Mandatory Credit: Walter Tychnowicz-Imagn Images

Burn the black jerseys. They’re clearly cursed.

I have to have the highlights here because that’s how this is done. I don’t recommend reliving this.

Game Notes

You don’t need to know who was the TOI leader in this one.

The Late Hakstol and entirety of the Dan Bylsma era, short as it was, was probably best described on-ice as “mushy”. They barely controlled play, their defense was often “involved” but not effective, and their offense, if it manifested itself at all, was rarely enough of a threat to counterbalance those issues. Lane Lambert’s system has mitigated quite a bit of those issues, and that’s to be commended…but they aren’t all gone yet. There are still some shifts where the defense gets caught puck-watching. There are still individual player teething issues that can cause problems during shifts. Teams with a lot of speed can still overwhelm the D-corps. Goalies can still have off-nights. Tonight, all of it came to a head in the most disastrous clusterf#!k imaginable through the first twenty minutes, and it just spiraled out from there. They were caught constantly off-guard at just about everything the Oilers were doing if they weren’t getting blown off the puck by their speed and body position, and they paid for it dearly as they were absolutely hapless on the backcheck against what felt like a fully powered Edmonton offense.

And you know the worst part of it was? For as rough a start they had, the Kraken did fight back. They got to within a goal after 20 minutes. They spent pretty much the rest of the contest in control of every relevant shot metric that is currently tracked by independent analyists. There was reason to believe a good speech and a resetting of expectations could’ve gotten them back into it easy…and then it just did not matter. They kept stringing together decent shifts and then would end up backchecking again and looking like ECHLers all over again. That cannot happen again. They’ve started doing the thing you’re supposed to and still losing. stop that.

4 of 5 Edmonton Power Plays scored, and they made up the difference on a Kraken power play with a short-handed tally. The Kraken’s Penalty Kill is now dead last in the NHL and showed no signs of improvement.

The goalies did not rise to the occasion of their defense being largely overwhelmed whenever the Oilers entered their zone. To belabor the point of their performance feels like overkill, but rest assured; they both played their hits when it came to having a bad night. Neither of them finished the game with a SV% above .800.

We gotta scrap third sweaters for this team if they aren’t directly tied to the Metropolitans, man. There’s something deeply wrong with them that’s causing this team to play so far below what they’re capable of when they wear them. I know Joey and Grubi paid a lot for those pads but they clearly aren’t working.

Was there anything good about this game?

Believe it or not? Yeah! Kinda!

Eeli Tolvanen got the Kraken on the board with an excellent follow up on a rebound!

Freddy Gaudreau showed the kind of stuff he should be showing more of throughout the next few months as he stripped the puck off of Leon Draisaitl. Good shift for him.

The shift that got Jared McCann his goal was genuinely quite strong from all parties involved; stopped a zone exit, turned it into another chance, followed up on the rebound. It was genuinely quite impressive.

Jani Nyman continued the theme of following up on rebound chances!

In general the Kraken were really good at making Calvin Pickard sweat with second chance opportunities! They should have been doing that more!

All of that was just drowned out by the constant flood of bad vibes coming from the Oilers and also the Kraken’s defensive effort.

The Charts, via NaturalStatTrick.com

The Kraken get a chance to rinse the awful taste of this game out of their mouths by playing the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday. That game begins at 7pm PST.

Keep Calm, and Post Zoidberg When We Win.