WARNINGCGY
Rush defense leaked all night
Gave up 24 rush shots worth 1.90 xG (4 goals) — transition gaps were there every period.
Tighten neutral-zone structure and keep D gaps closed on entries.
The verdict · coin flip
The Kraken won a genuine coin flip — neither side controlled the run of play.
SEA 4 · CGY 2
Preseason · exhibition
Split squads and prospects, not the club that will take the ice in October. The shots and grades below describe this game only: nothing here counts toward season records, form, rankings or player numbers.
◆ By the ModelSep 22, 10:48 PMxG: xgboost-0.758Edited for clarityDrafted from NHL play-by-play by Backcheck's model, worded for clarity by an AI editor that may not change a number. Nobody at Backcheck was at the rink. How this works
Seattle beat Calgary 4-2, closing it out with an empty-net finish. Jon-Randall Avon was the engine all night, setting up two goals before scoring the clincher into an empty cage, and L. Morrison scored twice while playing a hand in another. Calgary never fully let go — Adam Nyman— excuse me, A. Suniev scored twice to keep pulling the Flames back level — but Seattle had the last answer whenever it mattered.
Seattle grabbed the lead early. T. Nelson opened the scoring off feeds from Morrison and J. Nyman in the first period, and J. Firkus made it 2-0 on the power play minutes later, with Avon drawing an assist. Calgary answered before the period ended when A. Suniev scored off a S. Honzek feed, and the game sat that way deep into the third. Suniev tied it again in the third period, set up by B. Jones and A. Wiebe, before Morrison restored Seattle's lead on another power play, this one started by T. Jugnauth and finished with help from Avon. Avon put it away late with an empty-netter, unassisted, and the Kraken had their two-goal win.
Here's the catch: that scoreline oversells how the game actually went. Expected goals finished 2.70-2.59 — a split that favors Calgary, not Seattle, and puts the two teams within a possession or two of each other all night. The Flames also held the bulk of the shot attempts, 51% to Seattle's 49%. By the shape of play, this was a coin-flip game that Calgary arguably deserved to have gone their way.
So why didn't it? Special teams decided it. Seattle scored twice in four power-play chances — a 50% conversion rate against a league average around 21% — while Calgary went 0-for-6 with the man advantage. That's the actual gap between these teams on the scoreboard: two Seattle power-play goals against zero from six Calgary tries. A team that even at even strength was matching a stingier opponent shot for shot can't survive being outscored that badly with the extra skater.
There's also a finishing story. Seattle scored 1.41 goals more than its expected-goals total should have produced — the kind of overperformance that tends not to repeat. Some of that is real: both goaltenders who saw Seattle's shots, P. Grubauer and N. Kokko, finished with save percentages of .938 and .875, and Grubauer specifically stopped nearly a goal more than expected on his 16 shots faced. But Calgary has its own explanation, and it isn't just bad luck — the Flames' defense conceded 24 shots off the rush worth 1.90 expected goals, and it cost them all four Seattle goals that came off the rush. That's a repeatable problem, not a one-night bounce, and it's the bigger flag for Calgary than the power play was.
Three Stars
- #16 J. Avon (SEA) — 1G, 2A in 17:33
- #61 A. Suniev (CGY) — 2G in 15:24
- #96 L. Morrison (SEA) — 1G, 1A in 15:03