In Seattle, the Kraken’s Eeli Tolvanen hit for his third goal in three games in the third period to give Seattle a 3-1 lead they protected for the win over the Columbus Blue Jackets o Saturday night. 
“It means a lot. There were some rough patches at the start of this year,” said Tolvanen. “Hockey wasn’t that much fun. Just coming here and getting the trust from the coaches and getting the opportunity to play a lot, it feels really good.”
Philipp Grubauer made 24 saves in the Kraken win.
“It’s a real good win for our team,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said. “It’s a really good response coming off last night (a 5-2 loss to the Calgary Flames) and it’s a great way to finish off the month of January.”
Seattle improved to29-15-5, they are 11-3-1 in the past 15.
“If you look at that on the schedule, if you look at the travel, the number of games, you’d expect a little bit of fatigue in this dressing room,” Hakstol said. “To finish the month [11-3-1] coming out, so it’s pretty good. This group should be proud of that.”
Kent Johnson was the lone striker for the Blue Jackets, his goal in the second period cut the Kraken lead at the time to 2-1.
The Blue Jackets dropped to 15-32-3.
“Ran into turnovers in the first period,” Columbus forward Johnny Gaudreau said. “Elvis saved our bacon there one too many times tonight. And then the second, we got a big goal from [Johnson] to make it 2-1, thought we pushed into the third, but they found a way to make it 3-1.”
Seattle took a 1-0 lead in the first period on a strike from Morgan Geekie.
Alex Wennberg pushed the Kraken advantage to 2-0 in the second period.
“I feel like we didn’t use our speed last game,” Wennberg said. “We talked about it, close that game and focus on this one. We take it game by game, and all we look at now is how we played today, and now we’re going to have a little bit of a break and focus on the next game.”
Elvis Merzlikins made 28 saves in the Columbus loss.
“We’re all playing 82 games,” Columbus’ Johnny Gaudreau said. “We’re already in the middle of the season, and we all go through those stretches where you’re playing a lot of hockey on the road, so we got to come prepared a little bit better.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.