Pittsburgh Penguins deal Seattle Kraken worst home loss in 6-1 rout

Kraken goalie Philipp Grubauer stared ominously at his bench awaiting the inevitable hook barely five minutes into this Monday nightmare.

Grubauer’s improved play was a big reason for his team’s resurgence of recent weeks, but four shots into this 6-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins and he was already down three goals. The Kraken, wanting no more of what they were seeing, replaced Grubauer with Joey Daccord and for a while it looked as if the home team might come back.

But with the Kraken trailing by just two with under two minutes to play in the second period, Penguins goalie Casey DeSmith made the type of huge stop Grubauer couldn’t earlier on. DeSmith got his stick on a cross-ice pass from Morgan Geekie to Jared McCann that would have been a certain goal into an empty net had it gotten through.

Instead, DeSmith made the deflection, the Pens came back down the ice and goals by Jake Guentzel and Jeff Carter — his second of the game — just 23 seconds apart sealed this one before the second period was done.

Guentzel added his second of the game in the final period as the Kraken, now 9-14-2, took just their second regulation loss — third overall — in an eight-game span. But another slow start, aided by more struggles from Grubauer, proved too much to overcome in front of 17,151 at Climate Pledge Arena.

Grubauer wasn’t the only culprit in the early going as the Kraken tossed the puck around like a live grenade in their own zone. A series of turnovers, the final one by Jeremy Lauzon, led to Jeff Carter banking one in off Grubauer just 1:47 into the game.

Fewer than three minutes later, the Kraken lost a faceoff in their own zone and the puck came in from the point where Sidney Crosby tapped it home from the lip of the crease. Then, just 25 seconds after that, it was Danton Heinen putting a puck by Grubauer from 40 feet away with a wrist shot that deflected off Riley Sheahan’s skate.

The Kraken barely had time to realize what had hit them before Daccord was in nets and they were down a three-spot. But from there, the game turned rather one-sidedly in their favor as the Penguins mustered just one shot the final 13 minutes of the period and the Kraken buzzed Pittsburgh’s net at will.

Geekie slid a pass across in the closing minutes to Brandon Tanev, who had a wide open net but couldn’t get his stick on the puck. Then, as the period was about to expire, two Kraken players had whacks at the puck in front of Penguins goalie DeSmith but also couldn’t convert as time expired.

Still, the Kraken kept coming as the second period opened and finally broke through. Jaden Schwartz got things started in the offensive zone, feeding it up to Jordan Eberle — like him, back after missing two games with a lower body injury.

Eberle had a nice give-and-go from there with Alex Wennberg, sending him an initial pass and then tucking the return into an open right side of the net at 3:43 to get the Kraken on the board in a 3-1 game.

The Kraken then had an excellent chance to further narrow the gap just 28 seconds later when Penguins defenseman Mike Matheson was sent off for high sticking. But the Penguins boast the NHL’s top penalty killing unit and showed why as the Kraken power play went nowhere while Pittsburgh had the best scoring chance playing short-handed.

The Kraken were about to be called on a delayed offside, so they hesitated to touch the puck at the blue line. Teddy Blueger raced up to snag it and sped in alone, attempting to put the puck between Daccord’s legs on the deke.

But Daccord held tight and made the pad save, keeping his team in a 3-1 game. The Kraken pressed from there to narrow the gap, but DeSmith held strong until his team put things out of reach at period’s end.