Kraken facing different dynamic in season of new challenges, expectations

DETROIT -- Jordan Eberle scored with five seconds left in overtime Tuesday, giving the Seattle Kraken a 5-4 win against the Detroit Red Wings at Little Caesars Arena.

The forward fell to his knees as he tapped the puck into the net, then spun 180 degrees. At first, he raised his stick. Then, staring at the ceiling, he slowly lowered his arms and slumped.

The feeling was joy mixed with relief.

"After the goal," he said with a laugh, "I was just like, 'Thank God.'"

Red Wings forward Lucas Raymond hit a goal post seconds earlier. Kraken forward Jared McCann tied the game 4-4 with a power-play goal and goalie Joey Daccord pulled with 1:22 left in regulation. And that was after Seattle blew a 3-1 lead by allowing three power-play goals in the third period.

And all of that was after Seattle started the season 1-4-1.

"It was huge to get one there, and obviously hopefully this will spark us a bit," Eberle said. "We've got to continue to stick with it, get some confidence. I think that's a big thing with this group."

You might not think the Kraken would need confidence.

Last season, they went 46-28-8, had 100 points and earned the first wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference.

They upset the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche in seven games in the Western Conference First Round, then took the Dallas Stars to seven games in the second round.

They scored tons of goals. In the regular season, they tied the New Jersey Devils for fourth in goals per game (3.52). In the playoffs, they ranked sixth (3.14).

But it's a new season with a new roster and new challenges.

Seattle parted with defenseman Carson Soucy and forwards Morgan Geekie, Ryan Donato and Daniel Sprong, while adding defenseman Brian Dumoulin and forwards Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and Kailer Yamamoto in free agency. Forward Tye Kartye, who debuted in the playoffs last season, made the team out of training camp.

Forward Brandon Tanev sustained a lower-body injury in the opener, a 4-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on Oct. 10, and is supposed to be out 4-6 weeks. Forward Andre Burakovsky sustained an upper-body injury in a 4-1 loss to the New York Rangers on Saturday and is out a projected 6-8 weeks.

In their first six games, the Kraken scored one goal or less five times. The outlier was a 7-4 win against the Carolina Hurricanes on Oct. 19.

"We hadn't really scored a lot," said Eberle, whose goal was his first of the season. "I think guys start gripping the sticks. You start overthinking it. You start working too hard, overworking. Things don't go your way when you start to do that, so hopefully we can settle into a rhythm, settle into the kind of game that we want to play, and hopefully we'll go from there."

There is a different dynamic now.

The Kraken finished 30th in the 32-team NHL in their inaugural season of 2021-22. No one on the outside expected much of them last season. They were still considered an expansion team.

Now expectations are higher inside and outside the organization. Seattle won't sneak up on anyone.

The Kraken can't afford complacency.

"We didn't get things easy last year," defenseman Vince Dunn said before the game Tuesday. "We had to work for everything, and I think maybe that's where maybe our minds are slipping a little bit this season, is understanding that we worked so hard as a whole to get to where we did last year. We need to get back to that foundation. Those characteristics that we showed last year haven't been there for complete games this year. We just need to get back to that."

The win against the Red Wings wasn't a complete game. The Kraken can't be happy about blowing a 3-1 lead by allowing three straight power-play goals.

But they can be happy about fighting back to defeat Detroit, which was riding a five-game winning streak and has been hot offensively. The Red Wings lead the NHL in goals (34) and rank second in power-play percentage (41.4 percent) behind the Devils (44.0 percent).

Forward Jaden Schwartz, who scored two goals, said the Kraken had good energy, sacrificed for each another and did a lot of little things right.

"Wins aren't coming easy right now, so got to dig in and play a full 60," Schwartz said. "I don't know if we've been consistent enough. Sometimes there's been breaks in games where we haven't responded to adversity well enough, I thought, getting back on it, and today we did a better job of bending a little bit but getting back after it."

Seattle plays at Carolina on Thursday (7 p.m. ET; ROOT-NW, BSSO).

"New year," McCann said. "Obviously new players. You're starting fresh again. That's the mindset you've got to have going into it. We need to play with a little bit more swagger, like we had last year toward the end of the year. We played better against the best teams. We need to find that again."