The Seattle Kraken trusted the process, and they're now a win away from an NHL playoff spot. Tuesday's comeback showed what they could do under pressure.
It's still not quite official, but the Seattle Kraken have moved within sniffing distance of their franchise's first NHL playoff berth.
On the heels of an 8-1 home win over the Arizona Coyotes on Monday night, the Kraken picked up their first-ever win at Rogers Arena in Vancouver on Tuesday, climbing out of a 2-0 hole to beat the Canucks by a 5-2 score.
"We've got more composure in our game," said forward Yanni Gourde, who got Seattle on the board with a floating wrister that handcuffed Vancouver goaltender Collin Delia late in Tuesday's first period.
"We know what we can achieve," added Gourde, who won two Stanley Cups with the Tampa Bay Lightning before he was claimed by Seattle in the 2021 expansion draft. "We know that if we trust that process, the outcome is going to be there for us."
The biggest turning point in the game came early in the second period when Seattle's Vince Dunn and Alexander Wennberg took penalties 66 seconds apart to give the Canucks a lengthy 5-on-3 opportunity.
After holding Vancouver to just one shot with the two-man advantage, Dunn seized a breakaway chance when he was released from the penalty box. And though he didn't score, the play disrupted the Canucks' power-play rhythms.
Sixteen seconds before Wennberg's penalty expired, Brandon Tanev tied the game 2-2 after he and Jared McCann created a shorthanded 2-on-1 opportunity.
"You're out there to do a job and block shots and get the kill," said Tanev, who has hit career highs with 16 goals and 35 points this season. "When you have those opportunities to get a shorthand goal like that, you want to bear down and put it away."
Tuesday's goal was the 10th shorthanded marker in Tanev's career. He's had at least one shorthanded goal in every season since 2017-18 with the Winnipeg Jets. One night earlier against Arizona, McCann converted while the Kraken were a man down in the first period for what proved to be his third game-winning goal of the season.
The two markers were just the fifth and sixth shorties of the year for Seattle. But they're part of an improved penalty kill which had struggled early in the season.
But since Jan. 16, Seattle's 86.1-percent kill rate is third-best in the league. And as they work to cement that playoff berth, the Kraken have given up just one goal while shorthanded in their last seven games.
They've been stingy with scoring opportunities, no matter the manpower situation. Despite being the tired team playing the second half of a back-to-back set on Tuesday night, the Kraken held the Canucks to just 18 shots — and outshot them 18-5 in the pivotal middle frame, when they outscored their hosts 3-0 and effectively salted away the important win.
In their last six games since March 25, the Kraken have averaged a league-low 18.8 shots against per game and haven't given up more than 24. It's the kind of discipline that could pay dividends at playoff time.
"That's been a big part of our success," said coach Dave Hakstol, who has overseen one of the biggest team turnarounds in the NHL this season.
"You're not going to score your way to winning at this time of year, so our guys have been committed on the defensive side," Hakstol continued. "We've made mistakes, and we made mistakes tonight that could have come back to haunt us. But overall, the commitment and the work ethic defensively has been pretty steady."
Potential rookie of the year Matty Beniers even delivered a highlight-reel defensive play late in the second period. He chased down J.T. Miller to prevent a Grade A scoring opportunity on a shorthanded breakaway — something that Miller and the Canucks' penalty kill have been executing well in recent weeks.
"It's huge," said Gourde of Beniers' big effort. "Obviously, the PK don't want to give up a breakaway, but the effort was excellent."
Beniers sealed Tuesday's game by scoring his 22nd goal of the year into the empty Vancouver net with exactly one minute left on the clock. The 20-year-old native of Hingham, Mass. is now up to 54 points for the year, nine better than second-place Matias Maccelli in the rookie scoring race.
"He's been playing very some great hockey lately, and those are things that he does right, every single night," said Gourde, who knows a thing or two about being an effective two-way center. "He's great offensively, but then he does those things very good defensively as well. He's been great on pucks, backchecking, taking care of those little details."
Across 13 goals on Monday and Tuesday, the Kraken saw 12 different scorers. The only player with two goals, both against Arizona on Monday, was McCann.
He's now up to a career-high 37 goals, easily topping his previous best of 27 from last season. And while his shooting percentage has regressed as expected from his gaudy scoring rate of 26.2 percent through the first two-and-a-half months of the season, his current 19.5 percent still ranks him in the top 10 among players with 10 goals or more. And for McCann, that 40-goal benchmark remains within reach, with five games remaining in the regular season.
Now at 94 points, the Kraken can clinch their first playoff spot in their second NHL season with a win in their next game, back at Climate Pledge Arena and facing Arizona again on Thursday.
Seattle also holds the edge in the tiebreaker against both teams that are still chasing them: the Calgary Flames (seven points back, four games remaining) and the Nashville Predators (eight points back, five games remaining).
Both the Flames and the Predators will need two points in their next games to maintain any hope of potentially catching the Kraken.
Calgary plays in Winnipeg on Wednesday in what's almost a winner-take-all game. Nashville hosts Carolina on Thursday — with an opening puck drop coming two-and-a-half hours before the beginning of Kraken/Coyotes in Seattle.
With a playoff opportunity now so close, Gourde's championship experience in Tampa Bay will be invaluable.
"It's playing a certain way. Playing physical. Playing like every puck matters," Gourde said when asked how the Kraken will know when they're ready for the post-season.
"All those little details of the game — they matter in the playoffs. When you don't do them, they end up behind your goalie, so you've got to take pride in every single detail of the game.
"Every loose puck, every battle on the wall, every blueline you cross, you've got to make the right decision. And that's what I think the next step is for our team.
"We've been doing a great job at it. We're just gonna keep building and doing it over and over and over again. Trust the process."
Gourde isn't the only member of the Kraken with championship experience. Five other Seattle players also have Stanley Cup rings. Justin Schultz won with Pittsburgh in 2016 and 2017, Philipp Grubauer in a backup role with Washington in 2018, and Vince Dunn and Jaden Schwartz both hoisted the trophy with St. Louis in 2019.
Injured Andre Burakovsky is also a two-time champion, with Washington in 2018 and Colorado in 2022. He has been sidelined for nearly two months with a lower-body injury but skated with his teammates in a non-contact jersey on Monday, teasing a potential return in time for the post-season.