Love them or hate them – historically, the Seattle Kraken have hated them – shootouts are a part of NHL regular season life.
In their five previous seasons, Seattle had compiled a 10-18 all-time shootout record. Surprisingly, the team prevailed in three of four shootouts in their expansion season. Just as surprising, in their 46-win, 100-point 2022-23 season, the Kraken lost all four of their shootouts.
In fact, besides Season One, they’ve never had a winning shootout record, falling in six of eight skills competitions last year.
Kraken Improved Shootout Fortunes
This year, though, the Kraken have employed a secret weapon to win shootouts. That weapon is named Colin Zulianello, goaltending coach. His wise counsel came in handy Tuesday at Climate Pledge Arena. Shootout goals over four rounds, by Freddy Gaudreau and Bobby McMann’s winner, were the difference (2-1) in a 4-3 victory over the Detroit Red Wings.
McMann also scored the decider in the Kraken’s other shootout through 10 games, a 3-2 victory over the Flyers on Oct. 13.
Shootout Rules Refresher
Regular season games still knotted through a scoreless five minute overtime get decided by a shootout. Teams alternate skaters for three rounds of penalty-shot style one-on-one confrontations with goaltenders.
Should the shootout be tied after three rounds, extra innings are added one at a time until a round in which one team scores and the other doesn’t. Two standings points go to the team winning the shootout, one point to the losers.
Kraken Goalie Coach’s Advice For Non-Goalies
Zulianello (image at right) naturally has talked with Grubauer and Joey Daccord about the best way to frustrate opposition shooters. What’s new is his advice to Kraken shooters.
“We’ve been executing on some of the things he’s come up with,” said Kraken coach Lane Lambert. “These are huge points for us to be able to earn. I know guys work on it in practice.”
The sacrificial lamb between the pipes for all that practice sometimes is emergency backup goaltender (EBUG) Dolan Gilbert.
“It wasn’t like we didn’t work on it last year. Zulianello did a really good job putting together a presentation over the summer. It was beneficial for our guys to see it from a goaltender’s perspective. One day, (Gilbert) took about 150 penalty shots. Probably couldn’t move any more.”
The coach demurred about what specific pearls of wisdom his goalie coach provided to Kraken skaters. His exact words, after a lengthy pause and chuckle (image at left) was, “You don’t (talk about that).”
How To Foil A Goaltender
Don’t tell coach, but Kraken defenseman Brandon Montour let one of the Zulianello secrets out of the bag.
Before sharing the tip, I’d hoped it would be some truly ingenious (or devious) top-secret technique. Say, for example, “Wrap a shiny piece of aluminum foil around the shaft of your stick. Angle the foil so it catches the arena lights, temporarily blinding the netminder.”
The reality isn’t anything so sneaky. Besides, Kraken players have too much integrity to stoop to tricks like that. (Unless they’re fighting for a playoff spot in April, right?)
Go Wide, Young Man
What Montour actually said: “We put a lot of focus on shootouts this year. Meetings with ‘Zu.’ Guys have (honed) in on working on it, looking at the statistics and percentages of how to score on goalies, guys taking wider turns. Guys have confidence (now).”
In fairness to coach Lambert, he also did relent, agreeing to share a tiny bit of the strategy for shootout success Zulianello had imparted to the troops. “Score! That’s it. Score goals,” offered the coach, with a Cheshire cat grin. The kind of grin a coach has a right to display when his team is two-and-0 in shootouts, and 6-3-1 after 10 games.
