Joey Daccord chased early, Kraken cap brutal homestand with loss to Sabres

Had they bottled up the first 24 seconds of Monday night’s game and gone home, it would have been a perfect outing for a Kraken team in desperate need of one.

Instead, the roof began caving in on Kraken goalie Joey Daccord just 25 seconds later as the Buffalo Sabres countered an opening minute goal by Jordan Eberle that had finally given his team an early jump missing far too often of late. A handful of shots later, the Kraken were down two goals and counting in a 6-2 loss that capped one of the worst and costliest prolonged homestands in franchise history.

Goals by Tage Thompson, Jeff Skinner — who’d eventually notch a hat trick — and Alex Tuch just 4:52 apart on Buffalo’s first four shots chased Daccord before the game’s six-minute mark. A couple of the shots were of top-quality, but all three were stoppable by an unscreened Daccord regardless of defensive mistakes made by the Kraken in not picking up the shooters.

Philipp Grubauer entered, kept the Sabres from scoring two more quick goals, then saw Matty Beniers knock home a power play rebound in the crease to get the Kraken back within one by the first intermission. But midway through the second period, goals 40 seconds apart by Owen Power and then Skinner with his second of the night, put the streaking Sabres comfortably ahead.

Skinner closed out the scoring in the final two minutes on a shot from the high slot through a partial screen, giving Buffalo its first ever victory over the Kraken franchise.

The Kraken had been 5-0-0 lifetime against the Sabres, but instead dropped their fifth straight game and finished the homestand a dismal 0-4-1 — reminiscent of their inaugural season when Climate Pledge Arena losses piled up fast and furious with seemingly no answers.

With the team’s recent play effectively eliminating them from serious playoff contention, the remaining month of the schedule will be about salvaging some optimism with which to enter the summer. The Kraken appeared to sidestep another serious loss when defenseman Jamie Oleksiak returned to action in the final period of Monday’s loss after taking a puck off his knee on an opening period blocked shot and being helped off the ice after writhing around in pain.

The team’s stunning collapse to a 28-27-12 record has come about so rapidly that there is still ample season to go in which things can get far worse.

In an effort to counter his team’s meager six-goal output the first four games of this homestand, coach Dave Hakstol made wholesale changes to his forward lines. He looked like a genius early on as newly-installed top-liner Eeli Tolvanen set up Eberle for a wrist shot goal just 24 seconds into the game.

The Kraken had managed just one goal before the third period of their prior four home losses, so Eberle’s goal was indeed a positive change. But after carrying his team through so much of the middle portion of the schedule, goalie Daccord picked an inopportune moment for arguably his worst start in three seasons with the Kraken.

The public address announcement of Eberle’s opening goal hadn’t even begun when Thompson streaked down the left wing and beat Daccord with a short-side snapper from 36 feet out. That was Buffalo’s first shot on net and the second one came three minutes later when Skinner went down the opposite wing and beat Daccord with a wrist shot from 34 feet away.

Hakstol kept Daccord in the game at that point and Daccord finally made a save six seconds later off the ensuing faceoff at center ice. But his night ended at the 5:41 mark when Tuch took a Thompson pass uncovered in the high slot and put a 32-foot wrister in the net.

The Kraken’s goal by Beniers that followed was somewhat fortunate after Sabres goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen lost sight of an incoming Tolvanen shot that was deflected before it reached the net. The puck sat untouched in the crease while Luukkonen searched for it and Beniers had no trouble waltzing over to tap it in to reach the 10-goal mark in what’s been a trying season for him.

But that 3-2 score would be as close as the Kraken would get the rest of the night.