Photo: Getty Images
The Seattle Kraken dropped their first pre-season defeat, 6-0 to the Edmonton Oilers at Rogers Place on Tuesday night, moving to 1-1 on the six-game schedule.
As pre-season typically dictates a “dress-rehearsal” approach with minimal emphasis on an everlasting win-loss total, the Kraken yielded a two-goal game to Brett Perlini, and a three-point game to reigning Hart Memorial Trophy (league MVP) and Art Ross Trophy (NHL’s leading scorer) winner Connor McDavid, logging a goal with two assists while helping the Oilers improve to 2-0. Mike Smith (18 saves) and Mikko Koskinen (16 saves) split time in net to share the shutout.
Notes:
-The Kraken won 52 percent of their face-offs, led by Riley Sheahan (13-of-23 for 57%), and Alexander True (7-of-10 for 70%).
-Vince Dunn, making his pre-season debut on the blueline, led the Kraken in time on ice (20:39), recording a shot on net with two hits and two blocked shots, and logged 4:01 of power play ice time.
-Ryker Evans, the second Kraken player off the board in the NHL Draft (second round), made his pre-season debut with 20:33 time on ice with two hits, two blocked shots, and a shot on net.
-Luke Henman, the first free agent signee in Kraken history, made his pre-season debut in 8:49 of ice time with two blocked shots, and one hit.
-Will Borgen led the Kraken with five hits, Marcus Nimelainen led Edmonton with six.
-Chris Driedger (39:58) and Joey Daccord (19:54) split time in net, with Daccord taking over the third period in a planned split with nine saves in his pre-season Kraken debut.
-Among the Kraken scratches: Mark Giordano, Adam Larsson, Jordan Eberle, Jared McCann, Jaden Schwartz, Alex Wennberg, Yanni Gourde (injured), Joonas Donskoi, and Philipp Grubauer.
- The Kraken debuted their road white jerseys, originally unveiled in July's expansion draft and among a reported NHL record-breaking jersey sales benchmark.
From the podium:
Vince Dunn, on what the team tries to work on during the course of a pre-season game:
“We’re not trying to work on anything different than when we were at the start of the game. The game gets away from us, if you want to say that. If you look at the last game against Vancouver, they were up and we came back. So, you’re never really out of it. First, it’s staying out of the penalty box. It’s about making the game easier on ourselves and making little plays. By doing that, the big things should take care of themselves.”
Morgan Geekie, biggest difference tonight with finding cohesion:
“(The Oilers) have a good line over there. We knew that coming in. We’re just trying to work on the details and everything like that. So, I think we figured some things out definitely as the game went on. I think we got better as the game progressed, so that’s all I can ask for right now.”
Geekie on the additional objectives as the game went along:
“The details. That’s the big thing for us. Anytime you can go out there against a lineup like that, you can iron some things out and figure it out as we go. Like I said earlier I think it’s a step in the right direction and we can keep going.”
Head coach Dave Hakstol on his takeaways from tonight:
“There’s pieces and parts of the game that are good. You also take away with how complete you have to play when you’re playing against good players and good teams. I liked the way we started the hockey game. The first period, we fell back on our heels after the first goal against. There were a lot of specialty teams throughout the rest of the first period. Second period, I think we regained our composure. I liked the start of that second period. The fourth goal against was our third or fourth poor line change of the period, it came back and got us. It knocked us off again balance rest of the game.”
Hakstol on the direction of the team after being together formally for less than a week:
“We keep building. We have another game tomorrow night. We’ll have a much different roster and a lot of the guys who played tonight will have the night off tomorrow. We go back and have a lot we can take out of this game to learn from, and we go back to work again tomorrow.”