Jaden Schwartz tallied a goal and two assists as the Seattle Kraken defeated the visiting Utah Hockey Club 5-2 on Monday night.
Yanni Gourde, Andre Burakovsky, Matty Beniers and Jared McCann also scored and Kaapo Kakko had a pair of helpers for the Kraken, who won their second in a row following a five-game skid. Goaltender Philipp Grubauer made 28 saves.
Logan Cooley and Alexander Kerfoot tallied for Utah, which lost its fourth consecutive game. Karel Vejmelka stopped 28 of 32 shots.
Schwartz, who tallied twice in the final five minutes of regulation Saturday at Vancouver as the Kraken rallied to win 5-4 in overtime, broke a 2-all tie at 7:22 of the third period Monday, sliding the puck between Vejmelka’s pads on a breakaway after taking a stretch pass from Kakko. That came after Schwartz had an earlier goal disallowed as a video review determined the Kraken were offside on the play.
Beniers made it 4-2 at 11:09 on a mini-breakaway after a pass from Kakko. Beniers fanned on his initial shot but picked the puck back up after it hit the end boards and turned and fired the puck off the back of the goalie’s left skate and into the net.
McCann scored an empty netter at 18:12 to clinch the victory.
Utah opened the scoring on the power play at 8:41 of the first as Clayton Keller fed Cooley for a one-timer from just below the right faceoff dot.
The Kraken scored twice in a 51-second span late in the period to take the lead.
Gourde tied it at 18:06, picking up a rebound off Ryker Evans’ initial shot and firing it over Vejmelka from a sharp angle on the right wing as the goaltender did the splits in an attempt to reach across the crease.
Burakovsky, who missed Saturday’s game with an illness, made it 2-1 at 18:57 by tipping Schwartz’s floating shot from the right point into the net.
Seattle maintained the lead until the final minute of the second period, when Kerfoot scored off a rebound of Michael Carcone’s shot at 19:01.
Kraken goaltender Joey Daccord was scratched with an undisclosed injury. Daccord didn’t make the trip to Vancouver last weekend.
–Field Level Media
