The Chicago Blackhawks were eliminated from playoff contention with a 3-1 road loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The Seattle Kraken, who will play host to the Blackhawks on Saturday, might not be far behind.<\/p>\n
The Kraken (32-31-11, 75 points) barely are hanging on in the Western Conference\u2019s postseason chase, four points behind the three teams \u2014 the San Jose Sharks, Nashville Predators and Los Angeles Kings \u2014 that currently are tied for the second and final wild-card berth. Seattle also is a point behind both the Winnipeg Jets and the St. Louis Blues, meaning it would have to pass five teams in its final eight regular-season games.<\/p>\n
The Kraken sustained a potentially devastating defeat Thursday against the visiting Utah Mammoth. After taking a two-goal lead in the first period, Seattle surrendered six unanswered goals in a 6-2 loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s disappointing at this point of the season where we\u2019re at. It\u2019s frustrating,\u201d said Kraken captain Jordan Eberle, who scored his team-leading 24th goal of the season. \u201cYou\u2019re trying to fight for your lives, and you\u2019re getting beat and you\u2019re getting run out of your own rink. It\u2019s just disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bobby McCann also scored for Seattle, his eighth goal in 10 games since being acquired from the Toronto Maple Leafs at the March 6 NHL trade deadline.<\/p>\n
After Utah tied it at 2-2 in the second period, the Kraken appeared to regain the lead on a tip-in by Jacob Melanson, but Utah coach Andre Tourigny challenged the call and a video review determined Melanson had made contact with Mammoth goaltender Karel Vejmelka in the crease, causing the goal to be disallowed.<\/p>\n
It was all Utah the rest of the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, we\u2019re hurting ourselves and the runway is running out,\u201d said Kraken coach Lane Lambert, referring to giveaways that led to goals, a pair of four-minute double minors for high-sticking and a penalty-killing unit that allowed three tallies.<\/p>\n
The Blackhawks (27-35-14, 68 points) have lost five games in a row (0-4-1).<\/p>\n
Nick Lardis scored Chicago\u2019s lone goal on Thursday. Blackhawks goaltender Spencer Knight stopped 32 of the 33 shots he faced, though he had to miss nearly five minutes in the second period while dealing with an equipment issue. The Oilers scored once on backup Arvid Soderblom while Knight was out.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrade A\u2019s wise, we had some really good looks,\u201d Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill said. \u201cGuys alone, eyeball to eyeball with the goalie, and we don\u2019t score. So I wouldn\u2019t say we didn\u2019t have opportunities, I would say we need to shoot more for sure. They had a bigger volume of chances, some of that comes from getting pucks around the net more than we did. So I don\u2019t think it was our best night from an execution standpoint, just simple passes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lardis left the game with four minutes remaining after getting hit by a slap shot from teammate Teuvo Teravainen. Blashill said the team would have to wait and see if the forward would be available Saturday in Seattle.<\/p>\n
This will be the third and final regular-season meeting between the teams this regular season. Seattle won the first two, 3-1 at home on Nov. 3 as Joey Daccord made 29 saves, and 3-2 on Nov. 20 in Chicago as Jaden Schwartz scored the last of three unanswered goals in the third period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chicago Blackhawks were eliminated from playoff contention with a 3-1 road loss to the Edmonton Oilers on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[5,4188,4,2686,234,5318],"class_list":{"0":"post-542806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-kraken","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-kraken","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-seattle","12":"tag-seattle-kraken","13":"tag-seattlekraken"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116354466853720304","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}