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A tough night for the Seattle Kraken special teams fell short of rallying out of a three-goal, first period deficit, and the Vancouver Canucks defeated the Kraken, 5-2 before 18,261 fans on Tuesday at Rogers Arena.
Sheldon Dries, J.T. Miller, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson each scored in the first period for the Canucks, who were eliminated from playoff contention after the Dallas Stars and Vegas Golden Knights matchup went to overtime.
“First sleepy start we’ve had in a while,” said head coach Dave Hakstol.
“Most times you really struggle to recover from a period like that, give our guy’s credit to recover.”
Jordan Eberle’s power play goal and Morgan Geekie’s seventh of the season, scored 4:13 apart in the second period got the Kraken back to within a goal, despite a pair of two-man advantages the Canucks killed early in the period.
Matty Beniers, who had an assist on Eberle’s 20th goal of the season, was stopped from point blank range by Spencer Martin on a tape-to-tape pass from Daniel Sprong, which could have tied the game in the third period.
Luke Schenn and Quinn Hughes then scored twice in a span of 2:49 to put the game away.
“They’re a good team and they’ve been playing well as of late,” said forward Jared McCann. “We’re just going to try to move on past this one and focus on the next game.”
Joey Daccord, called up on Tuesday from the American Hockey League with Charlotte, made 22 saves in the loss.
The Kraken dropped all three games of the road trip and will aim to rebound into the win column in a quick turnaround, with a Wednesday night matchup set for 7pm PT against the Los Angeles Kings (93.3 KJR / Kraken Audio Network) at Climate Pledge Arena.