The Need to Knows
The Time: 7pm PST
The Place: Climate Pledge Arena in Beautiful Seattle, WA
Place to Watch: KHN, KONG, Amazon Prime (if Local), CHSN, TVAS
Place to Listen: KJR 93.3-FM
An Opposing Viewpoint: Second City Hockey
Game Preview
Things have been weird for the Kraken. They’ve taken their last two foes to overtime but ultimately failed to beat them, and because of the quirks of the Pacific Division, are in a unique position to potentially hop into second place for a day if they can get two points.
Their opponent? The Blackhawks. While they aren’t exactly a great team, are definitely putting forward a marked improvement over where they’ve been over the past couple of years. Bedard may finally be coming into his own, and players like Frank Nazar, Teuvo Teravainen, and Andre Burakovsky (Welcome back, Andre!) are responding to the youthful energy of the team with some strong early starts.
Analytically? Well, they’re still warming up to the idea of being a team that controls play. They’ve begun to pull themselves off the mat and are now merely in the bottom 5 of possession across their 12 games played, and have gotten some pretty solid play out of Spencer Knight. They will still cede plenty of ice to their opponent, but they will happily score now instead of letting Conor do everything. They are “fun”, which is the best thing a team like them can be. Maybe not good, but fun.
Of course, the Kraken actually have to take some dangerous shots to take advantage of that fact. Last game was an absolute slog at 5v5, and Seattle should count itself very lucky that they didn’t get their doors blown off them against NY. They need to score some actual goals here and make the ‘Hawks work for their possessions, because they still don’t love doing that and that fact should be taken advantage of all the time.
Otherwise? A good game awaits!
LET’S GO KRAKEN, LET’S GO SQUIDS