National Hockey League teams play 82 regular-season games. Last night at Climate Pledge Arena goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury recorded the 72nd shutout of his career- over three quarters of a season – as the Minnesota Wild ended the Seattle Kraken’s five-game winning streak with a 1-0 victory.
Fleury led the Pittsburgh Penguins to two Stanley Cup titles in 2015 and `16 and was in the nets for Las Vegas when the Golden Knights made the Stanley Cup finals as an expansion team in 2018. Last night, Fleury stopped 28 shots as he’s now shutout 28 NHL teams a league record. The only teams he hasn’t blanked are Vegas, Minnesota, Columbus and St. Louis.
After the game, Fleury joked with reporters that the record just shows that he’s getting old and has been around a long time. But Fleury came up with big saves on Jordan Eberle, Oliver Bjorkstrand and Yanni Gourde in the final seconds to secure the victory. Gourde was still digging for the puck as time ran out.
Matty Beniers had a couple of good chances in the first, but the Wild would record the only goal of the contest in the closing minutes of the first period.
It was a fluky one (as a lot of NHL goals are). Defenseman Jon Merrill tried to hit his defense partner Calen Addison with a pass, but it alluded Addison and ricocheted off the boards to Mats Zucarello, who rifled the puck home.
While the Kraken’s winning streak came to an end, Seattle goalkeeper Martin Jones kept his streak alive. Allowing only one goal in the previous four games, Jones has now given up only five goals in five games. Jones was the game’s number-three star behind Fleury and Zuccarello. Last week in Minnesota, Jones shutout the Wild, 4-0.
Another streak that ended – the Kraken had scored at least three goals in their previous 12 games. However, the team has now killed 16 straight penalties over the last six games. First-year assistant coach Dave Lowry is in charge of the PK, and Seattle’s using a different formation on kills this season.
Seattle coach Dave Hakstol felt that a lack of success on the power play cost his squad the game. In fact, the Kraken have only two PPG’s in their last 16 man advantages. They were unsuccessful on four power plays last night and didn’t get a shot on goal on the first two power plays.
“Put this one (loss) on the power play units,” said Hakstol. “It’s that kind of night you’ve got to get a score off 5-on-5″ or even-strength play.”.
“What stands out is I think we lost each opening face-off,” Hakstol said. “You’re going to have nights where that’s how it goes for the power play. The power play has been good all year. It’s been timely. You’ve got to find a way to come up with the puck. You don’t have to win a draw clean, but we’ve got to win some 50-50’s (puck battles)and keep those pucks in the zone. There were a few too many pucks thrown to the net with nobody within 30 feet of the net.”
“There was definitely a lot of outside play,” said Gourde. “We’ve got to find seconds, find rebounds. We’ve got to be out front (screening the goalie). If the goalie sees the puck, most likely he’s gonna make the save. We’ve got to do a better job of making his game a little bit harder and of finding the open guy.”
The Kraken fall to 8-5-2 on the season. The Wild improve to 7-6. Seattle plays game three of a six-game homestand tomorrow night when they host the Winnipeg Jets. The Jets are one of several teams (including the Kraken) who have been a surprise team in the first month of the season. Winnipeg boasts an 8-3-1 record to lead the Central Division of the Western Conference.
Game Notes
- Jared McCann, the Kraken’s leading scorer in their initial season, returned to the lineup after missing three games with a lower body injury. Jamie Oleksiak missed his first game of the season after sitting out the third period of the Kraken’s previous game against Nashville. Defenseman Cale Fleury, who’s been on the Seattle roster all season, made his regular season debut. He played nine regular season games a year ago. With Fleury on the roster, the Kraken can no longer say that every player who’s suited up this season has a goal or an assist. Fleury did have two shots on goal last night.
- Defenseman Adam Larsson played his 700th NHL game last night. Larsson, who turns 30 today (November 12) made his NHL debut with the New Jersey Devils as an 18-year-old.
- Speaking of streaks, the Kraken’s Morgan Geekie saw a streak come to an end last night. He had tallied a point in the last five Kraken games (three goals, three assists).
- Marcus Hellberg has returned to the Kraken. Hellberg who’s played all over the world (how many NHL players have played in China?) was expected to share the goaltending duties on the Kraken’s American Hockey League team- the Coachella Valley Firebirds- along with Joey Daccord. But when the Kraken optioned Hellberg, he was claimed on waivers by the Ottawa Senators. On Thursday, Seattle reacquired Hellberg and he was the backup to Martin Jones last night. Daccord played one game for the Kraken and earned a victory over the Calgary Flames.
- At every NHL game, the night’s three stars are selected by local media at the end of the game. Some teams even announce three stars for the year at the end of the season. A player receives three points for the number-one star, two for number-two, and one for number three. Not surprisingly, leading scorer Andre Burakovsky has seven points, the lone Kraken to be picked as the number-one star twice,-Oct. 13 against the LA Kings and Nov. 8 against the Nashville Predators. Goaltender Martin Jones ranks second with six points, but has been selected as one of three stars a team-high five times – one second and four thirds. To show how balanced the Kraken are this season, 15 different players have been selected one of the three stars at least once. The rest of the point totals are Jordan Eberle 5, Yanni Gourde 5, Brandon Tanev 5, Jared McCann 4, Will Borgen 3, Karson Kuhlman 3, Darren Sprong 3, Alex Wennberg 3, Adam Larsson 2, Jaden Schwartz 1, Ryan Donato 1, Morgan Geekie 1, Oliver Bjorkstrand 1.
Scoring Summary
First Period
Mats Zuccarello (Jon Merrill, Kirill Kaprizov) 18:19
Second Period
No scoring
Third Period
No scoring
Shots on Goal- Minnesota 21, Seattle 28.
Penalty Minutes- Minnesota 8, Seattle 6.
Referees- Eric Furlatt, Reid Anderson. Linesmen- Travis Toomey, Tommy Hughes
Three Stars- 1. Marc-Andre Fleury, M. 2. Mats Zuccarello, M. 3. Martin Jones, S.
