November didn’t end exactly how the Seattle Kraken or the Carolina Hurricanes had hoped.
Both teams will try to get back on track when they meet Tuesday in Raleigh, N.C., after a pair of ugly losses over the weekend.
The Kraken moved past the .500 mark with a 3-2 victory last Monday in Anaheim but dropped the second game of the home-and-home series 5-2 on Wednesday. Seattle felt confident with two games against the lowly Sharks ahead, only to lose 8-5 on Friday in San Jose and 4-2 on Saturday back at home.
“(It’s been a lack of) execution,” said Jared McCann, the Kraken’s leading scorer (10 goals). “Making bad plays with the puck, not getting it deep, and (turning) the puck over. And it just always seems to kind of go in the back of our net. So when that happens, you’ve just got to simplify. You’re not going to beat teams scoring five, six goals every game.”
Not even the return of defenseman Vince Dunn, who missed the previous 19 games with a mid-body injury, was enough to spark Seattle on Saturday.
“It’s not effort. Guys are trying, at least, to do the right thing, but maybe overcomplicating themselves and trying to do other people’s jobs,” Dunn said, per The Seattle Times. “We talked about that before this game … I think everyone is definitely feeling the heat.”
The heat will only intensify for the Kraken, as the stop in Carolina will open a four-game trip that includes contests in the New York metropolitan area against the Islanders, Devils and Rangers.
“We have the road trip coming up. We let three big games slide on us there and these next few games are not going to be easy, so we got to find a way to pull things together here,” Dunn told the Times.
The Hurricanes lost 6-3 at home to Florida on Friday, then dropped a 6-0 decision to the host Panthers on Saturday. Carolina’s Spencer Martin allowed five goals on 28 shots Saturday before being replaced by Yaniv Perets midway through the third period.
“We have to shelf this one. The games keep coming,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “Turn the page. We are always focusing on the next day and you learn from it. This is good. We have to take our medicine here; knock us down a few notches and get regrouped, start again.
“We have a great team, we know that. When you don’t play as a team, don’t do the little things, this is what happens.”
The Hurricanes won 14 of their first 18 games but are just 2-3-1 since.
“Obviously, we got beat in every aspect. There was not a whole lot of positive out there,” Carolina captain Jordan Staal said after Saturday’s loss. “We didn’t do a good enough job of breaking the puck out, moving the puck forward, and playing in their end.”
Martin has split starts this season with the currently injured Pyotr Kochetkov (concussion). The Hurricanes signed 35-year-old goaltender Dustin Tokarski to a one-year, two-way contract Monday.
Tokarski, who has appeared in 80 NHL games, was 4-1 with a 1.61 goals-against average this season with the Hurricanes’ American Hockey League affiliate, the Chicago Wolves. Perets was reassigned to Chicago after making his season debut Saturday.
–Field Level Media
