Kraken Gift Lightning Winner in 4-3 Overtime Loss as Montour Exits Early

Hockey is a game of mistakes, and the Seattle Kraken made one, maybe two or three, too many on Thursday. Those errors cost them a standings point in a 4-3 overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning. What stings is that Seattle nearly erased every one of them and forced the extra period anyway.

Coach Lane Lambert pinned the difference on something basic. "[It was] skating," he said of what changed from period to period. "We weren't moving our feet. We weren't making quick enough plays, so when we don't do that, we look very average. When we do it, we look above average."

The loss still leaves Seattle 3-0-1 on a road trip that many viewed as a stiff early test. A win Saturday night would bring them to nine points out of a possible 10. Lambert saw the value in the point but also the strain. "That's a good point for us to get, certainly being down like that in the third period," he said. "You start getting into Game 4 and Day 8 or 9 of a road trip, and it starts to become fatiguing. I thought we had a little bit of fatigue tonight."

Giveaways Cost Seattle Two Points

Tampa's first goal started with pressure. Freddy Gaudreau forced Andrei Vasilevskiy and Emil Lilleberg into a turnover, and Ryan Winterton punished it from the doorstep. Seattle answered about 11 minutes later.

The tying goal came off a rush that looked like the Kraken had plenty of numbers back. Brandon Montour and Ryker Evans both shaded toward Brayden Point, though, and that left Brandon Hagel alone on the right side. Hagel fired, chased down his own rebound, and tucked it over Philipp Grubauer's shoulder.

Evans gets some benefit of the doubt here. Berkly Catton appeared to have Hagel marked on the backcheck, but once Evans slid toward Point, Hagel slipped away from Catton and had all the time he needed. Defensive reads like that are hard to make at full speed, and they're exactly the sort of thing a team pays for when the rest of its structure is working.

Seattle's worst stretch came later. Jared McCann's power-play goal at 2:54 of the third had tied the game 2-2. Then Ville Ottavainen lost the puck near the side of the net, a 24-year-old rookie defenceman who had scored his first NHL goal in Philadelphia only two nights earlier. He regained possession and then tried to stickhandle straight through Grubauer's crease rather than move the puck to open ice. He lost it again, this time right onto Ilya Mikheyev's stick. Mikheyev's shot didn't connect cleanly, but the puck popped up and beat Grubauer. Tampa led 3-2.

Overtime delivered the last blow. Victor Hedman carried the puck through the neutral zone on a 1-on-3, and Shane Wright, Evans and Mackie Samoskevich spread out at the blue line and left a lane up the middle. Hedman read it, drove past all three Kraken players, and poked the puck under Grubauer. That's a play that makes a former Norris Trophy winner look like himself, and Seattle's spacing gave him every opportunity.

A standings point in Tampa is never a reason to hang your head. Still, this was a game Seattle could have won. A few sloppy plays turned a manageable night into a loss.

Beniers Keeps Seattle Alive

Fatigue showed up in the legs, and Seattle didn't have its usual energy. Tampa is a good team, and it took a 2-1 lead into the third in its own building. Without a late response, the Kraken would have been stuck in regulation with a loss that started with their own mistakes.

That response came from Matty Beniers. With about four minutes left, he won an offensive-zone faceoff back to Vince Dunn at the point, then went straight to the front of the net. He stayed on the Lightning centreman's side of the crease while Dunn wound up, got a stick on the shot, and redirected it past Vasilevskiy to tie the game at 3-3 with 4:19 remaining.

Lambert was clear about where the goal came from. "Obviously, it's a big goal for us," he said. "He did a really good job of winning the face-off and going to the net. We drew it up that way. We felt we could beat their centerman to the net, so he did exactly that."

The tally was also Beniers' 200th NHL point. He downplayed the milestone. "It's very, very cool," he said. "Yeah, I don't know. It's a sweet thing to think about, but I think I'm just more focused on the team winning at this point."

Montour's Exit Thins the Blue Line

Seattle entered the season hoping for good health from its key players. McCann has been one of the early bright spots, with his third goal and eighth point in eight games. Kaapo Kakko and Chandler Stephenson were also expected to be central to the group, and the Kraken were counting on them staying in the lineup.

Montour may be the most important of those players. He was limited to 64 games last season because of a bursa on his ankle, a broken hand, and the death of his brother. He also said injuries lingered for much of the year, which makes any new problem a concern for a team that needs him on the ice.

Montour's night got worrying early. The Kraken Hockey Network noted during the game that he had gone missing from the bench midway through the first period. He did return after a few minutes. Early in the second, he fell awkwardly while going over the blue line and did not return. Seattle listed it as a lower-body injury. Montour's status for Saturday's game at Florida has not been updated.

Losing him forced five defencemen to rotate for more than half the game. Ryan Lindgren is already out, and Seattle is carrying Ottavainen and Josh Mahura in the lineup, with Cale Fleury available as a healthy extra. There's a chance all three are in the lineup Saturday in Florida, and that's a patchwork group if Montour can't go.

Here's the thing: the Kraken showed they can match a strong team and find a point on the road. The defensive mistakes and the thin blue line are the problems to fix before Saturday. If Montour is available, the team's depth looks much better. If he isn't, the Kraken will have to find out quickly how much their defence can carry.