Kraken start 2023 by ending three-game skid with victory over New York Islanders
Kraken forward Ryan Donato, in one of the few moments he paused for breath all night, was matter-of-fact in describing the things his team finally did right after too many outings spent getting them wrong.
Donato was all over the ice at seemingly pivotal moments of this 4-1 win over the New York Islanders, pounding away in the corners, setting up an opening goal from behind the net and then generating early momentum in a second period that salted things away. The overall performance by his team in Sunday’s final Climate Pledge Arena home game before the longest road trip of this season was markedly different from an embarrassing loss two nights earlier that exposed multiple bad habits encroaching the past month.
“The coaches obviously had their message for us and things we could do better, but a lot of it came from within as well,” Donato said after the Kraken snapped a three-game losing skid with only their fourth victory in the last dozen games. “A lot of our leaders stepped up. They also said things that they were going to do and they came out and played hard tonight. So, yeah. There was definitely a needed change for sure.”
Donato and Daniel Sprong did some hard work in behind the net before delivering the puck to the slot for defenseman Adam Larsson to open the scoring with a first period snapshot. But Donato was also involved in a key penalty kill early in the second period after onetime Seattle Thunderbirds star Mat Barzal had tied things late in an opening frame largely dominated by the home side.
Donato grabbed the puck while shorthanded, raced in alone and put a fantastic deke move on Islanders goaltender Ilya Sorokin, only to be denied at the last second. It was one of several spectacular saves by Sorokin to keep things close on a night the Kraken held a 35-19 margin in shots, but the opening minute chance kept the momentum going the way of Donato’s team until a power play goal minutes later by newcomer Eelie Tolvanen.
The one-timed slap shot goal by Tolvanen off a Vince Dunn feed put the Kraken ahead to stay and then, later on in the period, Oliver Bjorkstrand made it 3-1 by pouncing on the rebound of an initial Jamie Oleksiak shot. Brandon Tanev added an empty net goal late to help the Kraken improve to 19-12-4 with their first victory in 12 days — their longest calendar stretch without a win this season.
“Every team around the league plays the right way at this point,” Donato said. “If you take nights off, they’re going to embarrass you and that’s happened to us a couple of times. I think when we do play the right way, we notice that we win a lot.”
It doesn’t get any simpler than the Kraken accomplishing a New Year’s Day resolution of finishing their checks and marking their men from the opening puck drop. They’d given up three goals in the opening 3:55 of Friday night’s humiliating home loss to Edmonton, but it took the Islanders more than nine minutes to register a single shot on goaltender Martin Jones in this one.
“Our readiness, our mentality was just better and it was right tonight,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said afterward.
The Kraken were so overwhelming at times, they even fooled the goal horn operator, who mistakenly sounded a celebratory blast after Sorokin had foiled yet another close-in chance. Not to be outdone, the Climate Pledge scoreboard operators somehow allowed the clock to skip ahead about five minutes late in the third period with the Kraken ahead 3-1 and play still ongoing.
The clock jumped to where fewer than 30 seconds were showing and confused and amused fans even counted down the final 10 seconds before the game-over horn sounded. At that point, an announcement was made that the game was in fact not yet over.
Nonetheless, the Kraken held on for the win ahead of their upcoming seven-city road trip to Canada and the U.S. East Coast. And for Hakstol, who’d put his team through one of its hardest practices of the season on Saturday, the change was obvious and welcome.
“We got back to it tonight,” he said. “Really, that’s the bottom line. From the start, we were ready to check. We played with a lot of purpose. Our specialty teams did a good job. Our goaltender made a couple of big saves in the last five minutes when it counted. Those are all the little pieces, and everything mixed in between through the 60 minutes was a solid — not spectacular, just a solid — 60-minute performance.”
The Kraken had scored just two power play goals the entire month of December before Tolvanen’s goal got the new month started right. And the penalty kill, struggling of late, got a different look with Donato taking a spot and immediately leading a 2-on-1 rush with Yanni Gourde in the first period that Sorokin turned away.
Bjorkstrand’s goal with seven minutes to go in the middle frame was huge, given the cushion it provided on a night Sorokin had frustrated shooters throughout. It was only the second goal for Bjorkstrand in his last dozen games, and another example of the Kraken being rewarded for going to the net in search of workmanlike second opportunities.
“Obviously, they want us to compete more and have better awareness out there of how we need to reload and come back,” Bjorkstrand said of the pregame messaging from coaches. “It’s finding that balance between offense and defense and so we executed better tonight. The whole mentality of everybody was just better.”