Kraken Fight To Finish For Hard-Earned Two Points

TAMPA, Florida – Newly minted Kraken pugilist Berkly Catton was smiling in a victorious locker room after this 15-round heavyweight tilt had ended with his team still standing.

Catton’s deeply engaged squad and the highly rated Tampa Bay Lightning had gone at each other with all they had before Brandon Montour scored his second goal of the game in overtime to deliver a crucial 4-3 win to a Kraken team desperately needing one.  With their backs to the Western Conference playoff wall and having snagged an unlikely shootout loss point two days prior with a late three-goal comeback, the Kraken played Thursday night’s game like a team for which losing was no longer an option.

“It was kind of like an old school game,” said Catton, who went all Eddie Shore on the Lightning early in the second period after Jordan Eberle was run into the boards. “But you know, we showed a lot of heart. And that was awesome.”

Catton certainly showed some heart and some heat after seeing Eberle fall to the ice and hit his head. The 5-foot-10, 178-pound forward immediately tried unsuccessfully to engage two Lightning players in a fight, then got 6-foot-2 defenseman JJ Moser to drop his gloves and trade punches before holding his own briefly and going to the ice. 

“Apparently, I got the wrong guy,” said Catton, who’d never fought in the NHL and had only one junior hockey fight his three years with the Spokane Chiefs. “I didn’t even know. I was just looking for whoever got him. And I don’t know, one of their guys looked at me and we just dropped them.”

Kraken head coach Lane Lambert would say after the game that Catton’s response “was a real spark for our hockey team” on a night they appeared emotionally and physically invested in the outcome throughout. Montour, not long afterward, would also pin Lightning forward Pontus Holmberg to the ice in another altercation, while Ryker Evans and Vince Dunn got into it with opponents as well and had to be pulled away. 

In other words, the deeply committed Kraken gave as good as they took in this game. And suddenly, they are back to only three points behind Nashville – which lost in regulation to New Jersey – with a game in-hand and 11 still to play in the race for a second wild card position.

 Catton said he had no choice but to duke it out with somebody once Eberle got run. The Kraken were leading 2-1 on first period goals by Montour and Kaapo Kakko, and the Lightning had come out throwing their weight around to start the middle frame.

“It’s your captain,” Catton said. “You’ve got to stick up for your captain. It’s just kind of an unwritten rule of hockey. So, I did the best I could, but I had to do it.”

Catton’s fight served to fire up the Kraken in what became a bit of a slugfest from there. Bobby McMann scored soon after for a 3-1 lead before the Lightning countered with a Jake Guentzel breakaway goal and then a Corey Perry power play marker midway through the period.

But Philipp Grubauer stoned the Lightning from there, stopping Holmberg on a breakaway shot in the period’s final two minutes and then holding off Tampa Bay in the final frame as they poured on the shots.

Montour then scored 2:47 into overtime, taking a Shane Wright pass low in the left circle and beating Andrei Vasilevskiy between his pads to snap a four-game Kraken losing streak. 

Lambert said the Kraken responses throughout and “resilience” in the face of adversity and in-game injuries to Eberle, Wright, and Matty Beniers—who all returned to finish the contest – was “a good lesson” of what it takes to win this time of year.

“They tried to turn up the physicality,” he said of the Lightning. “Again, it’s a Stanley Cup champion hockey team over there, and they play the game any way you want to play it. So, you know, that’s where it’s a good experience for us. That’s where we have to get.”

The Kraken once again, as they had in Florida two nights prior, started only 11 forwards and seven defensemen in a bid to maximize ice time for some of their more creative offensive players. And they looked like a different team from the get-go, limiting the Lightning to just six first period shots and getting led offensively by Chandler Stephenson, who made a nice play beating a defender along the left-wing boards ahead of setting Kakko up in the slot for his first period goal.

Lambert felt Stephenson played like “a man possessed” all night long.

“You felt like he understood the moment,” Lambert said.

And though Lambert never defined exactly what that “moment” entailed, it was clear his team understood it had backed itself as close to the edge of the playoff cliff as possible. And knowing that they'd barely avoided disaster against Florida by scoring three goals in the final 5:43 of regulation Tuesday to snag a long point in a shootout loss, they willed themselves to a higher level in this one and took a huge step forward.

“We’re a desperate team right now,” winning goal scorer Montour said. “We need to be engaged every shift.”

And being engaged, he added, means not backing down when opponents come your way. Montour wound up in the box alongside Catton for piledriving Holmberg to the ice only minutes after his rookie teammate's debut NHL fight.

“He was kind of worried about whether he’d won or lost,” Montour said with a chuckle. “He’s a young guy stepping up for a guy that’s been hit. Again, that’s not his job. But that’s a culture change. Obviously, he’s small, and it’s a bigger boy over there. Just to not even second guess it and to step up and protect his teammate, that’s how teams grow.”

Kraken goalie Grubauer had a front row seat to all the goals, hits, and fisticuffs along with stopping 30 of 33 shots for the victory. 

“Given the time of year too, and what happened in the game, that’s a huge part – that you have each other’s back,” Grubauer said. “That’s the most important thing moving forward as well. Because it’s not going to get any easier. The games are going to get rougher. That’s playoff hockey, and us stepping up for each other means a lot.”

And the Kraken will now play more meaningful games after Catton, the team’s smallest player and least likely to try any Bob Probert impersonations, took a stand and saw others follow him back into playoff contention.

“It’s desperate measures,” Catton said. “We’ve got to be good every night here. We kind of did it tonight, and like I said, we’ve got to keep it going.”