*Photo from The Rink Live*
After a bit of a delay, the Kraken are being released to the NHL world. Morgan Geekie had two assists, Ryan Donato scored, and the Seattle Kraken defeated the St. Louis Blues with a 5-2 victory on Tuesday night in Seattle.
The win goes down as the second in a row for the Kraken, who improve to 18-10-3 on the season, 3rd place in the Pacific Division. Geekie and Brandon Tanev each had two point games, with Tanev adding a goal and an assist. Donato also stayed hot for the Kraken, scoring in his 4th straight game.
Donato said after the game that "I think we see when we play the right way, were going to get our chances, and if we capitalize on them it’s hard to beat us. For me, it definitely is sweet. I think it’s exciting. But honestly at the end of the day, I think everybody in here can agree that it’s more about winning. So for me to be a part of that win, it’s definitely a good feeling."
It was Donato who started the scoring, giving the Kraken a 1-0 lead at the 16:27 mark of the first period, with Geekie and Adam Larsson assisting. Carson Soucy kicked off the scoring in the second period to double the lead to 2-0. Daniel Sprong and Jared McCann also scored to give the Kraken a 4-0 advantage after two periods.
Colton Parayko got the Blues on the board in the 3rd period, making it 4-1 on his second goal of the season 5:59 into the period. Pavel Buchnevich followed it up with a power play goal, further cutting the deficit to 4-2 with assists from Torey Krug and Brayden Schenn. Tanev sealed it up with a goal to make it a 5-2 win for the Kraken.
Kraken head coach Dave Hakstol said that "There's two or three occasions where they got inside because we were up to a little too loose on our return. The way we play we need doubles, we need help down low killing plays, we need stops and starts inside. We did a pretty good job of that but against this team, if you don't do it every time. It's coming inside. We saw that a little bit in the second. We got good saves from Jonesy on those."
Starting in goal for the Kraken was Martin Jones, who picked up the win to improve to 14-5-2 on the season. Jones stopped 22 of the 24 shots the Blues tested him with, good for a .917 save percentage in the win.
Thomas Greiss was the starter on the other end of the ice for the Blues. Greiss got the loss, turning aside 28 out of the 32 shots on goal the Kraken had, recording a .875 save percentage. His record drops to 4-5-0 in 9 starts.
St. Louis head coach Craig Berube said of the loss that "We didn't manage the puck very well. They checked well, we didn't have time or space and we didn't do the right things with the puck. That's probably what the bottom line was. They got behind us too much and they were on us and we didn't make very good plays and we didn't compete very hard, we lost a lot of puck battles."
Up next, the Kraken hit the road for a Thursday night division matchup against the Vegas Golden Knights, with Jones expected to get the start. Jordan Binnington is in line to start for the Blues on Friday night, also against the Golden Knights, also in Vegas.
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