Kraken survive a scare, win it in the skills competition
Seattle needed a shootout to beat Calgary 4-3, and needed Philipp Grubauer to be close to perfect to get there. The Kraken goaltender stopped both shooters he faced in the extra frame, sealing a win that head coach Lane Lambert pointed to as the best individual performance on his roster that night. “I thought he was our best player by far,” Lambert said. “I thought he was fantastic.”
Brandon Montour and Ryker Evans scored in the third period to erase a Calgary lead and push the game to overtime, both goals coming off feeds from Matty Beniers. Calgary answered more than once across the night before Seattle finally shut the door in the shootout, with Beniers and rookie Berkly Catton converting their attempts to finish it.
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A statement about depth, not just goaltending
Ryker Evans framed the win as part of a bigger identity forming inside Seattle’s room. “We’re going to stick up for each other because we’re all very close,” Evans said. “That’s what we need in our game.” Talk like that carries little weight in September on its own, but paired with a third-period comeback against a divisional-style opponent, it is the kind of thing coaching staffs like to see on tape before the games start counting.
Calgary will take some encouragement from pushing a mostly complete Seattle lineup into extra time, even in a loss that drops the Flames further down the preseason table. It was also one of Calgary’s last tune-ups before the roster gets finalized, with the club already into its penultimate preseason outing. For a team still searching for answers before the regular season, the fight on display mattered more than the final result going in the books as a defeat.
What it means going forward
Grubauer’s shootout save total will not show up in any box score that matters come October, but for a Kraken team leaning on veteran goaltending to buy time for a young core, nights like this one build exactly the kind of trust a coaching staff wants heading into the real schedule.
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