“I thought we did good things in that game,” McLellan said. “Our power play was real good. I thought once we established playing our game, we got our forecheck going and created a lot of chances off the attack that way. We stayed in the game, which was real important… We had to come from behind, so we’re staying in games and finding ways to come back. Those are positive things that we got to keep going.”
Ranked sixth in the Western Conference’s Pacific Division, the Kraken are winless in their last four games and most recently lost to the Edmonton Oilers by a 9-4 score at Climate Pledge Arena on Thursday.
This season, Seattle is led offensively by Jaden Schwartz (eight goals, seven assists), captain Jordan Eberle (eight goals, seven assists) and Matty Beniers (three goals, 12 assists), all of whom have 15 points apiece. In net, Joey Daccord is 7-6-4 with a 2.92 goals-against average and .894 save percentage while Philipp Grubauer is 4-4-0 with a 2.63 GAA to go along with a .895 SV%.
“They’re a real strong checking team,” McLellan said about the Kraken. “I’ve talked about each team having a number – they understand what their number is and what they need to do to keep it at that. They’re committed to it. They’ve been getting some good goaltending, so I don’t expect the game to play out any different than what it did in Detroit– a tight-checking, tight game beginning to end.”