Penguins start hot but 'couldn't find a way to finish' in loss to Kraken

SEATTLE -- Sometimes it's just one of those nights.

The Penguins' 2-0 loss to the Kraken here at Climate Pledge Arena on Thursday snapped a three-game win streak and a four-game point streak, and was a missed opportunity to pick up two crucial points in the standings in a pretty pivotal point of the season.

All that disappointment is amplified by the fact that the Penguins genuinely did play well enough to win.

"For a lot of the night, we were the better team," Mike Sullivan said. "We just couldn't find a way to finish."

The Penguins outshot the Kraken 28-16 through the first 40 minutes. They dominated in the shot attempt category in that span too, by a margin of 60-29. Even looking at only high-danger attempts, the Penguins were the better team, recording 13 to the Kraken's three.

But it was the Kraken who had the game's only goal though those first two periods, and it was a flukey one. Seattle's Will Borgen took a shot that hit Alex Wennberg and deflected straight into the air above the crease. Oliver Bjorkstrand batted it in past Tristan Jarry, through the five-hole:

"It's tough when the puck goes up in the air like that," Jarry said. "Your trajectory of your body is looking down. And usually the way the pucks traveling, it's usually down to up. It's tough to track the puck from the ceiling down. Just lost track of it for a split second, and they were able to get it before we did."

The Kraken were the better team in the third period. They outshot the Penguins 12-5. High-danger attempts were even at 3-3, but it was one of the Kraken's high-danger looks on the power play that beat Jarry late and put the game away:

It's a tough game to break down. I mean, look at the heat map of where the unblocked shot attempts were coming from. One team was getting significantly more off from around the net, and it wasn't the Kraken:

Also per Natural Stat Trick, the Penguins generated eight rebound attempts. The Kraken generated four. The Penguins generated three rush attempts, and the Kraken generated one.

Philipp Grubauer was great in net for Seattle, that's for sure. But is there anything the Penguins could have done a little better to make his life more difficult?

"We didn't get the rebounds, the second chances," Lars Eller told me after the game. "We didn't have enough bodies at times. But I think we had enough quality chances to score a couple of goals. Most nights we get those kind of chances, we're going to score two or three."

That sentiment was echoed almost exactly by Rickard Rakell -- who generated three of those eight rebound attempts himself.

"We had a lot of shots on net," Rakell said. "But I feel like we didn't really get the rebounds, second opportunities to extend zone time. They were pretty good at getting the puck out."

I asked Sullivan the same question, and he said "we certainly tried" to do those things to make it difficult on Grubauer.

"There was a fair amount of traffic," he continued. "There was a lot of chaos at the net. ... There were some good looks that we had off the rush. There were some in-zone where I thought we had net traffic and were trying to put pucks on the net. That's one way to manufacture goals. We just couldn't find one."

Even though the Penguins were getting the better chances through the first 40 minutes, Sullivan still switched up his lines to look for that spark in the third. Drew O'Connor replaced Reilly Smith on the third line, and Smith was bumped down to the third. Smith took the spot of Jesse Puljujarvi, who was elevated to the second line to replace O'Connor.

Some of that shuffling could have been an effort to get Evgeni Malkin going, as he was only one of two Penguins skaters along with Eller to not record a single shot on goal. But even then, it wasn't for lack of effort. Malkin attempted five shots -- one missed the net entirely, and four were blocked. He wasn't alone in getting a lot of his shots blocked, though. The Kraken blocked 26 shots to the Penguins' 15, and even a fair amount players who were hitting the net were also seeing a ton of their attempts blocked. Rakell had three shots hit the net and four blocked, and Erik Karlsson had three hit the net and six blocked.

Sullivan thought it was a night where "offense was a little bit hard to come by" -- for both teams, not just his own.

"You know, the first goal they get, it's a fairly fortuitous bounce," Sullivan said. "And then obviously the power play goal at the end just just makes it tougher. But for most of the night, it just seemed like it was one of those games."

It was just "one of those games." The Penguins didn't play a perfect game, but they certainly played well enough to earn at least a point, if not come away with the win. That's not to say that the Penguins were satisfied after this one. The frustration from the players was evident in the locker room. They know that the results are what matter, and they didn't get them tonight.

All they can do is regroup and get ready for an Alberta weekend against the Flames and Oilers.

THE ESSENTIALS

• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule

THE HIGHLIGHTS

THE THREE STARS

As selected at Climate Pledge Arena:

1. Philipp Grubauer, Kraken G
2. Oliver Bjorkstrand, Kraken RW
3. Alex Wennberg, Kraken C

THE IN-GAME INJURIES

• Penguins: None

• Kraken: None

THE LINEUPS

Sullivan’s lines and pairings:

Reilly Smith - Sidney Crosby - Rickard Rakell
Drew O'Connor - Evgeni Malkin - Valtteri Puustinen
Emil Bemstrom - Lars Eller - Jesse Puljujarvi
Jansen Harkins - Noel Acciari - Jeff Carter

P.O Joseph - Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson - Erik Karlsson
Ryan Graves - Chad Ruhwedel

And for Dave Hakstol's Kraken:

Jaden Schwartz - Alex Wennberg - Oliver Bjorkstrand
Jared McCann - Matty Beniers - Jordan Eberle
Eeli Tolvanen - Yanni Gourde - Tye Kartye
Tomas Tatar - Kailer Yamamoto - Brandon Tanev

Vince Dunn - Adam Larsson
Jamie Oleksiak - Will Borgen
Brian Dumoulin - Justin Schultz

THE SCHEDULE

The Penguins are scheduled to practice in Calgary on Friday at 2:15 p.m. Eastern. Next game is Saturday at 10:08 p.m. against the Flames.

THE FEED

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