The Seattle Kraken haven’t been healthy up front all season.
And now they’ll be even more shorthanded heading into Saturday’s game at Ottawa.
The Kraken placed Jaden Schwartz, who is second on the team with eight goals, on injured reserve Thursday with a lower-body injury.
General manager Ron Francis told The Seattle Times that Schwartz is expected to miss about six weeks.
Forward Brandon Tanev suffered a lower-body injury in the season opener and missed 14 games before returning, only to get hurt again and miss the past two games. Andre Burakovsky has been out since mid-October with an upper-body injury.
“That’s the nature of the game,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “(Schwartz is) a guy that is important to us, but now we’ve got an opportunity for somebody else and collectively the group has to fill in those holes and overcome his absence here for a little while.”
The Kraken recalled Max McCormick from Coachella Valley of the American Hockey League. McCormick was the Firebirds’ leading scorer with 17 points (eight goals, nine assists) in 16 games. McCormick has played in 93 career NHL games, for Seattle, Carolina and Ottawa.
Schwartz missed the Kraken’s 4-3 loss at Toronto on Thursday in which the Maple Leafs’ Mitch Marner not only had a hat trick but also scored the winner in the shootout.
The Kraken rallied from a two-goal deficit in the third period, but still suffered their third consecutive defeat (0-2-1).
“We lost a point in a shootout,” Hakstol said. “We were the better team; I call it as I see it. If we don’t play well, I’ll let you know, and I think I do that pretty honestly. We played really well. We were the better team and I thought we deserved a better outcome. It’s disappointing to lose in the shootout.”
Jared McCann scored twice for the Kraken and Eeli Tolvanen also tallied. Goaltender Philipp Grubauer made 25 saves.
“I think we played really well,” Tolvanen said. “I think that was one of the best 60, 65 minutes we played so far this season. I felt like everybody was on their game. We were down two goals going into the third and you saw everybody putting the effort in and everybody wanted to come back.”
The Senators will be playing the second half of a back-to-back after losing 4-2 on Friday at Columbus. It was Ottawa’s third loss in a row, a span in which the Senators have been outscored 14-5.
Brady Tkachuk had a goal and an assist, and Claude Giroux also tallied for the Senators, who blew a two-goal lead. They struggled to solve Elvis Merzlikins, who made 41 saves for the Blue Jackets.
“We did enough things to win the game,” Ottawa coach D.J. Smith said. “At the end of the day, we don’t get a couple of blocks and they get some tips, and they go into the net. We’ve got to find ways to score.”
–Field Level Media
