POST-RAW | Kris Knoblauch 12.04.25

POST-RAW | Kris Knoblauch 12.04.25

Hi Chris. Uh a tough a couple tough losses against Dallas and Colorado, but they come out and score nine goals tonight. Can you talk about what you saw from your team? Uh right from the start, I thought we were ready to play. Um I thought there was a lot of jump. Um all lines contributing. We get off to the good start. Um with uh three goals, we’re up three-0. Um unfortunately, we take a penalty. they score a power play goal and you know didn’t look so good after that when they made it 3-2. Uh we escaped going into the second period. Um you know they almost tied up at the end of the end of the first but uh we were able to get the next goal and get some momentum and um you know offensively obviously we felt really good and we’ve been talking a lot about how we can drive a little more offense and how we can score the last few days. Um, yeah, nice see the guys being rewarded with some offense because um I think overall they’ve been last couple weeks they’ve been playing hard and the defensive game has been getting a lot better. And Connor said uh after the game that he was coming out with motivated to shoot more. Uh can you tell us what you saw from him tonight and how it changes this team when he’s going like that? Yeah, he was just driven and um with the mentality of shooting the puck and not passing up opportunities and you saw I believe his first shot or first shift he had a shot. Um and even on the power play um you know he was shooting the puck on the power play with the goal there. Um, you know, I think he was disappointed with um probably your your guys’s u coverage on his offensive uh ability or not shooting the puck and maybe stirred it up. Um, and I know if I’ve got a problem with any other players or something, I’ll just address it with you guys. You guys can you guys can write about it. But, um, yeah, I think he had the mentality of shooting the puck and getting more pucks than that. Uh Connor Clattenburg, how’s he doing? Um he’s doing pretty well. I know he was getting checked. He had some stitches above his eye, but I think everything’s good. Okay. Um do you feel like the sample size is is pretty good now? Like go back to the Tampa game. You guys have put together five out of six games where you played pretty well. Uh do you feel like you got something some traction here that you’ve been looking for for a while? We’re getting getting there. We’re getting there. I don’t think this is quite our team yet. I think we still have things to work on. I think we got um like I don’t think Seattle was at their best tonight. I know they had a long break and I think we took advantage of that, but um I’m starting to see a lot more things from our team that I like. Um and it all starts with our compete and attention to detail in the defensive zone. And if you don’t compete and if you don’t um defend well, you can’t win regularly. You can win once in a while. You can catch a team off guard and um you know, sometimes you can win a shootout game, but unless you can consistently play good defensive hockey, um you’re not going to have much success. And I see especially at the end of the road trip when we were in Tampa Bay and Florida, we were a lot more dialed into playing better defensive hockey. and that’s what we’re going to need to do. Matt Seavoy was telling us that, you know, even as as far back as junior, it was like having to be patient waiting for the offense to come and that’s kind of been the story this year. What have you sort of seen from him? What he’s given you when the numbers haven’t been coming and what do you think this night can do? anytime a player scores, it just takes a lot of weight off your shoulders and you can just you play better, but you just you play better because you’re um just thinking more clearly. You’re not putting pressure on yourself to make the next play. Um hopefully this, you know, starts something, you know, overall I think I’ve been happy with his game. He’s been a good 200 foot player and we’ve trusted him on the penalty kill. We’ve had him on the second unit power play. He’s been up and down the lineup. um not up and down the lineup because his play was inconsistent just because we felt that he can play different roles and uh tonight I thought he was a good fit for Leon Pods. Thought that line was good. Um hopefully he can um yeah just takes a lot of weight off his shoulder and he can start scoring some more goals. Chris has put Kohl’s in playing with Leon. Is it osmosis now that he’s starting to shoot the puck from those angles that Leon scores from? Yeah, you know, Pods keeps on doing that. That might not be Leon’s spot anymore. Um, yeah, I know that’s something he practiced, you know, taking those shots. I know last year we love Pods. Uh, one fault that I would have about his game was just that he didn’t have a shot mentality. He has a good shot, but he was just hesitant to fire fire it away. and um you know coming to camp this year he definitely wanted to score goals and uh he’s I don’t know what his shot stats are but I I feel like he’s always in a position that he wants to fire that puck at the net. Um and now he’s starting to get to the net and get available so he can get those um you know those tip goals, those rebounds, stuff like that that that Heyman’s been um doing so often. and he scored one a few games before that. Flipping one up around the goalie’s mask that Connor would normally score. Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s Connor’s goal now. And he might be taking that one over too. Jeez, those guys are Let’s not get too carried away here. Uh you mentioned about Connor us getting on Connor a little bit, but he had one goal seemingly for quite some time and now he’s got like about 14. I guess the goal scorer is backing him. Yeah. one is, you know, wanting to shoot the puck, but also you have to um circumstances also like does the goalie play well? Did he get robbed? Uh who’s he out there with? His linemates not playing well, is our team not driving play that we’re in the offensive zone. Um but also credit to him. He’s um he’s wanting to make a difference. He wants to be um make a play or create a goal every time he hits the ice. So, you know, he’s playing um really good hockey now.

Kris addresses the media following a 9-4 win over the kraken on Thursday at Rogers Place.