Kraken GM says Seattle finding ways to lose games

The Seattle Kraken have not started their inaugural season the way that they have wanted to. Currently they are dead last in the Pacific Division with just 9 points (4-10-1) in 15 games thus far. Although the season is still young, Kraken GM Ron Francis believes the team has «found a way to lose» games instead of finding ways to win them.

"We felt that goaltending and defense would give us a chance in each game," Francis told The Seattle Times. "And then the question was scoring, and can we score enough or not? I think we certainly felt going into the season that we would be a competitive team."

"I think we've had some games from the start of the season where I've felt we found a way to lose rather than gain a point or two. And when you give up six or eight of those points, you're in a different situation than you're sitting in now."

The team has lost four straight and six of the past seven. This also hurts them due to the fact that they rank 31st in the NHL with 3.667 GAA and just 20th in goals per game with 2.80.

"I think the expected goals against is the big discrepancy from where we thought it would be," Francis said. "And it seems to be different things on different nights. Certainly, there have been games where the goaltenders feel they'd like one or two back. And I think there have been nights where the [defensemen] and the forwards, they'd like to do something different with one or two. And that's sort of adding to our frustration at this point."

Philipp Grubauer has struggled mightily when he was expected to be a Vezina candidate goaltender. He signed a six-year contract July 28 after posting a great statline last year, going 30-9-1 with a 1.95 GAA and .922 SV%. That success has not translated to this year, as he is just 4-7-1 with a 3.18 GAA and .880 SV%.

"There's a lot of things that have factored into it," Francis said. "We started with five [games] in eight [days] on the road, and then [Driedger] got injured so we had to run [Grubauer] probably harder than we want. You've got a team with guys trying to figure each other out, figure out a new system. Certainly, there's been more than one time we've sort of left [Grubauer] out to dry, and I think that factors into things."

"I'm not making excuses for him. I think if you talk to him, he'd say he needs to be a little bit better. But as a group, we all need to be a little bit better in situations as well too."

seattletimes.com