The Puck Had A Mind Of Its Own
A Steve Martin sequence took place with six minutes remaining in the first period between the Seattle Kraken and Edmonton Oilers Thursday at Rogers Place.
Which is to say, wild and crazy.
First, Seattle's Tye Kartye with a devastating (and clean) open-ice hit in the Edmonton zone on Ryan McLeod.
Maybe the Kraken stopped to admire it, because the Oilers end up with a 2-on-1. Breaking over the Kraken line, Mattias Janmark passes to Derek Ryan, who in turn finds the trailer, Vincent Desharnais, busting down the slot. Kraken goalie Joey Daccord makes a fabulous sprawling save on Desharnais' wrister, but Daccord's momentum leaves him a fish out of water, as well as outside the crease.
The rebound squirts back to Ryan at the goal line at the left of the post. Trying to settle a bouncing puck, Ryan kicks it off the goalpost. Now the elusive biscuit bounces into the crease as a flailing Daccord, on his belly, tries to snare it.
Ryan whacks away at thin air as emergency reserve goalie Tomas Tatar slides on one knee behind Daccord. By now, the Kraken caught up-ice have returned, and you could throw a blanket over all six Seattle players at the crease.
All six, as well as a trio of Oilers, are playing whack-a-mole, but the puck eludes everybody. Finally it comes out to the top of the left circle, where Edmonton's Brett Kulak fires a slapshot so hard, he's either trying to shoot the puck or kill it - which at this point, no one could blame him.
Kraken defenseman Brian Dumoulin blocks the shot, Seattle exits the zone, and everyone exhales.
By the way, everything described from the Kartye hit to the Kulak slapper happened in 11 seconds.
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