In Seattle, the Kraken won their fifth straight game on Tuesday night, 5-2, over the Anaheim Ducks.
It really wasn’t that close.
Philipp Grubauer made 20 saves in the Kraken win.
Seattle improved to 37-21-6.
The Kraken took a 2-0 lead in the opening stanza on strikes form Jamie Oleksiak and Jared McCann.
“We’re in a race of our own right now,” McCann said. “We’re trying to stay ahead of [Edmonton], we’re trying to get in a better position for playoffs. We need to be focused every single night. We’re going to have to play well every single night.”
Trevor Zegras got Anaheim on the board with 53 seconds of fresh ice used in the second period at 2-1.
“The game comes down to what we call ‘A’ chances,” Anaheim coach Dallas Eakins said. “II thought we had more A chances than them, we just didn’t bury them. Their goaltender played very, very well. I think the thing that really hurt us tonight was our power play. We didn’t get many good looks there, especially when we really needed it.”
Seattle got that goal back in the second off a strike by Daniel Sprong for a 3-1 lead.
“I liked the intelligence of our team,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said. “We had some recognition that we weren’t maybe going to be at our best in terms of energy. As we got through to the second half of the game, we managed it pretty well.”
Eeli Tolvanen struck in the third period for a 4-1 advantage to Seattle.
The Ducks made it 4-2 with under two minutes left in the game on a marker form Max Comtois .
Jaden Schwartz iced the win for the Kraken with an empty-net goal with 18 seconds left of the regulation clock and the 5-2 final.
“It was honestly, just one of those games,” Anaheim defenseman Cam Fowler said. “I think they were opportunistic with the chances that they had. Looking back on it. I don’t think it was a bad effort by our group. I thought we were right in it; just those lapses that we did have, it seemed like it was in the back of the net. And we didn’t do a good enough job on our power play, and that’s kind of why you end up with a result like that.”
John Gibson made 26 saves in the Anaheim loss.
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