Utah has the best power play in the NHL and one of its worst penalty kills, and Thursday in Seattle tests which one this team really is. The power play is first at 36.1 percent. The kill is 28th at 68.8 percent. After Monday's 5-4 win over Pittsburgh we blamed the kill for most of what went wrong. Seattle's kill is 25th (72.4 percent) and its power play is 12th (21.9 percent), so both of Utah's units get a fair test. Our call: the power play wins this one, though not by enough to call the kill fixed.
- Puck drop: 8:00 p.m. MT, Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle (game page)
- Watch: ESPN+, Hulu and Disney+ in the U.S., SN+ in Canada
- Listen: KSL Sports Zone (97.5 FM / 102.7 AM HD2), the KSL Sports App, Sirius XM 223
- Utah: 7-3-0, first in the Central, third in the West, 4-2-0 on the road. All 10 games have ended in regulation.
- Seattle: 6-3-1, third in the Pacific, fifth in the West, 2-1-0 at home, off a 4-3 shootout win over Detroit on Tuesday.
- Records and standings are through the morning of Oct. 22. This is the first of three meetings this season (schedule).
The margin is thinner than the ranks
Ten games in, Utah has had 36 power plays and scored on 13, per the Mammoth PR game notes. It has been shorthanded 32 times and given up 10. So the power play and the kill together are plus-3, which is fine, and a small cushion for a unit that leads the league. Nick Schmaltz has five of the 13.
The cushion can go in one night. On Monday Pittsburgh went 2-for-2 and Utah went 1-for-2, and a 5-2 lead in the third finished 5-4. Seattle's 12th-ranked power play gets its goals from more than one shooter, with two each from Jared McCann and Bobby McMann, and Utah's kill has stopped 22 of 32.
Seattle starts fast, and so does Utah
Seattle's goals come from all over the lineup. Through nine games the Kraken had 15 different goal scorers, by Geoff Baker's count on the Kraken's site, behind Boston's 17 and the 16 each for Utah and Washington, so our scoring is spread even wider. Their 11 players with multiple goals trailed only Vegas, by the same count. Frederick Gaudreau, a fourth-line center, leads them with five goals. "We've had great depth so far as far as guys scoring up and down the lineup," captain Jordan Eberle said in Baker's story on the Kraken's site.
They also score early: 13 first-period goals, tied for third in the league, per the Mammoth's preview story. That runs straight into Utah's best habit. The Mammoth are 5-0-0 when leading after one period and 7-0-0 when leading after two, per Mammoth PR, and their 104 first-period shots rank third. Whoever owns the first 20 minutes probably doesn't have to chase.
The net
Utah hasn't named a starter as of this writing. Karel Vejmelka is 5-2-0 with an .879 save percentage, and Sebastian Cossa is 2-1-0 at .820 after winning Monday. Utah takes 30.1 shots a game (fifth) and allows 22.5 (third fewest), yet it's 18th in goals against at 3.1. A team that gives up that few shots shouldn't be 18th, and the gap is in the save percentages and the kill.
On Sept. 9, before the season started, Pierre LeBrun of TSN listed Utah with Carolina and Buffalo as possible landing spots for Winnipeg goalie Connor Hellebuyck. It's a rumor and only a possibility, but we think 10 games of .879 and .820 will keep fans bringing it up, and a clean night on the kill would quiet that a little. On Oct. 20 Sportsnet analyst Stephen Valiquette brought our own goalie into it, telling Nick Kypreos and Justin Bourne in a segment Sportsnet posted on X, "I'm hearing Vejmelka's name a lot being linked to the Rangers. Hellebuyck, by way of Vejmelka coming to New York, would be going to Utah." That's an analyst's hearsay about a possible three-way deal, not a report of talks, so it's a rumor too. Valiquette pitched Vejmelka as a workhorse who carried Utah alone last season, and he did lead the NHL with 63 starts.
Seattle's projected starter is Philipp Grubauer, the only goalie on the Kraken's projected lines, which the team calls unofficial. He's 3-1-1 with a .904 save percentage and stopped 22 of 25 on Tuesday, so this would be his second start in three days.
Our pick
Utah 4, Seattle 3. Utah draws more power plays than it gives (36 to 32 so far) and scores on more than a third of them, and Seattle's kill is 25th. One power-play goal is the least we'd expect, and two is reasonable. We'd have gone 3-2 if either kill gave us a reason to, but two kills in the bottom eight and two offenses scoring 3.7 goals a game or more (Utah 3.8, fifth in the league) point to more goals than that. André Tourigny named discipline among the things his team has worked on since the start of the season, per the team's preview story, and that is where we could be wrong. If Utah is shorthanded four or more times, Seattle's power play gets enough looks to beat this kill twice, and that plus-3 between the power play and the kill starts going the other way.
Tusks up.
Sources: NHL API standings, schedule and team stats; Mammoth PR postgame notes, Oct. 19; the Mammoth's preview story on NHL.com; Geoff Baker on the Kraken's site; the Kraken's preview and projected lines; Pierre LeBrun, TSN; Stephen Valiquette, Sportsnet on X, Oct. 20; our Oct. 20 recap.