season.
The Jets defeated the Kraken twice previously, on Dec. 9 and Feb. 17.
For a game that might seem meaningless as a finale for two non-playoff teams, the result did have consequences in the standings. The loss kept the Kraken at the third-lowest points total (60). That gives Seattle 11.5 percent odds to earn the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 NHL Draft. The draft lottery is slated for May 10.
The future is bright.
"There's a lot of pieces of our game that we've really liked over the last stretch," Hakstol said.
"Those are the pieces that we'll take. Now, we start to dig in and re-evaluate things and that process starts tomorrow."