Kraken blow a multi-goal lead again as they fall to Hurricanes in OT

RALEIGH, N.C. — A physics-defying play by Kraken fourth-liner Devin Shore to not only keep a long stretch pass to him onside but then cap the play with a highlight goal seemed to signal his team might once again be both lucky and good a second straight game.

That had been the case against Detroit a couple of days prior and Thursday night’s quick start with two first-period goals by Oliver Bjorkstrand and then Shore against a stumbling Carolina Hurricanes team looked promising for a Kraken squad seeking consecutive victories for the first time. Alas, some of that luck dried up along with the team’s goal scoring in a 3-2 overtime loss in which the Kraken blew their long-held lead late in regulation and then the game in the dying stages of the extra session.

Jesperi Kotkaniemi scored the tying marker with 4:24 to go after Jordan Eberle fell and turned the puck over in Carolina’s end, and then Martin Necas won it with just 9.7 seconds remaining in overtime, beating Joey Daccord with a blistering wrist shot from 39 feet out.

“When you have a lead in the third, you want to take it to them and not sit back,” said Shore, whose team went more than eight minutes without a shot to open that final frame while protecting a one-goal lead. “At the same time, it’s easier said than done. It is a bit of human nature to kind of be in defense mode. But yeah, we’ve got to do a better job of continuing to play north.”

Not that the Kraken, now 2-4-2, went into a defensive shell after Shore’s eye-catching deke move — something out of the playbook of his former Edmonton Oilers’ teammate Connor McDavid — on goalie Frederik Andersen made it 2-0 with just over five minutes left in the first. Though the Hurricanes, a high-shot-volume team, forced goalie Daccord to make a franchise-record 43 saves, it was the Kraken enjoying arguably the more dangerous chances throughout the opening two frames despite being outshot 31-15.

Shore knocking down a long Bjorkstrand pass just inside the Carolina blue line without going offside might have been even more impressive than his dazzling moves on the ensuing goal. Shore admitted afterward that skill had little to do with how the timing worked out in his favor on a play the Hurricanes decided not to challenge with a video review.

“I think it was a little lucky in terms of the offside,” he said. “You know it’s close.”

But the Kraken could have used more luck from there. Instead, defenseman Brian Dumoulin fell behind the end line and turned the puck over, leading to the first Necas goal in the final two minutes of the period to cut the Kraken’s lead to 2-1 by intermission.

Then, in a second period in which they were outshot 16-7, the Kraken seemed to enjoy the best chances — one of them seeing Matty Beniers blast a slap shot past Andersen from 20 feet out only to have it ring off the post.

“I mean, we had four Grade-A (chances),” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said of the middle period. “I don’t think we gave up that many.”

Indeed, the Kraken had numerous chances to extend their lead against a Carolina team that’s looked porous defensively since the season started. They’d entered the night losers of three straight, four of five and having surrendered a league-high 33 goals.

Bjorkstrand then made it 34 goals just under 12 minutes in, carrying a puck over the Carolina blue line, faking out veteran defender Brent Burns and then firing a puck top-shelf on Andersen from the high slot.

“We played hard a full 60-plus minutes in this one,” Hakstol said. “The second period, we had some great chances to extend the lead but we were unable to do it. They’re a team that you know they’re going to push in the third period. And they played exactly the way we thought they would.”

Carolina fired 24 more pucks on the Kraken net the final period and in overtime before Necas finally converted the winner.

The Kraken, despite needing the eight-plus minutes to register their first shot of that final frame, nonetheless had a couple of excellent scoring chances the period’s latter half — most notably by Justin Schultz in close with Jaden Schwartz wreaking havoc at the net front. Then, in the game’s waning minutes, Eberle and company pinched forward to try again to notch an insurance marker.

But Eberle fell down, Brady Skjei led an odd-man rush back up the ice and the play culminated with Necas dropping the puck to a wide open Kotkaniemi for a wrist shot goal from 18 feet away in the high slot.

“Obviously, we made a big mistake on the tying goal,” Hakstol said. “Our guys got a little too big there and were trying to do too much offensively.”

Ultimately, though, unlike the prior win over Detroit when they were the ones scoring a tying marker late in regulation and a winner in the dying seconds of overtime, the Kraken after Shore’s barely-onside breakaway goal couldn’t seem to catch a break in this one when they really needed it.

Bjorkstrand liked his team’s effort overall, but would have preferred them being a tad more efficient at converting chances and exiting their own end after taking the early two-goal lead.

“I think they just kept coming,” he said of the Hurricanes. “And obviously, we couldn’t seem to get out of our zone fast enough. It seemed like we were kind of fighting the puck a little bit at certain times.”

And fighting luck a bit at others.