The Kraken finished this six-city road trip at 1-3-2 and while the four points secured of a possible 12 didn’t exactly bury them playoff-wise, it did invite multiple teams to pull up alongside them and beyond in chasing down Nashville. Winnipeg leapfrogged them by a point after winning in overtime Tuesday and is now even with the Los Angeles Kings a point behind the Predators while San Jose is tied with the Kraken.
All that said, the gap between the Kraken and the playoffs is still rather small. But they need to start winning more games.
Edmonton hadn’t won four straight games all season until putting a pair of first period pucks behind Philipp Grubauer for all the offense needed. A Jake Wallman shot was going wide of the net until it struck a ducking Max Jones and deflected in, then a blueline mistake resulted in a 2-on-1 break the other way with Kasperi Kapanen beating Grubauer with a shot to the far post.
Connor McDavid cliched it with his 43rd goal of the season on an empty net the final three minutes of regulation with Grubauer pulled for an extra attacker.
Ingram stopped 27 shots, 21 of them the final two periods, to record his ninth career shutout on his 28th birthday.
The Kraken switched things up after the ineffective opening period, bumping Jared McCann back to the top trio along alongside longtime linemates Jordan Eberle and Beniers. Eberle got the best looks of the group, missing point blank from the slot in the middle period and then hitting the post from 21 feet out early in the third.
“We definitely had our looks,” Beniers said of the reunited trio. “We definitely had a lot of chances in and around the net. Jared (McCann) had a few. Ebs (Eberle) hit a post and missed the net. We had our looks. But you’ve just got to score.”
Beniers said his team has little choice at this stage but to keep generating those looks and hope for better outcomes. He liked what he saw from the second period onward.
“I think (it was) just a little bit more desperation in our game,” he said. “Getting more pucks to the bottom. We had success there. We didn’t do that enough in the first and we started getting to that. Started getting more shots on net. More chaos. And you know, we had our opportunities.”
McCann likewise felt those chances were there and his team just failed to bury them.
“It’s easy to say that we’re just not scoring and that’s why we’re losing,” he said. “I feel like we’re doing a lot of good other things. We’re creating good offense and playing good defensively. But we’re just not finding the back of the net.”