GLENDALE, Arizona — This battle for NHL basement supremacy wasn’t quite the stuff of dreams, though some Kraken players were afforded coveted chances that should define this final quarter of the season.
One such player, newcomer Daniel Sprong, got to show off his cannon slap shot on an opening period power play, then later deployed a pinpoint wrister that tied the score in the second period. Not long after, defenseman Carson Soucy added his second goal of the night to help lift his team to a 4-2 win over the Arizona Coyotes and out of a three-way tie for last place overall.
Morgan Geekie added some insurance with 7:22 to go, taking a nice cross-ice feed from Jared McCann after a faked shot and firing it into an open net.
Tuesday night’s showdown in front of 11,670 at the Gila River Arena began with the Kraken, Arizona and Montreal all tied for the league’s fewest points total of 44. It also came on the heels of the previous day’s trade deadline that saw six Kraken regulars moved in a half-dozen deals, meaning their final 19 games will take on a somewhat different look than the opening 63.
Kraken coach Dave Hakstol has said he’ll be testing and challenging players in various roles to see how they respond. Hakstol added that some players limited in prior playing time will be given chances to show what they’ve got and need to take advantage.
Two immediate beneficiaries were defensemen Haydn Fleury and Will Borgen, who started on the night’s third blue line pairing after spending much of the season in the press box when Mark Giordano and Jeremy Lauzon were still around. Fleury took a cross-checking penalty in the second period that enabled Coyotes winger Nick Schmaltz to one-time a Clayton Keller pass from the high slot on the power play for the game’s opening goal.
But just 17 seconds later, it would be Soucy tying the score with a seeing-eye wrist shot that found its way past Coyotes goalie Karel Vejmelka top-shelf. The Kraken didn’t have much time to celebrate as just 44 seconds after that, Nick Ritchie got in alone behind Fleury and scored on Philipp Grubauer.
The three goals in 1:02 had the Kraken trailing 2-1 in another game in which they’d dominated early — outshooting the Coyotes 15-8 in the opening period — while failing to fully capitalize. Arizona had twice beaten the Kraken in prior meetings and this game appeared headed in a similar direction until Sprong netted the equalizer at the 13:39 mark of the middle frame.
Sprong had talked about his powerful shot in a media conference call immediately after Monday’s trade that sent him from the Washington Capitals to the Kraken along with a fourth-round pick in 2022 and a sixth-rounder in 2023 in exchange for Marcus Johansson. The Kraken wasted no time in getting Sprong regular turns on the power play’s second unit, hoping to jumpstart a player who’d struggled to capitalize on scoring opportunities with the Capitals much of this season.
His opening period one-timer from the left point had forced Vejmelka into a last-second kick save. Then, Sprong didn’t miss in the second period when afforded a chance from the left circle, hoisting a wrist shot past Vejmelka to tie it 2-2.
Soucy is another player who had fallen victim earlier on this season to the numbers-game in a talented blue line corps. But his second multi-goal game this season now gives him a career-high nine in 47 games.
His eventual game winner came fewer than three minutes after Sprong’s equalizer, taking a pass in the left circle and wristing the puck home.
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