Kraken Game Facts
Tonight: Seattle Kraken at Nashville Predators
Where: Bridgestone Arena
When: 5 pm pacific, with actual puck drop 10 to 20 minutes later.
TV/Radio: ROOT Sports NW / FM 93.3
Key Factors:
Starting goaltenders: Phillip Grubauer for Seattle, Juuse Saros for Nashville
The Kraken paid for their mistakes on Tuesday night against the opportunistic defending Stanley Cup champions in Vegas in a 4-1 loss. As we came to expect last season, Seattle’s even strength game was mostly in sync while their power play fell short.
Toss in a five minute major to the Golden Knights and the Kraken went 0-fer on the man advantage for a total of 11 minutes.
On the flip side the Kraken penalty kill was perfect, killling off all four Vegas power plays. Seattle lost a key penalty killer and their best face-off man when Pierre-Edouard Bellemare left the game in the 2nd-period after blocking a shot with his left hand. He played a grand total of 7:30 of ice time while the Kraken as a team lost 60% of the face-offs.
That’s an ugly number.
Fortunately for Seattle, Bellemare will be back, centering the 4th line between Tye Kartye, who gets his first ever regular season NHL game, and Kailer Yamamoto.
The bad news; Brandon Tanev is the missing man after taking a hit to the head in the 3rd period, the one that earned Golden Knight Brett Howden a match penalty. Howden was suspended two games by the NHL for the hit.
Here’s Seattle’s projected line-up:
Jared McCann – Matty Beniers – Jordan Eberle
Jaden Schwartz – Alex Wennberg – Andre Burakovsky
Eeli Tolvanen – Yanni Gourde – Oliver Bjorkstrand
Tye Kartye – Pierre-Edouard Bellemare – Kailer Yamamoto
Vince Dunn – Adam Larsson
Brian Dumoulin – Justin Schultz
Jamie Oleksiak – Will Borgen
Philipp Grubauer
Joey Daccord
The group will likely get a bit of extra time in the dressing room before the game as it’s opening night in Nashville and there will be a bit of pomp and circumstance.
Special Teams
We discussed the Kraken numbers.
The Predators went 1-for-4 on the man advantage in Tampa two nights ago while giving up two power play goals on five Lightning chances.
Last season Nashville was 27th out of 32 NHL teams on the power play with a 17.6% success rate, while their excellent penalty kill should be even better with the addition of center Ryan O’Reilly in the off-season. In 2022-’23 it finished sixth best at 82.6%.
On paper, both penalty kills should have the advantage over the power plays, so one goal on special teams could make a big difference. The Predators went 0-for-7 last season against the Kraken.
Coming In:
Kraken: 0-and-1, coming off a 4-1 loss at Vegas on Tuesday night in the season opener.
Predators: 0-and-1, coming off a 5-3 defeat at Tampa Bay on Tuesday against the Lightning.
Seattle is 4-1-and-1 all-time against Nashville.
Recent Kraken:
— Kraken Fall Behind And Fall Short On Comeback
— Game On! Key’s To Kraken Season With Limited New Look
