There was plenty of talk coming out of a prior night’s defeat about how the Kraken would have to avoid spending too much time in their own defensive zone.
Alas, that didn’t work out so well Tuesday night as the Kraken could have charged the visiting New York Islanders rent for all the time they spent camped out on their doorstep. By the time the Kraken finally woke up nearly two periods in, it was too late to avoid a 5-2 defeat in what’s now a five-game losing streak.
The prior night’s loss in Vancouver had seen the Kraken undone by a terrible second period. But this time around, it was the first two periods that took the Kraken and the announced crowd of 17,151 at Climate Pledge Arena out of the game when it mattered.
Midway through, New York had a 4-0 lead and a 24-6 edge in shots on goal. Though the Kraken would manage to whittle that lead in half on goals by Yanni Gourde and Riley Sheahan, it wasn’t nearly enough.
Zach Parise closed out the night’s scoring with his second of the contest, an empty netter with 1:58 to play and Philipp Grubauer pulled for an extra attacker.
New York enjoyed a 13-4 shots advantage in the opening frame and took a 2-0 lead to intermission. The game at that point looked nothing like the one a few weeks ago on Long Island, New York, when the Kraken registered the first shutout in franchise history with some textbook defensive play.
Brock Nelson had opened the scoring by beating Grubauer with a snap shot to the short side at the 8:53 mark.
The Kraken nearly caught a break with 2:41 to go in the opening frame when Parise had a goal waved off after being called for goaltender interference. But the Islanders challenged the call and the goal was upheld upon video review when it was ruled defender Mark Giordano had pushed Parise into Grubauer.
The middle period wasn’t much better for the Kraken as Kyle Palmieri and Casey Cizikas added goals for a 4-0 lead midway through. The Cizikas goal came after a bad puck bounce off the end boards that went right to him and enabled him to put it in an open net before Grubauer could recover.
At the time, the Islanders were outshooting the home side by a 4-to-1 ratio and the Kraken were making things easy for Islanders netminder Ilya Sorokin. But Gourde helped start to make things interesting just 45 seconds after the Cizikas goal when he beat Sorokin with a quick wristshot off a faceoff to cut the lead to 4-1.
The Kraken couldn’t get any closer before intermission, though they did pick their play up a bit, outshooting the visitors 9-3 the remainder of the frame. Then, in the third period, it was New York’s turn to have a puck bounce go against them as Sheahan picked up a strange carom off the boards and tucked it past Sorokin before he could react.
That made it a 4-2 game only 1:35 in and with an entire third period still to play.
From there, the Kraken poured it on and kept things highly competitive the rest of the way.
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