In a season that has rendered feelings of indifference at times for fans, the Seattle Kraken’s 3-2 loss to the Calgary Flames on Sunday invoked some big emotions. Anger, confusion, excitement, hope, and disappointment—they were all there, wrapped up in a loss that, had it gone the other way, could have reinvigorated the last semblance of belief that the team could re-enter the playoff conversation.
Instead, Seattle went the other direction, dropping to a whopping 10 points behind the Flames for the last wild-card spot in the Western Conference.
Here are Three Takeaways from a crushing 3-2 Kraken loss to the Flames.
Takeaway #1: Everything went against Seattle in the first period
After digesting that chaotic and lengthy first period, I’m left with one lingering feeling: disdain toward the non-goalie-interference ruling on Yegor Sharangovich’s goal that made it 2-0. But that decision also put Seattle down 5-on-3 for two full minutes, leading to Jonathan Huberdeau’s goal—the eventual game-winner.
So, now that I’m thinking about it again as I’m writing this, I’m getting mad about all of it all over again, as I imagine a lot of Kraken fans are still feeling on Monday morning.
Let’s walk through the sequence of events. Jaden Schwartz scored a power-play goal at 11:03 of the first period that should have made it 1-0, but Calgary challenged for goalie interference. On the review, Schwartz’s skates were in the blue paint when the contact occurred between him and Dan Vladar’s stick, and Vladar did seem to be impeded on the play. So, I understood the no-goal decision, although Schwartz sounded perplexed by it after the game.
“You never know with these calls, right?” Schwartz said. “I don’t know if it’s people from Toronto, or… Both of the refs told me that it was probably a goal, but it was out of their hands, and people from Toronto called it, so not sure what they’re watching. I think it was a bad call. He put his stick in my skates, and I was then— I went out of the crease. Just a tough break.”
Jaden Schwartz appeared to score a power-play goal, but the #Flames successfully challenged for goalie interference.
Schwartz’s skate got tangled with Vladar’s stick in the blue paint.
Still 0-0. pic.twitter.com/Veu7ZodoqH
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) February 3, 2025
So that was perceived major injustice No. 1 in the game.
Morgan Frost scored his first goal as a Flame three minutes later at 14:03. I had no major complaints about that one, other than poor defending, as Frost dangled between Oliver Bjorkstrand, Vince Dunn, and Adam Larsson, and rifled it over Joey Daccord’s shoulder. It was basically a 1-on-4 rush, as Sharangovich drifted out to the side on the play, so a tighter gap by Dunn and Larsson should have quashed that opportunity.
Now Morgan Frost DOES score his first with the #Flames, and it’s a beauty.
1-0. pic.twitter.com/GaJlZwmKOC
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) February 3, 2025
Injustice No. 2 is where the proverbial s*** hit the fan.
Mikael Backlund sprung Sharangovich for a mini breakaway, which caused Jamie Oleksiak to slash Sharangovich and jar the puck off his stick. At first glance, it appeared that Sharangovich losing the puck simply fooled Joey Daccord, and the off-speed pitch trickled through him to make it 2-0 at 16:43. But Dan Bylsma submitted a goalie interference challenge of his own, and replay showed that Sharangovich did make contact with Daccord, causing his stick to pop up off the ice and allow the puck to slide under him.
Uh oh.
2-0, as Sharangovich loses the puck because of a slash by Oleksiak.
For some reason, the penalty is also standing up, which makes no sense, because it happened before the goal. Bizarre call. #SeaKraken pic.twitter.com/mZLNmsCCJj
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) February 3, 2025
But, because we can’t have nice things, the officials announced no goalie interference, good goal. Since Oleksiak had slashed Sharangovich, and Jared McCann was already in the penalty box for jumping Brayden Pachal (who flattened Andre Burakovsky and then turtled in a very Martin Pospisil fashion), McCann’s penalty ended with the goal, but Oleksiak’s started. PLUS, the Kraken got penalized for a failed challenge, which I still say is a ridiculous rule, but that’s a conversation for another day.
The official ruling indicated that it was incidental contact between Sharangovich and Daccord, and that they were both lunging for a loose puck. Maybe you could say it’s incidental, but if you do, then you also have to say that Schwartz’s contact with Vladar on his negated goal was incidental.
“I think from going up 1-0 to down 3-0 with goalie interference calls, the power play, the 5-on-3 that ensued… I think a lot of events in that period were not how we wanted them to go,” Bylsma said.
The coach also said the refs explained that Sharangovich’s goal stood because it was a “continuation play,” whatever that means.
As the game wore on, you could tell the Kraken were getting more and more agitated with the officials. Oliver Bjorkstrand got his stick ripped out of his hands but didn’t get a call and barked at the refs on his way to the bench. Brandon Montour got hauled down and went out of his way to scream at them two separate times during one shift. Even Kaapo Kakko remarked that he was upset he hadn’t gotten a penalty call on Jake Bean, who blatantly tripped him at center ice seconds before Kakko ended up scoring to get the Kraken on the board.
It was a tough night for the officials, and it cost Seattle dearly.
Takeaway #2: Kraken tried to recover
The Kraken had an impressive push in the second period and got robbed on several occasions by Vladar, who always looks like Dominik Hasek when he faces Seattle (which probably says more about the Kraken than it does about Dan Vladar, but I digress).
They made a real game out of it, though, with Kakko breaking through at 14:31 of the second period to put them back within arm’s reach heading to the third. And they did finally get a break from the officials that led to Brandon Tanev’s goal at 5:41 of the third period.
After being screamed at all night, the linesman had an itchy trigger finger and whistled a bizarre icing call on which the puck barely crossed the goal line when McCann touched it. Shane Wright won the ensuing face-off, McCann shot from the top of the circle, and the puck deflected off Tanev and in.
TURBO TIME! 🚨 #SeaKraken finally get some good fortune with a heinous icing call in their favor. Then off a face-off win by Shane Wright, Tanev gets a good bounce.
3-2 #Flames pic.twitter.com/V7CoOLr9U8
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) February 3, 2025
Seattle battled all the way to the final horn, and on a feverish rush with time ticking down, forced Vladar to make one more big stop on McCann to close out the game.
Had that gone in, it likely would have been ruled no goal for a kicking motion. The fans would have loved that.
Takeaway #3: Another crushing loss
There have been a lot of stinging losses for the Kraken this season, and that one may just take the cake. If there was still a path toward getting back into the conversation, it revolved around winning the two matchups with Calgary this week and snagging one of the two tougher matchups against Detroit and Toronto. With Step 1 of that plan a failure, this Kraken loss to the Flames confirmed what we already knew—that Seattle will be selling at the NHL Trade Deadline and playing months of meaningless hockey down the stretch.