Kraken (25-30-4) at Blues (26-26-6) | 5:00 p.m.

One: Energy, Effort, Execute

To a player, every member of the Kraken felt like the 4-1 score in Sunday’s game with Tampa Bay didn’t accurately reflect what happened on the ice. It’s not hard to agree. Seattle generated more shot volume and quality than they allowed and were down just 1-0 until the final ten minutes of the game. So, what needs to carry over, and what needs to change? Vince Dunn said he liked his team’s effort but the one thing the Kraken could have improved offensively was fighting more to get to the dangerous areas net front and get some traffic to challenge the other team’s goaltender.

Defensively, the energy and effort come down to playing as aggressively as the Kraken have been since coming out of the 4 Nations’ break. Especially versus Tampa, you could see players closing in and keeping tighter gaps with opponents. Timely reads had Seattle benefitting from blocking both passes and shots. But doing that consistently so that there aren’t “chances we’d like to take back” as Dunn described given to the other team.

Two: Top Line Tangle

After joining the Kraken on Dec. 19, it took some time to figure out where Kaapo Kakko fit best in the lineup, he immediately was paired with center Matty Beniers and then after two games with Jaden Schwartz on the other wing in late December, those three became a permanent fixture as the Kraken’s de facto top line. The three have played the last nineteen games together with solid results. Most nights they aren’t just gaining the advantage offensively (10 goals scored; plus-12 shot attempt differential) they are doing it going against opponents’ top lines. Last game they came out even in shot quality and plus-5 in shot attempts against Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov, and Jake Guentzel; and in Florida, they created 70-percent of all shot attempts and 63-percent of all shot quality against mainly Sam Reinhart, Aleksander Barkov and Carter Verhaeghe.

St. Louis poses another challenge in a top line of Jake Neighbours, Robert Thomas, and Pavel Buchnevich who has been routinely gaining the advantage offensively and has scored 11 goals for their team while allowing just six in 192 minutes of ice time.

Watching which line comes out on top of this battle could be a very interesting game within the game and a key if the Kraken want to come away with two standings points.

Three: Know the Foe

Fifty-eight games into their season, the St. Louis Blues sit at exactly .500 with a 26-26-6 record. With new head coach Jim Montgomery (hired Nov 24) at the helm, they’ve had their bright spots: goaltender Jordan Binnington, albeit known for inconsistency, is fresh off backstopping Team Canada to a 4 Nations Face-off championship; two off-season acquisitions via offer sheet (Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg) have proved to be valuable additions in both ends of the ice and they are top ten in the league in shots from the slot; rush and cycle chances. They also have a player in Jordan Kyrou who is leading them in goals (23) and points (46) who scored twice on the Kraken in the first game of the season and is fifth in the league in rush chances this year. The flip side? Special teams have been a struggle with both their power play (23) and penalty kill (29) ranking towards the bottom of the league. And while Binnington can be unpredictable, backup Joel Hofer has outright struggled allowing just shy of a half-goal more than he should every game. Just like the Kraken, they’ve split their back-to-back coming out of the 4 Nations break.