Seattle Kraken fall to Flames in final preseason home game
Afterward, the Seattle Kraken were mostly optimistic about their performance.
If you only saw the score — a 4-1 preseason loss to the Calgary Flames — it might have been hard to understand why. But the Kraken started strong and finished with a 24-13 shot advantage, including a 19-9 advantage heading into the third.
Goalie Chris Driedger recognized that Saturday wasn’t his best game. “Not a lot of action,” he said, which can be difficult for a goaltender. Still, he said Seattle played an “incredible game” from the jump.
“(Calgary) just got a couple nice bounces,” he said, “and it got away from us a little bit. … I thought we did a great job tonight. I thought we were moving the puck well, offensively and defensively. I thought we were just a little snack-bitten tonight offensively.”
Seattle fell behind 3-0 midway through the second period in front of a sold-out crowd inside Kent’s accesso ShoWare Center. The Kraken dominated the first period, but Calgary’s Byron Froese scored the first of his two goals on a power play with 16 seconds left.
Froese added his second goal early in the second. Then, with 11:17 left in the second, Glenn Gawdin put the Flames up 3-0 with a short-handed goal.
“We didn’t start on time last night, we did tonight,” Hakstol said of Seattle’s strong first period. “We didn’t carry momentum all the way through. We had a couple soft patches and that cost us the second goal. … Overall, when I’m really evaluating things, I’m evaluating smaller pieces. I’m evaluating things we did well and really did not do well.”
Hakstol’s list of positives started with the number of offensive opportunities the Kraken generated. And despite Calgary’s short-handed goal, he was happy with the power play.
Seattle finally got on the board with 9:50 left in the second as defenseman Vince Dunn gave the Kraken a power-play goal.
“We had a lot of looks,” Dunn said. “We had a lot of shot on net. We just have to find a way not to let our mistakes creep into the back of the net.”
Calgary entered the second intermission with a 3-1 lead, extending the advantage to 4-1 on a Connor Mackey goal with 8:49 left in the third period. Hakstol said his message for Driedger after such an odd outing is simple: “Go to work.”
“It’s a tough night in terms of the amount of work that was coming his way,” Hakstol said. “There was a couple seeing-eye shots there, there’s one (shot) that’s a tip. … Those are all things, you got to fight to find those pucks. Those are all things that Chris does well.”
Saturday marked Seattle’s final preseason home game. The Kraken played all three games in arenas across the start — starting in Spokane on Sunday and ending with Kent on Saturday. Seattle will now wrap up the preseason at Vancouver on Tuesday before opening the regular season at Vegas on Oct. 12. The Kraken won’t play in Climate Pledge Arena until it hosts the Canucks on Oct. 23.
“I think we’re all just excited to get going and playing,” Dunn said. “There’s so much energy in the city and in the locker room. I think we’re just looking forward to that first game whether it’s at home or away.”
