In their second season, the Seattle Kraken reached the 100-point plateau, eliminating the Colorado Avalanche in seven games in the first round before losing again in seven games to the Dallas Stars in the second round.
In this third season in the NHL, the Kraken’s goal was to repeat their success and assert themselves as one of the good teams in the league. In Seattle we wanted to destroy the prejudices of the Cinderella story.
But this magic no longer exists for the Kraken. A few hours before the visit to Montreal, Dave Hakstol’s gang had a record of 8-11-6.
In the Kraken locker room, we don’t hide the fact that there is frustration.
“It’s a frustrating year because we lack consistency,” summed up winger Jordan Eberle. There were games where we were at our best and the next game we were at our worst. We showed how good we can be. More recently we have found our consistency but it’s funny because we lost our last few games even though we were playing well. It makes us a little angry. We have to find a way to take control of the games, that’s how we won last year, now we’re doing the opposite.”
The same goes for Pierre-Édouard Bellemare, who is in his first campaign with the Kraken.
“We are inconsistent,” said Bellemare. We have a good game, then two mediocre games, then two incredible games but we can’t get any points, then a normal game but we manage to get the points. It’s a bit incomprehensible. What we miss most and what frustrates us is the team’s identity, which we have to regain.
Manage expectations
Yanni Gourde, who had trained on the ice at the Bell Center, also brought up consistency to explain his team’s poor start.
“Consistency is our biggest problem,” Gourde said. We face adversity. We find it difficult to produce the same performance from game to game and we don’t manage to last a good 60 minutes.
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Last year, the Kraken led the NHL with 209 goals in five-on-five play. A year later it is no longer the same. Gary Bettman’s youngest child ranks 22nd with 44 goals in five-on-five play.
“At the beginning of the season we perhaps had the feeling that we were in for a slightly easier season,” admitted Gourde. But after a few games we realized that wasn’t the case. There are now more than 20 games on the schedule and we have to play better.
Matty Beniers, who won the Calder Trophy last year thanks to a 57-point haul (24 goals, 33 assists) in 80 games, is following the same downward curve as his team. In 25 games, the 21-year-old American only scored 12 points (4 goals, 8 assists).