PITTSBURGH — Returning to an arena where he’d enjoyed a true home-ice advantage for years was a somewhat daunting task for Jared McCann and teammates on a Kraken squad with the league’s worst road record.
But right from the outset of their stunning 2-1 win Thursday night over the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Kraken served notice things would be different. They went right at the streaking home side, withstood a mid-game pushback, then overcame some third period adversity before McCann finally put a puck in the Pittsburgh net with 3:56 to go in regulation.
Adam Larsson capped the first sudden death victory in Kraken history on a wrist shot from the high slot to flip a script for a team known for staying close but not finishing.
“We’ve been in that situation a lot this season,” McCann said of his team working hard all night only to find itself trailing late. “And we stuck with it. You know, it was a learning experience as a team and I think we kind of grew from it.”
That the Kraken even found themselves in a scoreless game nearly halfway through the third period was somewhat surprising, given the Penguins had won six straight overall and eight in a row at PPG Paints Arena. Then, a somewhat dubious goaltender interference call on Marcus Johansson — whose feet got kicked out by sliding netminder Tristan Jarry as the forward chased his own breakaway rebound — led to Evgeni Malkin beating Philipp Grubauer from the high slot for a power play goal that opened the scoring.
For a while, it looked as if the only goal scored on Grubauer would be enough. Especially when Jordan Eberle was stopped point blank by Jarry after being sent in alone with four minutes to play. But McCann said his mindset after that save was “We’re going to get one” — which the Kraken did seconds later when he won the ensuing faceoff.
The puck eventually went to Vince Dunn for a shot from the right point that McCann deflected home.
“That’s what I thought about at the draw there was, ‘We’re going to get one, we’re doing it,'” McCann said. “It was a good team effort, obviously. We played well. We played to our strengths and now we’ve got to build from this.”
It was a sweet homecoming for McCann, who leads the Kraken with 17 goals after being traded away from Pittsburgh days before last July’s expansion draft. The Penguins worried they’d lose McCann for nothing if the Kraken selected him, so they dealt him to the Maple Leafs and he was chosen days later off that team.
McCann maintained after the overtime that he cherished his time here and was appreciative of how the Penguins “brought my career back to life” the last three seasons. But if the Pens revived his career, McCann has taken it to another level entirely with his new team — one showing serious improvement since the extended Christmas break.
“I keep harping on this, but you’ve got to think defense first,” McCann said. “You really do, especially against a team like that, who are so skilled offensively. Obviously, they’re some of the best players in the game so we’ve got to get them to make a mistake and tonight we took advantage of that.”
After out-chancing the Penguins the opening period, the Kraken were held to just two shots in the middle frame. But the Penguins weren’t exactly dominating either, except for one late stretch of more than 90 seconds when the Kraken couldn’t get the puck out of their zone.
Johansson wound up breaking his stick and the Penguins enjoyed a partial man-advantage for a full minute. They got off three shots on Grubauer, all one-timers, while the stick-less Johansson skated around furiously blocking others.
Finally, Eberle blocked one last attempt and cleared the zone so exhausted Kraken skaters could finally be replaced.
“You don’t chase in that situation,” Grubauer said of the marathon shift. “You get in trouble as soon as you start chasing with four guys because a stick’s broken. … So, I think we did good, stayed tight in our shooting lanes and kept guys to the outside.”
The Kraken came out aggressively in the third and kept the pressure on, while Grubauer repeatedly made stops. His biggest of the night came on Jeff Carter just moments after McCann’s tying goal.
And unlike so many prior nights the Kraken have yielded big goals after scoring one themselves, that stop on Carter provided Grubauer’s teammates a chance to finish what they’d started. Alex Wennberg did that a minute into the overtime session, carrying the puck deep into Pittsburgh’s end before feeding Larsson perfectly for the winning goal.
“We didn’t give them room to make plays like in some other games,” said Grubauer, who was pulled three goals and five minutes into a 6-1 routing by the same Penguins last month at Climate Pledge Arena. “As long as you can keep that zero, you’ve got a good chance to win. And once we gave up that goal, we were right back at it.
“I think we’ve had games where we didn’t come out right away after giving up a goal, so I think over the last couple of games we did a better job.”
Kraken coach Dave Hakstol had mentioned coming in that this building is “a hard place to win” and presented a challenge for his first-year squad. The Kraken entered with an NHL-worst 4-11-2 road record and hadn’t won an away contest since Dec. 14 in San Jose.
“For us, it’s an enjoyable win but one that we worked for,” he said. “Our game didn’t change a whole lot tonight from the drop of the puck all the way through to the winning goal in overtime and that was good to see.”
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