What’s been clear the past two games is the Kraken have found a higher gear. As they had against Tampa Bay two nights prior, the Kraken played an engaged brand of hockey where they battled for every puck and immediately responded to any physical liberties taken by their opponent.
Never was that more evident than when hulking 6-foot-7, 231-pound Sabres defenseman Logan Stanley leveled Shane Wright in the neutral zone late in the opening period. Stanley appeared to catch Wright with a forearm to the head, though the forward was low to begin with and the hit was ruled clean.
McCann immediately went after the much bigger Stanley, as did Vince Dunn, causing a scrum to erupt before any punches were thrown. Then, only a couple of minutes into the second period, 6-foot-7, 255-pound Kraken defenseman Jamie Oleksiak challenged Stanley to a fight near center ice.
It was Oleksiak’s first bout in 2 ½ seasons, dating back to November 2023. The duo locked arms in a tense stalemate for several moments until Oleksiak, who’d taken an initial punch, got a hand free, landed two blows – knocking Stanley’s helmet off – and then threw him to the ice.
Wright, for his part, left the game and did not return.
Lambert said the referee explained the no-penalty call was because Wright “was so low” that he exposed his head area and Stanley wasn’t considered to have targeted it. And though Lambert liked how his team chose to “step up to the plate” when things got physical, he added: “You know, we can initiate that. We don’t have to just wait for some team to start dishing it out. We need to initiate.”
Grubauer did all he could to preserve the Kraken lead before the tying goals, making a terrific second period stop on Mattias Samuelsson on a bang-bang play right at the net front. The puck then came back to Tage Thompson for a one-timed blast that Grubauer snared. Later, Grubauer made a terrific kick save on a puck redirected at the net front by Jason Zucker.
Grubauer also had help behind him, with Ryan McLeod hitting the crossbar on a last second shot right at first period’s end. Then, Sam Carrick hit the right post on a second period shot from 10 feet out that ricocheted through the goal mouth and struck the opposite post while staying out.
McMann scored less than a minute later to put the Kraken up two. But the Sabres would not be denied.
Kraken forward Kakko was among those irked at not picking up the extra point.
“It’s a good thing we got a point,” Kakko said. “But we’ve got to find a way to win these kinds of games.”