The Kraken lost for the eighth time in 12 games coming out of the Winter Olympic break yet still found themselves holding the conference’s second wild card when the day began. One difference once the day’s game ended was the Predators now joining them on an equal points footing with the Kings, though the Kraken hold the tiebreaker on both based on regulation wins.
Those wins haven’t come easily since the break ended.
Gaudreau scored a tying goal with 80 seconds to go in the first period off a nifty net front feed by Chandler Stephenson, but it would be the only one scored by the Kraken all night against Nashville backup goalie Justus Annunen. The Kraken had learned before gametime that Predators starting netminder Juuse Saros was out with an upper body injury, which amounted to great news given he’d stonewalled them last week in stopping 43 of 45 shots.
But the Kraken couldn’t take full advantage. They managed just 13 shots combined over the final two periods as a Ryan O’Reilly go-ahead marker on the power play seven minutes into the middle frame stood up the rest of the way. Filip Forsberg sealed the deal in the final two minutes of regulation with an empty net marker with goalie Joey Daccord pulled for an extra attacker.
“They’ve got big defensemen first of all,” Gaudreau said of why the Kraken struggled to generate shots on net from in close. “They play a connected game. It felt like there wasn’t much room out there.”
Stephenson, himself a longstanding playoff veteran with Stanley Cup victories playing for Washington and Vegas, said it wasn’t a case of the Kraken failing to fully capitalize on Saros being out by jumping on his backup early. The Kraken did manage 13 first period shots and got the lone goal before intermission against backup Annunen.
“With a goalie, it doesn’t really matter who’s in,” he said. “It’s not like we were licking our chops in here. Every goalie is good. So, it’s just kind of a different game plan, I guess, on goalies and trying to attack different tendencies.”