Kraken Make Statement With Crucial Road Win

LAS VEGAS – In the glowing aftermath of a game he’d helped finish with the eventual winning goal, Kraken forward Kaapo Kakko was more interested in discussing the importance of his team’s start.

That opening 20 minutes by the Kraken in Saturday night’s 3-2 win over the Vegas Golden Knights just may have been their best frame all season as they opened a critical three-game road swing ahead of the Olympic break. They got goals that period by Eeli Tolvanen and the 200^th of Jared McCann’s career, but it was the way they hemmed in and frustrated the Pacific Division leaders on the forecheck and backcheck that had T-Mobile Arena fans at one point booing as the tone was set early.

“It’s a big thing how we’re starting,” Kakko said about all the recent contests during this four-game win streak. “I don’t know exactly what’s there, but I think there’s no secret to it. It’s all of us trying to do everything we can to make sure we start well.”

Vegas would eventually tie it on goals midway through the second period by Ivan Barbashev and then a Mitch Marner power play shot from the high slot in the closing seconds of that frame. But being tied after two periods of pretty good hockey on the road isn’t the worst place to be and the Kraken proved it.

Adam Larsson put a puck on net from the right point just three minutes into the third and Kakko was there to fire the rebound past Vegas goalie Akira Schmid for the only goal Kraken netminder Joey Daccord would need the rest of the way. Daccord stopped 27 of 29 shots overall, including several in the nerve-wracking final minutes before pumping his fist in exaggerated, victorious fashion multiple times as the final horn sounded.

This was no “dog days” mid-season game. The Kraken moved to within three points of first-place Vegas and has the same gap with second place Edmonton, though still holding two games in-hand on the Oilers.

They solidified their own hold on third place, two up on the Anaheim Ducks and Los Angeles Kings. And they are now a point ahead of a Utah team that owns the first of two Western Conference wild-card spots.

But after a game like this, nobody should be thinking “wild card” for the Kraken. Not when they now have one more victory at 26 than the division-leading Golden Knights.

Clearly, the next two games at Anaheim on Tuesday night and Los Angeles on Wednesday night will be huge to close out the schedule ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games Milano Cortina. The Kraken won’t resume until late February after that in what’s shaping up as an all-out sprint to the finish from there.

“I mean, it’s totally different from last year at this time,” Kakko said of both the importance of the condensed remaining schedule and his team’s ability to hang on to its playoff positioning. “That’s what you want. You want to have something to play for.”

Kakko will be playing for Finland at the Winter Olympics, as will Kraken forward Tolvanen, who got his team on the board just under six minutes in by slotting home a rebound off a Ryan Winterton chance in close. Chandler Stephenson had made a strong play driving the puck in deep before dishing off to Winterton.

“Yeah, we scored a goal because of that,” Tolvanen said of Stephenson’s initial effort. “When he’s moving his feet, he’s a phenomenal player. That’s one of those instances where you can take the D wide and make those kinds of plays.”

Winterton had been instrumental in the quick start with strong forechecking leading up to the goal. Same with Jacob Melanson, a wrecking ball once again on his way to setting yet another franchise record for hits in a game with 12.

“It’s big against these guys because they have the star power, they have a good offense,” Tolvanen said. “We were talking about how we needed a good start. And I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that lately.”

The Kraken just 10 days ago played an important divisional game at home against Anaheim and turned in their worst start all season in an eventual loss. After the game, head coach Lane Lambert was dumbfounded, calling it “an illogical event” that his team could play so poorly in such a key matchup.

They haven’t lost since.

“I think we kind of noticed,” Tolvanen said of the Anaheim game. “That’s unacceptable.”

Lambert agreed his team took something away from a negative experience.

“Over the course of 82 games you’re going to have a stinker here and there,” he said. “Whether or not you learn from it is the key. And I think we learned from it.”

It’s helped that McCann caught fire in the interim, scoring six goals in a six-game stretch that’s seen the Kraken win five of those contests. His one-timer from the right circle off a power play set-up by Vince Dunn added to his franchise records for goals in a single month with 11 and points as well with 20.

His ascension has reinvigorated the top forward line of McCann, Matty Beniers and Jordan Eberle, while taking heat off a fourth line that had carried much of the January load prior. Lambert said the expanded minutes eaten up by the fourth line during this month’s record 17-game schedule has enabled him to lighten the ice-time for players such as Stephenson and Beniers to keep them fresh enough to produce at high levels.

Lambert also liked how his team didn’t let up following Saturday night’s tying goal by Marner. After all, he said, they’d given the Golden Knights all they could handle, and were dead even 40 minutes into a tough road start.

“The message was, it doesn’t matter how we got here,” Lambert said. “We win a period and we win a game on the road in this building. Whether you were up 2-0 or down 2-0, it doesn’t matter. The score’s 2-2 right now. Go out and win a period. And they did.”

And in doing so, Kakko and company have set themselves up for an exciting month of March if they can continue this type of play the final two road games before he heads off to Milan.

“I think we’ve been doing good lately,” Kakko said. “Not just this one, but the games before. I think we’ve been good and then we just keep going. We got a good start tonight and that’s what we wanted. It was a big win.”