SEATTLE — Dave Hakstol wore a wry smile.
Before Friday’s 5-2 defeat against the Vegas Golden Knights, Seattle’s first-year coach was asked who would serve as his starting goaltender.
“Grubi is in net,” he said, referring to 30-year-old veteran Philipp Grubauer.
Then he took a protracted breath, before teasingly adding: “There will come a day when I’m not going to tell you that until game time. For now, Grubi.”
Of course, throughout an undeniably underwhelming inaugural season, the answer to that question has been strangely consistent. Grubauer — who signed for six years and $35.4 million before the season — has started nearly three quarters of all Kraken games, despite Chris Driedger also signing for three years and $10.5 million … to be little more than an emergency option.
Plus, after failing to start 18 consecutive games, Driedger produced back-to-back impressive performances this week — in a deceptive 3-0 Vegas victory Wednesday and a 6-1 Kraken dispatching of Los Angeles on Monday night.
And yet, in explaining his decision, Hakstol said, “We’re going to need leadership in that position, and Grubi will be the man that goes in and gets the opportunity to do that for his teammates.”
Grubauer and his teammates didn’t do enough.
Vegas opened the scoring with 10:32 left in the first period, when defenseman Alec Martinez slid a pass around a lunging Jamie Oleksiak to center Jack Eichel, who stuffed the puck between Grubauer’s legs and into the net. Eichel added on with just 1:26 elapsed in the second, roofing a wrister over a helpless Grubauer from point-blank range.
With 7:20 left in the second period, Knights defenseman Shea Theodore added to the tally — taking a pass in open ice and rocketing a wrister clean past Grubauer’s stick side. Jonathan Marchessault and William Karlsson each added empty-net goals to cement the result.
“He battled hard,” Hakstol said of Grubauer’s game, declining to elaborate further.
On a night when the Knights were in desperate need of a win — trailing Dallas for a single point for the Western Conference’s second wild card spot — the Kraken couldn’t muster much offense early. Their most fight came from forward Jared McCann, who dropped his gloves and landed a series of overhand rights to the skull of Vegas’ Michael Amadio — whose helmet promptly ejected and skidded on the ice.
“Frustration, I think, is the easiest way to put it,” McCann said, when asked what led to the fight. “Things haven’t really been going our way this year, with bounces or anything like that, right? So I just feel like it kind of boiled over tonight.”
Added right winger Kole Lind: “That’s big for our team. (McCann) brings a really big role to our team, and when he sees fit, that he needs to fight, he does. Obviously, I think the crowd was a little dead. We were dead on the bench. Not much was said in the intermission within the group. Dave (Hakstol) had most of the words to say. Other than that there wasn’t much said in the room. So I think we just needed a little jump in our game.”
During the second intermission — while the Kraken, collectively, were not saying much — a fan named Vincent participated in the “Impossible Shot Challenge,” trying (and failing) to shoot a puck into a microscopic sliver of net from the opposite blue line for $500,000.
For much of the night, a Kraken goal seemed almost equally unlikely.
But Seattle finally found the net with 9:16 left in the third period, when McCann dropped a pass behind his back to the waiting Alex Wennberg — who hammered it home past Logan Thompson for his ninth goal of the year. When the result was essentially out of reach at 4-1, Lind contributed his first career goal with 1:38 left in the game.
That, at least, was something to smile about.
“It felt pretty good. There’s not really words to describe it,” the 23-year-old Lind said of his first NHL goal. “Lots of guys say they black out, whatever. I remember every moment. It was unreal.”
As for Grubauer, the 6-foot-1, 188-pound net-minder stopped 21 of 24 shots in the Kraken’s second consecutive loss.
For now: Grubi.
But there’s no telling who’ll start at home against Dallas on Sunday night.
