The Need to Knows
- The Time: 7:30 pm PT / 10:30 pm ET
- The Place: T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas, Nevada
- Where to Watch: ESPN
- Where to Listen: KJR 93.3 FM
- An Opposing Viewpoint: Knights On Ice
Know Your Enemy
It wasn’t all too long ago that the Kraken faced the Vegas Golden Knights. In fact, it was on March 12th, better known as Jordan Eberle’s 1,000th game. That game didn’t start the Kraken’s current 5-game losing streak, but in some ways it seemed to help cement it. A few mistakes cost the Kraken the game as the Golden Knights’ Stanley Cup winning talent was able to capitalize to come back from a deficit and win in overtime. Now, it’s not like the Golden Knights are invincible. After all, this same Kraken team was able to shut them out during the Winter Classic. Vegas currently sits in the second wild card spot in the Western Conference, which isn’t exactly where one would expect the defending Cup champions to be. Additionally, coming into this game, their record is only 4-6-0 over the last 10 games. For comparison’s sake, the Kraken’s record over their last 10 games is 4-5-1. The difference between these two teams comes from how they’ve played in earlier stretches of the season. Vegas hasn’t been the most consistent, but they’ve pulled it together enough to earn 11 more points than the Kraken have.
Game Preview
If you didn’t garner it from what I wrote above, let me reiterate it in a different way: the Golden Knights are currently the team to beat if anyone below them wants to make the playoffs. They sit in the second wild card spot with 79 points. The Kraken currently have 68. No, Seattle hasn’t been officially eliminated yet, but the inevitable is staring them down now.
Throughout my preview pieces this season, I’ve been focused on what the playoff race looks like. I remember saying how teams that are in a playoff position by American Thanksgiving more often than not make the playoffs. At that time, the Kraken were in that race, but they weren’t in a high ranking spot. They were barely in that chase, in the place that those teams that don’t make the playoffs after all more often than not sit in.
Even now, I still don’t want to throw it in and say it’s over. Yet, it’s a massive feat that this Kraken team has to overcome. To beat the Golden Knights tonight would be a statement win that says they aren’t going to fully give up and hand the playoffs over to an expansion rival. To lose tonight, though, would be as close to saying “We give up” as a team can.
There have been questions about what kind of effort this Kraken team is actually giving. Allyson wrote about how Coach Dave Hakstol doesn’t seem to want to admit the mentality that seems to be piling up with his team. How much of this current collapse could be avoidable? How much of this is underlying that last season’s results were actually an illusion that fooled Kraken fans (and myself, I’ll admit) into thinking this team was better than it actually is? How much is all of this a combination of both? It’s difficult to work out exactly what the underlying issues are. What isn’t difficult, though, is realizing that the Kraken have pretty much no room for error right now—and the past week and a half has shown that error is all this team seems capable of.
I’m not going to lie: it sucks to be at the tail end of March and write about how a team seems to no longer have any gas left in the tank to make a push for the postseason. It sucks to see the games no longer have any true meaning to win for. It sucks less to start imagining what the next prospect for Seattle might be with a first rounder in the top half, but that’s the consolation prize for missing the playoffs. After the taste that we all got last year watching the Kraken in that chase for the Stanley Cup, it’s heart-wrenching to realize that, with all probability, there’s not going to be a repeat of it this year. Sure, we are going to do all we can here at this site to get everyone excited for the draft, but it’s not the same as playoff hockey.
It would be nice to see the Kraken win tonight, because wins are always going to feel better than losses, but it feels like there’s too much ground to catch up on to feel like any wins are going to allow Seattle to punch its ticket into the playoffs. They’re running out of time, nowhere near the finish line, but without a miracle, they aren’t moving forward this season. (And if you know the source material of the song I linked to and referenced as I thought about the team’s bleak immediate future, we need to be friends.)
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