Making The Most Of Every Goal

Poulsbo resident and former longtime NHL defenseman Bert Marshall chuckled at a suggested link between a Kraken squad he cheers for locally and one of his expansion era teams of yesteryear.

Marshall, who turns 82 this month, played for the Oakland Seals – also known at times as the California Golden Seals and California Seals -- during a 1969-70 season in which they made the playoffs despite scoring the league’s second fewest goals. The Kraken similarly sported the NHL’s second lowest goals per game total ahead of facing Winnipeg on Thursday night but improved to 8-4-5 after a stirring 5-3 comeback victory over the Jets and are within two points of the Pacific Division lead.

Not that Marshall or anybody else recommends barely scoring as a recipe for success. If anything, the historical Seals footnote puts into context just how good the Kraken have been defensively in managing their fastest 21-point start ever while sorting through offensive woes.

Marshall scored just once in 72 games that bizarre Seals season. “I certainly played my part in it,” he quipped. “We weren’t very good at scoring, so I figured I needed to put all of my energy into preventing the other team from scoring on us.”

Those Seals remain the post-1967-68 expansion era gold standard for making the playoffs despite an offense that couldn’t shoot straight, averaging just 2.2 goals per game. The Kraken, incidentally, entered Thursday’s game averaging 2.5 goals but jumped to 2.65 and from second lowest to fourth lowest in the league after scoring five times.

Vancouver made the playoffs in 1978-79 despite averaging a second-worst 2.78 goals per game. And Detroit in 1986-87 qualified despite the worst offense in the entire NHL – though, owing to hockey’s wide-open mid-1980s style, those Red Wings still were a goal a game better than the Seals at 3.25.

So, Marshall’s Seals remain the bearer of a low scoring playoff torch nobody really wants to carry.

Marshall is the first to point out that the Seals and Kraken aren’t all that comparable. Despite Marshall’s goal prevention efforts, Oakland’s defense was nearly as bad as its offense in allowing a third-worst 3.2 goals per game in a 12-team league.

“We were only a few seasons into the league coming out of expansion,” Marshall said. “And some of the teams we were competing against weren’t very good either.”

Indeed, the Seals made the playoffs mainly because their Western Division consisted of six recent expansion squads. The top four qualified, with Oakland at 22-40-14 tying Philadelphia for the final playoff spot at 58 points but prevailing with a higher win total.

The Kraken, by contrast, are No. 7 defensively of 32 teams at 2.76 goals allowed per contest. And they play in a division and conference sporting some of the NHL’s best teams they must surpass for postseason qualification.

Their current pace will see the Kraken finish with a team record 101 points. St. Louis last season needed 96 to claim the final Western Conference playoff spot.

So, the answer is yes, the Kraken obviously can be a playoff team maintaining this offensive pace. But with big-time qualifiers. Namely, the Kraken their prior seven games had averaged a Seals-like 2.14 goals per contest. Their 2-2-3 mark that span equated to an 82-point season and that won’t cut it.

In other words, more games like Thursday’s season high five-goal outburst will be needed regardless of what current averages and history might suggest.

Kraken head coach Lane Lambert knows it. Lambert also very well knows the 1986-87 Red Wings squad that made the playoffs despite the NHL’s worst offense given he’d spent the three prior seasons playing for them.

He’s in no mood to attempt a repeat. Nor does he feel the Kraken will remain in offensive lockdown.

“If you look at the shot attempts we’ve had, let’s just go back the last three games – we’ve had…187 to be exact,” Lambert had said midweek. “And we’ve had over 100 of those either blocked or miss the net. So, there’s your formula for having success, it is to get more of those attempts on net.”

Lambert feels he has the horses to do that.

A season ago, Jared McCann, Eeli Tolvanen, Mason Marchment, Kaapo Kakko and Freddy Gaudreau combined for 99 goals. They’ve currently scored seven – equivalent to 34 in a season.

Clearly, that can’t continue. Kakko finally scored Thursday in his seventh game back from a preseason injury, although he left soon after with a lower body injury. Then Tolvanen scored his second goal of the season. McCann had a team-leading three goals before his injury four weeks ago. Gaudreau should return any day after getting hurt the season’s fourth game.

So, you’d expect the offensive tide to shift once the injured guys return and others start living up to the backs of their hockey cards. After all, Lambert’s masterful job tightening the defensive structure was never supposed to be at the expense of all offense.

“We have great structure in our defensive zone,” Lambert said. “We need to get better structure in the offensive zone. There are certainly some things that we can do.”

One was slotting centerman Shane Wright out on the wing. Lambert feels Wright has a great shot and wants him in better positions to deploy it. He’d also like other shooters beyond Wright shooting more.

“We can’t defer to passing,” he said. “We’ve got to have a shot-first mentality, and we’ve got to get pucks through.”

Lambert agreed with a suggestion his players haven’t been “selfish” enough.

“That’s probably the biggest thing is that they’re being unselfish and they’re trying to set their teammate up,” Lambert said. “We want them to be selfish. If you’re selfish as a shooter, if you’re selfish as an offensive player that just means you’re going to the net, you’re putting pucks to the net and it’s good for the team.”

And good for everybody’s peace of mind. The Kraken on Thursday had been on-pace for an NHL record 41 overtime games. They’d seen 10 of 16 games decided by one goal.

It would bode well for playing tight playoff hockey if the season ended now. But with five months of action remaining, some additional scoring flurries and multi-goal wins will do well in preventing Lambert and his players from suffering a collective nervous breakdown.

Seals playoff veteran Marshall doesn’t carry many fond memories from that 1970 postseason experience, beyond his daughter, Dana, being born between Games 3 and 4 of the opening round series against Pittsburgh. True to form, the Seals scored just once in each of the first two contests, then twice apiece the next two in getting swept 4-0.

Marshall eventually left for another recent expansion franchise in the New York Islanders, spending the rest of the 1970s in better deserved playoff runs.

“Most of my favorite memories in hockey were with the Islanders,” Marshall said, laughing. “I don’t really think about the Seals much when it comes to things I enjoyed.”

Nor are the Kraken likely to reflect fondly on the historical implications of getting the most out of their paltry goal total to-date. They know this franchise record start, at best, has bought them time in the wait for offense. And that even a modest goal increase, as with Thursday’s second win this season over a Winnipeg powerhouse, should make the Kraken a much more formidable team than those playoff Seals ever amounted to.