The Dallas Stars and Seattle Kraken are set to hit the ice on Thursday night for Game 2 of their Western Conference semifinal series, with the Kraken enjoying a 1–0 series lead.
As the NHL’s newest franchise (and a bottom-feeding club in the 2021–22 season), Seattle’s newfound success this year has many onlookers surprised and somewhat skeptical about their chances against the Stars. But they put many of those doubts to bed with a 5–4 overtime win in Dallas on Tuesday, setting the stage for Thursday’s pivotal clash.
On Thursday’s edition of Daily Faceoff Live, Frank Seravalli and Colby Cohen had a lively chat about what exactly makes this iteration of the Kraken tick — and how Dallas can potentially look to counter them.
Frank Seravalli: What I really enjoy watching about the Seattle Kraken, Colby, is that they’re really smart. They don’t have many players that are going to make mental mistakes and blunders. Do things happen? Of course. But they’re able to read and react, and I think their collective hockey IQ as a team is certainly well above-average and I would say well above some of these teams that they’re facing in the playoffs. They were able to take advantage of some very specific situations that the Dallas Stars worked themselves into in Game 1, whether it’s Dallas traditionally overloading one side of the ice in the defensive zone — the Kraken are able to feed a defenseman that’s shooting into the slot. Things like that, little interesting wrinkles that I thought the Kraken, who went to Game 7 and had a very quick turnaround into Round 2, were able to take advantage of. And, for whatever reason, the Stars, Colby, knew what was coming in Game 1, yet still got hit in the face by a two-by-four and still seemed to be surprised by what the Kraken do. Why are teams still surprised when the Kraken only really play one way?
Colby Cohen: Well, they just don’t beat themselves. And I know that’s a cliché, but that’s in every dressing room at every high level of hockey, that is one of the first things your coach talks about, especially in the playoffs. You can’t beat yourself. You have to learn to live to fight another day, which means not looking for the play through the middle, not going for that stretch play, making sure the puck gets out of your zone at the blue line and into the neutral zone, and then fold back into your structure and continue to be solid. I think Seattle does that this year as well as any team we have seen in the playoffs. Now, having said that, Frank, I look at the Dallas lineup, I think they’re too balanced. They’ve got Jake Oettinger in net. I like how balanced the scoring has been for Dallas. Hintz has five goals, Seguin has four, Pavelski we saw have the four, Robertson’s got seven points, Domi’s chipped in with six points. I look at the way that they’re built and they’ve got three really good lines and I think their fourth line with Glendening is solid — it’s a playoff-type line. Hard-nosed, straight-line. And then they’ve got Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell anchoring their top two pairs on their blue line and I just think Dallas is too good of a team to get caught off-guard. I think they will clean up some of the self-inflicted mistakes, and I just think they’re too deep.
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