In Seattle, the Kraken came out on Monday playing like a team in need of two points.
Seven different skaters scored on Monday for Seattle in an 8-1 shellacking of the Arizona Coyotes.
Jared McCann had two of the goals for Seattle, who moved three points clear of the Winnipeg Jets for the first wild card in the Western Conference.
“Every two points is big,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “We talk about it all the time. You don’t look too far back and you don’t look too far forward. You just worry about working and doing what you have to do to get two points and the score doesn’t matter.”
Jordan Eberle got the offense rolling with a first period power play goal and 1-0 lead to Seattle.
“We’re moving the puck well, we’re getting pucks on the net, we’re playing with confidence on the power play,” Seattle’s Daniel Sprong said. “We’re taking the chances we need, the looks are there, and we’re capitalizing on it. It’s good momentum for us, especially near the end of the year.”
Philipp Grubauer made 20 saves in the Kraken win.
Seattle improved to 42-26-8.
McCann scored his first of the night at 15:07 with a shorthanded marker.
“We said, `We’ve got to stay on it. We can’t let up,'” McCann said. “We have a tendency to kind of back up (with a lead) and kind of play defensive, and that puts us in the soup sometimes. So we did a good job of staying on [it].”
The Coyotes got pone back in the middle frame on a goal from Lawson Crouse for a 2-1 deficit, but it was a gone after that.
Seattle hit for two more in the middle frame for a 4-1 lead headed to the third.
Carson Soucy and McCann did the damage in the second period.
“I think we just did a good job learning where their weaknesses are, where we can use our skill, use our speed,” Soucy said. “Throughout the game, we just kept getting better and better all night.”
If that wasn’t enough, the Kraken added four markers in the third period.
Will Borgen ballooned the lead to 5-1 at 1:18 of the third.
“Those two points were huge,” Soucy said. “I think we did a good job of keeping our foot on the gas and closing it out. When it was tight there for a bit, we did a good job of focusing on what we needed to do to just kind of wear them down.”
Oliver Bjorkstrand scored at 11:01 for a 6-1 advantage.
Morgan Geekie and Ryan Donato just made it silly with goals at 18:05 and 19:33, respectively.
“I think we had a good pace, we had good pressure, we did a lot of good things,” Coyotes coach Andre Tourigny said. “We were generating good scoring chances, quality chances in the first two [periods], but then in the third they started scoring right away and it was tough.”
Ivan Prosvetov made 24 saves in the Coyotes loss.
“He didn’t make a difference,” Tourigny said of Prosvetov. “We needed him to stop the bleeding and he couldn’t get it done.”
Brutal.
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