Kraken Blow Another Lead, Then Montour Rescues Them Against Maple Leafs

Once again, the Kraken made their fans sweat, and once again they found a way out. Seattle won 5-4 over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday, but the path there was another tense third period that started with a two-goal lead and ended with Brandon Montour's winner with 33 seconds left.

This is now the fourth time since Oct. 13 that Seattle has let a multi-goal lead slip. Against Philadelphia, they led by two, lost it, and recovered to win in a shootout. Against Detroit, they gave up a three-goal lead and again won in a shootout. Against Utah, another two-goal lead evaporated before they finished the job 5-3. Wednesday followed the same script, and the result was the same.

The third-period problem is becoming a pattern

Credit where it's due: Seattle keeps finding the answer. Still, four comeback-style wins in a short stretch is a trend worth watching, and it's a fair question whether the team is protecting leads too passively when it has them.

Game state plays a role. When you're ahead by two or more, the instinct is to sit back and defend, even if the plan is to keep attacking. The ideal version of this team, I think, is one that takes a lead and buries the opponent rather than needing late heroics every time.

Chandler Stephenson, who finished with two points, described the mindset from the trailing side. "Teams that are down… I mean, we've been in that situation," he said. "You're just kind of playing, I don't want to say recklessly, but you're just playing. It doesn't really matter if one goes in because you're down. So, whereas when you're protecting a lead, you're being more conservative, you're trying to obviously defend a little bit better, and sometimes it's that you defend a little bit too much and kind of back yourself into a corner."

Coach Lane Lambert has leaned on the positive side of these four wins rather than dwelling on the lost leads. He pointed to the circumstances of Toronto's goals. Jack Roslovic's goal that cut the deficit to 4-3 came at 4-on-4, and Auston Matthews' tying goal arrived with Sergei Bobrovsky pulled for an extra skater.

"I think that you'd always like to see [a more assertive approach] a little bit, for sure," Lambert said. "We'd love to have a few more shots and things like that. But I thought we were really sound. They didn't get a scoring chance 5-on-5 in the third period. Let me just put it that way."

That's a coach who is satisfied with the structure even while the scoreboard made it look messy. Whether that satisfaction holds if the comebacks stop coming is the question to watch.

Depth scoring and a defense that chipped in

Seattle got contributions from across the lineup again. Berkly Catton scored another strong goal, Stephenson added a power-play tally, and three goals came from the blue line. The blue-line output is the part that stands out to me, because it's the kind of depth that keeps a team afloat when the top forwards are being checked hard.

Josh Mahura was the standout of that group. He scored his first goal of the season, and it was his first since the overtime winner he scored against these same Leafs last year. Toronto had just taken a 1-0 lead with a late first-period power-play goal from Gavin McKenna, his first of two on the night, and Mahura's answer came quickly.

Early in the second, Freddy Gaudreau fed a quick-out pass from the right half wall to Ben Meyers, who hit Mahura in stride. Mahura read the odd-man rush and jumped into the play, and Meyers' pass landed on his stick with an open net waiting. That made it 2-1.

Mahura described the game plan that got them there. "I think you kind of see who each team's starting in the game and in the periods, and our mindset is just to keep it simple," he said. "Try to get some… I don't know, I don't want to say O-zone time, but just some puck possession time and try to play not in our end and be breaking pucks out. So it's nothing crazy like in the sense of, we're trying to necessarily accomplish something, but just going out and executing our game plan."

Lambert opened the game with his fourth line and third defense pair, and he did it again in this matchup. He explained that it was a matchup decision, since Toronto started its fourth line and Lambert had last change at home. It's the kind of detail that shows a coach planning shift by shift.

Ryker Evans then made it 4-2 with a goal that might have been the best of the night. Samoskevich carried the puck through the neutral zone after Stephenson started the transition, cut hard at the red line to create room, and found Evans flying over the blue line. Evans fired in stride, and the shot clanked off the far post and rolled in behind Bobrovsky.

"It was very impressive. Impressive enough that I didn't even know it went in," Samoskevich said of Evans' shot. "He's a great player. I think he's playing really good right now. I think everyone's playing really good, and when we play at that speed, we're hard to play against."

Montour's winner and the finish

With about 40 seconds left in regulation and overtime looking likely, Bobby McMann floated a high flip toward Bobrovsky. The puck took an odd bounce as Matty Beniers crashed the net, and Bobrovsky had to cover it and take the whistle.

Beniers won the ensuing offensive-zone draw back. Jordan Eberle grabbed the loose puck and slid it across to Montour, who had circled outside to find space away from Roslovic. Montour skated in to just above the right dot, wound up, and fired a shot that squeezed between Bobrovsky's pads and into the net.

It's a clean finish to a messy night. Seattle's late-game habits may be one of the season's real storylines, but a team that keeps finding the winner is also a team that believes it can. The next test is whether they can start closing these games earlier, because the margin for error in a playoff race is much thinner than it is in October.