3 Takeaways from the Seattle Kraken’s Game One Win Over Colorado

The Seattle Kraken just defeated the Colorado Avalanche in Game One, 3-1. It’s the first Stanley Cup Playoff win for the Kraken in their history, and they did it in a very tough environment in Ball Arena.

It was an exciting game to watch, so let’s go over three main takeaways from tonight’s contest.

1. The Kraken played a phenomenal road game and never wavered.

One of the most important things going into this game for Seattle was finding a way to limit the noise and use the adrenaline in a positive way. Another key, and maybe more importantly was going to be shutting down Colorado’s three superstars in MacKinnon, Rantanen, and Makar.

The Kraken did both of those things, starting with getting out ahead early. At three minutes and 26 seconds into the first, it was Eeli Tolvainen who scored first for Seattle. That was the tone-setter that Seattle needed to have.

It was so exciting to see Tolvanen score that goal because although the Kraken let the Avalanche tie the game, the momentum never shifted back towards Colorado the rest of the night.

Seattle has a nice thing going so far where they like to score right when the period starts, because one minute and 20 seconds into the second, it was Wennberg who gave the Kraken the lead back.

Morgan Geekie would make it a two-goal lead for Seattle, and with how well defensively they were playing and how Philipp Grubauer was playing, the energy in the building sounded like the Avs fans knew it was over.

Super impressive effort by Seattle overall. I don’t think this was a performance many people saw coming.

2. The Avalanche secondary scoring was nonexistent in Game One.

Secondary scoring isn’t always necessary when you have Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, and Cale Makar on your team. However, for the majority of the time watching this game, it felt like I was watching those three guys every shift against the Kraken’s four lines.

The known secondary scorers on the Avs that can give you 15-20 goal production like Evan Rodrigues, Valeri Nichushkin, and others were completely invisible.  It better get corrected in this series, because their play tonight was a big reason the Avs got dominated.

3. Philipp Grubauer can play in the playoffs.

Grubauer wasn’t really tested that much in the first one-and-a-half periods or so. In the last eight minutes of the second period is where it was all Avs. The Kraken in this short time span were giving up turnover after turnover, but Grubauer was standing on his head.

That eight-minute stretch was really the only bad stretch Seattle played the entire night.

It was a great performance from Grubauer whose regular season numbers were suspect.