When you score six in the first period, it’s going to be a struggle to maintain focus.
It sort of happened to the Seattle Kraken in Chicago on Saturday.
The Kraken scored six times in the first to take a 6-1 lead on the Blackhawks, then cruised on through the final 40 minutes of play for an 8-5 win.
There was a lot of lipstick on the pig for the Blackhawks near the end f the tilt.
“The two points is what matters,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said. “It’s a great accomplishment for the players to be able to do that. It shows the consistency and the work that they’ve put in from the start of this road trip. For me, it’s more about the players accomplishing consistency of play together as they moved through the entire road trip.”
Seattle swept its seven-game roadie.
Jared McCann had his first NHL career hat trick in the win.
“It’s been nice,” McCann said. “Being able to score in a game like this is huge. Obviously, we made some history tonight, so it was nice. It’s huge. We didn’t have the best year last year, especially on the road. We were looking forward to the season. We added some new faces and made our team a lot deeper.”
Martin Jones made 22 saves in the win.
The Kraken improved to 26-11-4.
Chicago dropped to 11-26-4.
“It’s not complicated, it’s just not good enough,” Chicago captain Jonathan Toews (first period goal) said. “The effort’s not there and the preparation’s clearly not there, so it’s not anyone in particular. It’s across the board, so it’s nothing specific, nothing special, but I think we all recognize that it was far from the level that we’ve played these last three games.
“We’ve got to show a little bit more experience, a little bit more character in the way that we’re taking steps forward as a team and maturing as team, and when we start getting momentum and things start clicking because we’re working and we’re earning the bounces, we can’t just have an off night where it’s just like we’re not feeling it and we’re kind of mailing it in like that. We’ve got to be better than that.”
The first period seemed to take three days to complete with the scoring.
Daniel Sprong opened up the offense to give Seattle a 1-0 lead, before Toews tied it, 1-1.
From there it was all Seattle with Matty Beniers restoring the lead, 2-1.
McCann scored his first of the night for a 3-1 advantage to Seattle, and Andre Burakovsky extended the lead to 4-1.
Eeli Tolvanen ballooned the advantage to 5-1, and McCann made it 6-1.
Adam Larson was on the ice for the six Seattle strikes, and was a plus-7 on the night.
“Honestly, I didn’t feel like I was involved in the first six of them,” Larsson said. “Whatever we’re doing out there seems to work. Obviously, we’ve had a lot of fun lately.”
Chicago held the Kraken off the board in the middle frame and got one goal back on a marker from Isaak Phillips for a 6-2 score after two periods.
Max Domi scored off the power-play with 57 seconds gone in the third period to make it 6-3.
McCann and Olivier Bjorkstrand scored for the Kraken to get the lead back to five goals at 8-3.
Chicago broke out the lipstick with two goals, a power play strike form Taylor Raddysh, and goal from Patrick Kane for the 8-5 final.
“Yeah, it was just collective,” Chicago coach Luke Richardson said. “Nobody was prepared to play today, physically and mentally. You know, I think probably scoring right after they scored to make it 1-1, it just felt like [we thought], ‘Oh, we were going to be OK,’ the way we were playing. And we were definitely not playing well. It may have been the worst thing that happened to us, instead of not scoring there and maybe having to work back into the game. I think we just thought it was going to happen tonight.”
Petr Mrazek got the start for Chicago, and yielded four goals and made one save before getting the hook just past the midway point of the first period.
Alex Stalock made 21 saves through the final two periods and seven plus minutes of the first.
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