The Seattle Kraken, who lost the first two games of their five-game road trip, will look for a turnaround Tuesday against the Toronto Maple Leafs, who will be playing their second game in two nights.
The Kraken fell 5-2 to the Washington Capitals on Saturday and 3-2 to the Carolina Hurricanes on Sunday, leaving the expansion team 1-8-1 in its past 10 games.
The Maple Leafs are coming off an anxious 5-4 victory over the host Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday night, a game in which Toronto blew a 3-0 lead.
Columbus tied the game at 3 early in the third period before Alexander Kerfoot and Michael Bunting scored for Toronto. The Blue Jackets pulled within one goal with 48 seconds left before the Maple Leafs hung on.
The result follows a 6-4 home loss to the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday, when Toronto failed to hold a third-period lead, and a 5-1 home loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday that ended a three-game Maple Leafs winning streak.
Petr Mrazek played goal for Toronto on Monday, making 31 saves. Jack Campbell is expected to start on Tuesday.
The Maple Leafs defeated the Kraken 6-2 on Feb. 14 in Seattle behind a goal and two assists from Mitchell Marner.
The Maple Leafs are potent with a man advantage and the Kraken allowed two power-play goals to the Hurricanes on Sunday. Seattle had one power-play goal.
“They won the special teams (matchup) by one,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “But it’s not all on the PK. You miss a clear (chance) on the first one, especially late in the (penalty) kill, with tired legs. … We’ve got to complete the kill.”
Hakstol said there was no reason to overreact and no adjustment was needed.
“You know, five-on-five the fight level was good,” he said. “We weren’t as clean as you’d like to be with the puck. You’re going to see some of that with the back-to-back (games). But in terms of our readiness to go out and play, it was real good at the drop of the puck.”
Calle Jarnkrok had a goal and an assist for Seattle on Sunday, and Alex Wennberg added a goal.
Toronto’s Auston Matthews scored his 40th goal of the season on Monday, giving him the fourth 40-goal season of his NHL career. He joins Darryl Sittler as the only players in franchise history to have four 40-goal seasons.
“I think we felt like we did a lot of really good things on Saturday, so I think the start that we had (Monday) was really positive,” Matthews said. “(After) letting them back in the game … I thought our bench and team as a whole just stayed poised and confident and we just kept playing and scored a couple big goals to give ourselves a lead.”
Linemates Matthews, Marner and Bunting each had a goal and an assist at Columbus.
“Some of the stuff (Matthews) does, I just kind of giggle to myself midgame because it’s pretty remarkable and he’s such an exceptional player,” Bunting said.
Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe added, “I liked a lot about our game. Obviously, don’t like the start of the second period, that goal they scored early in the second that’s a real downer on the game for me. … But, obviously, the first period was as good as we could ask for. You want to follow that up and keep building on it, but we weren’t able to do that, so that was the disappointing part of the game.”
–Field Level Media