Kraken road trip ends with ‘pretty embarrassing’ blowout loss to Blues

Joey Daccord received zero help to commemorate the 100th appearance in goal in his Kraken career.

Instead, Daccord’s memory of hitting the century mark with Seattle was skating off the ice midway through the second period after an onslaught of St. Louis goals where the Kraken goalie was left exposed by his teammates.

The Kraken were thumped 7-2 by the Blues on Tuesday night in the finale of their three-game road trip following the break for the 4 Nations Face-Off. After opening the road swing with a solid victory in Florida over the defending champion Panthers, the Kraken (25-31-4) followed up with a 4-1 loss in Tampa Bay where they played well for 40 minutes before fading late playing on a back-to-back.

But the performance against the Blues was one-sided from the outset and left Daccord unfairly under duress for most of the 29 minutes, 45 seconds he was on the ice before being relieved for only the third time in his 92 starts with the Kraken.

And it left his teammates seemingly apologizing for their effort after the loss.

“Take your pick, pretty much everything: (defensive) zone coverage, couldn’t get a forecheck established, made it easy on them. Just looked like we didn’t have our legs tonight and it’s just overall pretty embarrassing,” forward Jared McCann said.

Daccord was tagged with five goals allowed on 21 shots, yet defensive breakdowns were at the root of four of the goals that got past the Kraken goalie. Only Jordan Kyrou’s opening goal 8:04 into the first period seemed to be a chance Daccord might want back. Still, it was a snipper goal from Kyrou toe-dragging the puck around Jamie Oleksiak and beating Daccord over the glove side.

Oskar Sundqvist made it 2-0 eight seconds into a power play later in the first period, but it was the second 20 minutes where it quickly got out of hand.

Robert Thomas, Zach Bolduc and Cam Fowler scored in a span of 4½ minutes that finally led to Kraken coach Dan Bylsma deciding to give Daccord the rest of the night off. Thomas scored on an odd-man rush after the Kraken were unable to dump the puck into St. Louis’ zone before making a change. Bolduc’s goal came after Brandon Tanev painfully blocked two shots and could barely get to the bench, but created another odd-man rush for the Blues.

Fowler provided the final capper to Daccord’s night with a shot from the blue line through a screen of bodies in front of the net.

“I don’t think Joey had a ton of chance in there,” Kraken coach Dan Bylsma said.

The decision to pull Daccord created the opportunity for Nikke Kokko to make his debut and become just the sixth different goalie to take the ice in franchise history.

Bylsma said sometimes making a debut be a surprise can sometimes help a young player and felt Kokko played well considering the circumstances.

“It was a time Kokko didn’t have to think about a start, didn’t have to think about it, just got tossed in there,” Bylsma said. “His first save was a great one and I thought it was a young goalie doing a good job in there.”

Kokko was a second-round pick by the Kraken in 2022 and this season at Coachella Valley was 15-4-1, with a 2.44 goals-against average and a .909 save percentage. The most impressive aspect was Kokko posting those numbers still 2½ weeks away from his 21st birthday.

Kokko debut came two days after Ales Stezka made the first start of his career on Sunday in Tampa Bay after being called up from Coachella Valley.

Depending on how the next week transpires with the trade deadline approaching on March 7, the Kraken could see some more of their young players currently with the Firebirds making their way to Seattle for the final month of the regular season.

Kokko ended up saving four of six shots in his debut. Jake Neighbours scored on the second shot Kokko faced, and Bolduc added his second of the game early in the third period when he was left unmarked in front of the net and tipped a shot from the blue line.

“He battled for us and obviously made some big saves,” McCann said.

The seven goals were the second-most allowed this season by the Kraken behind the eight scored by San Jose in November.

The only redeeming moments for the Kraken were a pair of former Stanley Cup winners with the Blues scoring third-period goals against their previous team. Vince Dunn kept Seattle from being shutout with his 11th goal of the season and Jaden Schwartz scored his team-leading 19th goal with 7:51 remaining.

But a respectable third period was little redemption for a miserable first 40 minutes.

“You can’t turn away from the fact that this game was all about compete in battle, and they had it and we didn’t,” Bylsma said.