In Seattle, the Kraken ended a six-game losing streak with the help of Philipp Grubauer who made 37 saves, 22 of them in the third period, n a 5-2 win over the Washington Capitals.
“The streak, it’s been tough,” Kraken head coach Dave Hakstol said. “It’s not a lot of fun. Our players, coming off last night’s or two nights ago, a game that stinks (7-3 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Friday), that stays with you. The atmosphere in our building also stays with you. … To be able to come out tonight and do what we could to try to reward the people up there and, most importantly, take pride in our standard tonight, and that’s really what happened.”
Tom Wilson and Alex Ovechkin were the Caps strikers.
“The game got away from us in about four minutes,” the Capitals’ Nic Dowd said. “I thought we actually played really well the rest of the game and controlled the game. I think we had 20 shots in the third period, something like that. We had chances and I thought we had a chance to win that game if we hadn’t let it get away from us.”
Seattle’s Jaden Schwartz hit for a goal and four points in the win.
“We love [Schwartz’] competitiveness,” Hakstol said. “I knew he was going to be playing some heavy minutes against a good line, but Schwartz is really good down below the circles in the offensive zone, and we saw that he was in his office tonight and he produced. He produced a really good night offensively.”
After the Caps took an early 1-0 lead on the Wilson goal, Seattle tied with a strike by Jared McCann in the first period.
Schwartz made it 2-1 to Seattle, and Adam Larsson and Calle Jarnkrok added marker for a 4-1 lead.
“I’m glad to get the two points tonight,” Jarnkrok said. “A really big difference was teamwork and getting back to the identity that we showed early on.”
Ovechkin cut the deficit to two goals in the third, but the Kraken’s Yanni Gourde added an empty-net goal for the 5-2 final.
Vitek Vanecek made 26 saves in the Caps loss.
“I thought we had a couple of chances to get one in there 6-on-5,” Dowd said. “You know, games like back-to-backs, it’s good to stay out of the box and you have to capitalize on our power play.”
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