Kraken's shootout woes continue in loss to Sabres

Kate Shefte, The Seattle Times on Mar 28, 2026

Published in Hockey

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SEATTLE — The Seattle Kraken picked up another standings point, but as Saturday’s overtime wound down, their hopes of a very needed second point fizzled.

Seattle has never been good at shootouts, and the Buffalo Sabres won their latest as quickly as possible. The Kraken fell to 1-6 in shootouts this season and 9-18 all-time, and dropped the road game 3-2.

Seattle is 1-2-2 with one game left in this long road trip.

As of Saturday morning, Seattle goaltender Joey Daccord had started twice as many games as Philipp Grubauer since the NHL paused for the Olympics. Grubauer anchored the Kraken during their 4-3 overtime win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday, however, and got the nod again in Buffalo. His most recent consecutive starts were Jan. 21 and 23.

Grubauer made 34 saves, then allowed shootout goals to Tage Thompson and Jack Quinn. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 32 regulation stops for Buffalo and turned aside Freddy Gaudreau and Kaapo Kakko’s breakaway bids.

Kraken all-time leading scorer Jared McCann returned to the lineup after missing three games with a lower-body injury. The Kraken lost another forward early, as Shane Wright was driven into the boards by Logan Stanley during the first period. Wright went down the tunnel without taking another shift and was ruled out for the rest of the game.

Six-foot-seven, 252-pound Seattle defenseman Jamie Oleksiak doesn’t drop the gloves often these days and tends to stick to his own weight class when he does. Six-foot-7, 231-pound Stanley fit the bill, and Stanley also had the Wright hit to answer for. Stanley got in the first pop, but Oleksiak closed out the fight, landing on top of the Sabres forward.

Seattle went up 2-0 and Buffalo slowly erased the lead. Nearly 13 minutes into the game, Kakko threaded a pass through several pairs of legs to Chandler Stephenson, who sent the puck cleanly into the net’s roof.

Later, trade deadline pickup Bobby McMann pulled the puck out of his skates and scored his seventh goal in eight Kraken games. He pushed his goal streak to three games. McMann also earned an assist on Stephenson’s goal, which secured his fourth multipoint outing, and his second straight.

The Sabres then came close enough to scoring that the goal horn went off, but the puck never went in. Eleven seconds into a second-period Buffalo power play, Rasmus Dahlin put the Sabres on the board. Teammate Peyton Krebs tied the game midway through the third period.

Buffalo was waiting for the Seattle, but not rested. The Sabres played the Detroit Red Wings at home on Friday night and lost 5-2. That was only their second regulation loss since the Olympic break. The Sabres have collected at least a point in 15 of 17 games, which allowed them to shoot up the Atlantic Division standings.

The longest active NHL playoff drought will almost certainly end this spring. Buffalo has gone 14 seasons without a postseason appearance. Its last one was in 2010-11, a decade before the Kraken franchise launched.

Seattle’s shaky play since the Olympic break put the team on the outside looking in. The Kraken trailed the Nashville Predators, who grabbed the last wild-card spot in the West, by three points with 11 games remaining and got one point back in Buffalo. Both teams Seattle has to leapfrog, Nashville and Los Angeles, played later Saturday.

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