Joey Daccord’s record-setting night lifts short-handed Kraken past Kings

LOS ANGELES — Of the 21 shots stopped by Kraken netminder Joey Daccord in Wednesday night’s opening period alone, his biggest play on a puck was likely a late poke-check to thwart a Phillip Danault breakaway attempt.

The well-timed stick play and then recovery for an ensuing shot stop demonstrated Daccord had indeed shown up with top-level focus for a Kraken team in dire need of every bit of it. By the time this 2-1 masterpiece of a Daccord victory was in the books, he’d set a franchise record with 43 saves and established that he is ready to assume the No. 1 goaltending job for as long as the team will allow it.

Much of that will have to do with how long Philipp Grubauer will need to recover from his long-term lower-body injury, but few were thinking about that on this night as the Kraken extended their points streak to five games. More importantly, they took down a significant Pacific Division foe at Crypto.com Arena on a night they were badly short-handed, with a sidelined Jared McCann and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare joining an injury procession of forwards led by Andre Burakovsky and Jaden Schwartz.

Brandon Tanev scored the game’s opening goal early in the second period, snapping a personal 10-game drought and celebrating by pretending to throw an invisible monkey off his back. Jordan Eberle then provided some key insurance six minutes into the final frame, taking a nice stretch pass from Matty Beniers, going in alone and beating Kings netminder Cam Talbot upstairs for only his fourth goal this season.

Blake Lizotte would finally score a bizarre marker for the Kings eight minutes into the third to make it a 2-1 game on a Kraken power-play miscue. Daccord came way out of his net to play the puck over to Justin Schultz, but it bounced off his stick.

Lizotte was right there to put the puck in an open net as Daccord couldn’t get back in time.

Daccord had already made 40 saves by that point and, still leading 2-1, would make his 42nd stop while short-handed several minutes later — tying his own franchise mark set earlier this season on the road in a loss to Carolina.

The Tanev goal, in particular, seemed to change the game’s direction as the Kraken, despite still allowing an above-average amount of shots, began directing several pucks of their own toward Talbot.

By the time the middle frame was done, the Kraken had outshot the Kings 17-6 and nearly extended their lead on a power play right near the tail end. But Talbot kept the puck out, setting up a third period in which it looked as if the losing team would be whichever one’s netminder blinked first.

That would be the Kings, as Daccord continued to stand strong, and the Kraken tightened up and limited the shots against him down the stretch.

The Kraken had looked very much a weakened team in the opening period as the Kings outshot them 21-7, with only Daccord standing between them and a multi-goal lead. The shot total allowed was two shy of the Kraken franchise record of 23 in a period given up to the Washington Capitals at home more than two years ago.

But the Kraken survived until intermission and withstood an early Kings push in the second period before Tanev opened the scoring a bit more than five minutes in. Alex Wennberg appeared to lose a faceoff in the Kings’ end, but Tanev immediately charged forward for the puck before a Los Angeles player could corral it.

Tanev managed to get a shot off, then kept charging forward and slammed his own rebound past Talbot to put the Kraken ahead 1-0 despite being outshot 25-12 at the time.