As mentioned, that lack of add-on is as much responsible for blowing the multi-goal leads like we saw Thursday as anything else. When you’re struggling to score, frustration can set in given the already present confidence issues. Kraken alternate captain Matty Beniers addressed this after a 3-0 loss in Edmonton on Tuesday, stating his team, which played the Oilers and Buffalo before that very evenly chances-wise, cannot let it get to them when good offensive process doesn’t begat results.
“You’ve just got to bear down sometimes,” Beniers said of the team’s mental approach. “Everyone wants to score, but you’ve got to hit the net. You’ve got to do those little things and get around the net, be there for the rebound. Second chance pucks. Tonight, it didn’t go in and that’s frustrating. But you’ve just got to keep going.”
Easier said than done, clearly.
Berkly Catton discussed this back in January when the 19-year-old finally scored his first NHL goal to end a 27-game drought that was the longest in his hockey memory.
“When you’re in a drought like that, you start to think the puck’s not going to go in when you shoot it,” Catton said. “You think it’s going to hit something while it’s on its way in and stay out.”
It can work that way for entire teams as well. When you aren’t scoring, it starts to feel hopeless when the world’s best goalies make professional stops. Small wonder the Kraken keep chiding themselves all season for passing up quality shot attempts in favor of lower percentage passes.
We saw it again Thursday night when Kaapo Kakko had a partial breakaway chance but dropped the puck 20 feet behind him in a pass to seemingly no one rather than shooting it. Perhaps when your entire team is struggling to score, you start believing the puck won’t go in when you shoot.
The Kraken looked to have solved that confidence portion initially against Utah netminder Karel Vejmelka, now a 34-game-winner, when Jordan Eberle beat him just 41 seconds in on the type of rebound chance Beniers had discussed.
For Eberle, it was only his second goal in a 16-game span dating back a month. Both Eberle personally and the team itself seemed off-to-the-races. Catton was robbed by a Vejmelka glove save at the goalmouth, but Bobby McMann added a second Kraken goal minutes later by sticking with the play after an initial whiffed shot and putting a spin-move backhander into the net.