Postgame: "It's a great lesson for us."

Behind a rush of five unanswered goals in the first two periods, a three-point game from Derick Brassard, and 24 saves from Carter Hart, the Philadelphia Flyers sent the Kraken to a 6-1 defeat at Wells Fargo Center, dropping the Kraken to 1-2-1 on their five game road trip.

Owning a share of high grade scoring chances in the opening minutes, the Kraken earned a wide open net look for Jordan Eberle. The problem: Carter Hart happened, sprawling out with miracle glove save to prevent Eberle’s first goal with the Kraken. Right back down the ice they went – and a Claude Giroux one-timer put the Flyers up 1-0, swinging momentum to the Flyers for the rest of the night.

The Kraken have 24 hours to process and file the final result mentally, before facing the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday night with a chance to finish the trip even, at 2-2-1.

Notes for tonight:

• Carson Soucy ended a drought of 33 games without a goal, scoring in the second period (his last, coming with Minnesota, Mar. 10, 2021 against Vegas). In the “did you know” column: it was the first goal scored by a defenseman in Kraken history.
• Out of the lineup: Yanni Gourde (off-season shoulder surgery), Calle Jarnkrok (COVID-19 protocol) and Colin Blackwell (lower body injury): a combined 42 goals from last season. Marcus Johansson (lower body) has also twice his the 20-goal plateau.
• Eberle led the Kraken with five shots on net.
• Shortly before Carson Soucy’s goal, tempers began to flare to which nobody should be surprised – emotional response is typical when the score becomes as crooked as a five-goal deficit.Jamie Oleksiak fought (and arguably, earned the upper hand) with Nick Seeler, with 42 penalty minutes among six infractions dished out between the two teams.
• Jared McCann’s assist on Soucy’s goal marked his eighth point in the last seven games – dating back to last season.
• More tempers flared at 9:11 of the third period after the Kraken came up short on a power play, Chris Driedger flashed a glove save, and Joel Farabee responded by putting the Flyers up 6-1: Nathan Bastian and former Seattle Thunderbird Nate Thompson dropped the gloves – both players receiving five minutes for fighting and 10-minute misconduct penalties.
• According to the useful analytics sitenaturalstattrick.com: this one pegged scoring chances (think of anything from inside this “home plate” boundary) in favor of the Flyers, 29-19. But – the Kraken actually edged the Flyers in “high danger” scoring chances, 13-12 – in other words, they wound up getting more chances to score from the likeliest area to score in hockey: between the circles, and at the front of the net. Putting this into context, though, the Flyers had six “high danger chances” in the first period. The Kraken had three.
• Philipp Grubauer, in net for his fourth straight game, exited in the second period after Justin Braun’s two-on-one goal made it 5-0 from the right circle, paving the way for Chris Driedger (six saves) in his Kraken debut.
• Not the result the Kraken wanted for him, but major congratulations to assistant equipment manager Kris Stierwalt’s 1,000thgame of his career – an incredible benchmark after six seasons in the AHL (Milwaukee), one in the KHL (Medvescak Zagreb), and the now defunct IHL (Flint).

FROM THE PODIUM:

Head coach Dave Hakstol on tonight’s game:
“We had a really competitive start, first ten minutes. We did have a couple of good scoring chances. We gave up the first goal from 200 feet away, which was a little bit of a theme tonight on, probably, I believe four their goals. We got beat up ice after that first goal, we got back on our heels, and we really didn't regain any consistent push.”

Hakstol on if the results were dictated from effort or energy:
“No, there's a lot of things that it looks like. We were out of sync. We couldn't we couldn't put ourselves back on the right track. And that's the end result.”

Hakstol, on the decision to pull Philipp Grubauer:
“No, you know, if I had a do over I would have got him out of there one (goal) sooner. So, no - not indicative of his play whatsoever. He’s played a lot of hockey for us, and has been outstanding.”

Hakstol on what needs to be said, after players speak up on accountable parts of their game:
“There’s a positive thing that there's an understanding of that, but you know we have to look at it, we don't obviously have a whole lot of time. But we'll look at those things and they have to get back into our game really quickly. We drop the puck 20 hours from now in New Jersey. I look at the goals that we gave up - and there were four of them that were from at least 150 feet away that began, whether it be, through a turnover or some other type of play up ice. And then, those plays ended up in the back of the net. So those are things that absolutely can't happen.”

Joonas Donskoi, his thoughts on the game:
“It starts with how I think it's a great lesson for us. There’s a lot of things we did not do tonight but I think, it starts with battles – battling hard, forechecking, being out there for each other. I think we didn't do any of that tonight, so I think that's the main thing that we're going to learn. But it happened. I think it would be really easy to start hanging our heads right now, but the good thing is we play again tomorrow. We know we can play. We’ve played some good hockey on this road. We’ve just got to regroup and go out there again tomorrow. We know what we need to fix.”

Donskoi on where the breakdowns occurred:
“I don’t know, like I said it starts with the battles. At least for me what I felt like, and I'm sure everybody felt like that in the locker room. That's where it starts from, winning those battles. You have the puck more, you know you have more puck possession, then you start creating offense and this all starts from there. So I think that's the main thing coming out of tonight.”