Kraken Game Facts
Sunday Evening: Montreal Canadiens at Seattle Kraken
Where: Climate Pledge Arena
When: 6 pm pacific
TV/Radio: Root Sports / FM 93.3
Key Factors:
Starting goalies: Cayden Primeau vs. Philipp Grubauer
The Kraken have lost seven games in a row, two of them in overtime, and are out of the Western Conference playoff picture, while the Canadiens have been out of the Eastern Conference playoff chase for most of the season.
Hockey Hall of Famer and current Habs head coach Martin St. Louis remains on leave for personal matters.
One savvy veteran and two young forwards for Montreal are out for the rest of the season due to injury. That would be Christian Dvorak, Kirby Dach and Joshua Roy.
Kraken D-man Vince Dunn has missed eight games, but skated with the club Sunday morning in a red no-contact sweater.
Here’s the projected line-up for Seattle for Sunday evening.
Eeli Tolvanen – Matty Beniers – Jordan Eberle
Jaden Schwartz – Jared McCann – Oliver Bjorkstrand
Brandon Tanev – Yanni Gourde (pictured) – Andre Burakovsky
Tomas Tatar – Kailer Yamamoto – Tye Kartye
Ryker Evans – Adam Larsson
Jamie Oleksiak – Will Borgen
Brian Dumoulin – Justin Schultz
Grubauer
Joey Daccord
Who’s Hot? And Not?
19-year-old winger Juraj Slafkovski, the 1st-overall pick in the 2022 NHL Draft, has a six-game point scoring streak that has seen him put up seven points.
Habs leading scorer (64 points) and 24-year-old captain Nick Suzuki (pictured) has cooled off a bit with three points over his last seven games.
Rookie D-man Evans scored his first NHL goal in Friday’s 2-1 loss at the Arizona Coyotes while seeing ample ice time paired with Adam Larsson. As a replacement for Dunn, Evans saw the third most ice time in the game among the Kraken blueliners for the 3rd straight match.
Seattle has scored a grand total of six goals over the course of its last five games.
Kraken forward Andre Burakovsky has just six points over his last twenty games and is pointless in the last three.
Special Teams
The Habs went 0-for-3 on the power play on Thursday night in Vancouver while holding down the Canucks to an 0-for-4. That was unusual for a Montreal penalty kill that functions at just a 76% success rate on the season. The power play is equally abysmal at 17.9%.
The Kraken went 0-for-3 on the power play against the Coyotes on Friday night while Arizona went 0-for-2.
Seattle’s special teams have hovered around the same percentages for longer than a month. The PP works successfully 21.1% of the time while the PK is close to acceptable at 79.3%.
Coming In:
Canadiens: 25-32-and-12, in 8th (last) place in the Atlantic Division with 62 points. Montreal lost to the Canucks 4-1 in Vancouver on Thursday night.
Kraken: 28-28-and-13, in 6th place in the Pacific Division with 69 points. Seattle lost to the Coyotes in Arizona on Friday night, 2-1 in overtime.
Recent Kraken:
— Golden Knights Handle Kraken 3-1
