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Jared McCann scored in his 400th career game but the Vancouver Canucks staged a rally of four unanswered goals to surge past the Seattle Kraken, 5-2 at Rogers Arena on Monday night.
The Kraken had to use a busy Chris Driedger to stay within striking distance for much of the night, who made a season high 41 saves as the Kraken were outshot, 46-27 to finish a three game road trip.
Coming up empty handed with losses in seven of the last nine games, their focus has to immediately shift onto the next quickly: they will turn around and host the New York Islanders on Tuesday night, 7pm (950 KJR / Kraken Audio Network) at Climate Pledge Arena.
The Kraken led 2-1 after the first period, responding to Tyler Motte’s goal 11 seconds in with back-to-back tallies from a Jared McCann two-on-one at 3:12 and a late shorthanded breakaway from Mark Giordano with 5:34 left.
“Second period, they won the races, the puck battles and because of that, they had majority of zone time,” said Kraken head coach Dave Hakstol. “When that happens in second period, you spend energy playing defense and not much left going other direction.”
“It starts with our play in the puck in the second period.”
Travis Hamonic’s seeing-eye shot from the right boards tied the game at 3:45 of the second period and Vasily Podkolzin put the Canucks ahead for good with 3:19 left.
Bo Horvat buried a power play goal 35 seconds into the third period and seconds after Jared McCann misfired an extra attacker chance, Tanner Pearson sealed the game with an empty netter with 1:32 left.
“Anytime you give up that many quality shots and quality chances, you don’t have much of a chance,” said Giordano.
“We usually break the puck out cleaner. We knew (the Canucks) would be desperate coming off a couple of bad losses, and we could tell they would be a desperate team.”
Vancouver improved to 3-0 in the head-to-head series with the Kraken getting one more chance to get a win in the head-to-head series, Apr. 26 in Vancouver.