One: How Saturday Can Boost Sunday’s Win Potential
ELMONT, L.I. – No surprise, of course, that head coach Lane Lambert liked the grit and follow-through of his team’s third period effort Saturday night in Pittsburgh. Even better, he envisions those 20 minutes as a model for how to start Sunday’s road trip finale on Long Island. The reward would be six of a possible eight standings points on the week.
“I think we can build on our third period in terms of when we got down [on the scoreboard],” said Lambert Saturday before boarding the team plane for JFK Airport in New York. “We started to make more plays and create more stuff offensively. I think we have to do that. We have to do it right from the get-go. But we defended as hard as we could. “I thought our goaltender [Philipp Grubauer] played a great game. There’s no question that we’re going to be right back at it here in not too many hours [Joey Daccord will likely be in net]. We just have to make sure we focus in and be good with our structure [Sunday].” That structure and Lambert’s systems of playing hard-nosed defense to create opportunistic offense might not sound enticing at first. Still, the outcome has certainly been exciting for fans to watch this week – including significant numbers of Kraken faithful who have attended games in Detroit, Chicago and Pittsburgh to date, with more surely on hand Sunday.
Two: Closer Look at Special Teams
Lane Lambert has been happy with the Kraken power play, especially in terms of generating scoring chances. Going into Sunday’s game, the Kraken power play on the road is 10th best in the NHL. During morning skates and practice on this road trip, Lambert has been vocal about “puck movement” while watching power play units quarterbacked by Vince Dunn and Brandon Montour. Both the Dunn and Montour groups have impressed Lambert enough that he is hesitant to use ‘first unit” and “second unit” labels. “Our power play has been good for us all year,” said Lambert Saturday morning. “There’s obviously been some games where [the units] don’t score. If you look back to the Dallas game [2-1 road loss], we didn’t score, but we had a number of chances. The [units] have scored big goals at big times. I can’t call them unit A, unit B, unit one, two unit, whatever. I think both units are doing a good job. The other night [Thursday’s win in Chicago] was a huge goal for us at the end of the game. It was whatever you call it, second unit, goes out and gets a goal.”
In Saturday’s stellar win over Pittsburgh, the Kraken penalty killers faced the NHL’s best power play for four penalties and seven minutes (one Seattle penalty overlapped with a Penguins penalty). The Seattle PK snuffed all but the final 13 seconds of the fourth penalty when Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin scored a go-ahead goal in a net-front scrum. “The [Kraken PK] did a good job in the first period,” said Lambert, “certainly given that with their power play and three [Kraken] penalties, the game could have got a got away from us early. We did a good job. It just seems like, for whatever reason, we just can’t quite keep it out of our net for 60 minutes in terms of being on the kill. The puck [on the Malkin goal] kind of bounced around. We did everything right, and it just kind of ended up in the spot for Malkin to punch it in. There have been some improvements in our penalty kill a little bit. We’ve made a couple of changes [one is Brandon Montour getting shorthanded time on ice]. We’re going to continue with the changes.”
Three: Know the Foe: Islanders 5-1-1 in Last Seven Games
The Islanders and coach Patrick Roy are riding a hot streak, climbing into third place in the Metropolitan Division. New York was 6-1-0 on its recently completed trip and lost 2-1 to St. Louis on Saturday afternoon. There is balanced scoring on the roster, as proven, but 17 different NYI players made the scoresheet on the recent road trip. First-line center Bo Horvath has 14 goals. The roster, which includes former WHL Seattle Thunderbirds star Mat Barzal, appears to be aligning effective with head coach Roy.
“What we see is clarity,” said Roy about a franchise-tying road trip. “We know that the way we’re playing, we can win a lot of games. What I love about the road trip is presence. We stayed in the present moment instead of looking at the scoreboard and being satisfied.”
Projected Lineup (No official)
Marchment-Beniers-Eberle
Schwartz-Stephenson-Tolvanen
Catton-Gaudreau-Wright
Kartye-Molgaard-Winterton
Dunn-Larsson
Lindgren-Montour
Evans-Oleksiak
Daccord
