DENVER — A blistering, second-period wrist shot by Kraken winger Oliver Bjorkstrand had stunningly put his team ahead by two and allowed followers of his second-year franchise to dare to dream the impossible.
After being outplayed most of Sunday night’s opening-round Game 7 to that point, the Kraken somehow had found themselves poised to knock out the defending Stanley Cup champions for good. And though the Colorado Avalanche eventually did mount a furious, desperation-fueled comeback, the Kraken and goalie Philipp Grubauer held on for a history-making, 2-1 victory and advanced to a second-round playoff showdown starting this week against the Dallas Stars.
Game 1 between the Kraken and Stars will be played at 6:30 p.m. Pacific on Tuesday night in Dallas.
Colorado pulled goalie Alexandar Georgiev for an extra attacker in the final two minutes, but Grubauer allowed just one goal on 34 shots faced, and his defenders blocked 29 more.
This dazzling Kraken playoff run had already captured the imagination of Seattle sports fans even before the visitors captured their third road game of the series and fifth at Ball Arena this season. Even after a 100-point regular season that was a 40-point boost over the expansion campaign, few pundits had given the Kraken a chance against an Avalanche squad that lost only twice in regulation the final five weeks before the playoffs.
Colorado won its championship a year ago with a bevy of talented young stars many had envisioned repeating their Cup feat this season and in years to come. And that group, even without injured captain Gabriel Landeskog and absentee winger Valeri Nichushkin, was not about to give up their crown without a fight.
Mikko Rantanen scored his sixth goal of the series by deflecting a Nathan MacKinnon power-play slapper home with just 27.3 seconds to go in the middle period to cut the Kraken’s 2-0 lead in half. That buoyed the home side at intermission, and they then came out for the third and appeared to tie things on another MacKinnon slap shot just three minutes in.
But on yet another remarkable twist in a series filled with them, the Kraken challenged that the earlier zone entry had been offside and a video review confirmed that to be true. The goal was taken off the board, outraged Avalanche fans unleashed a tirade on the officials, and the Kraken had their lead back.
The Kraken’s first-ever playoff series victory, in an emotional, hard-fought series with subplots on and off the ice, came down to the finest hours in Kraken uniforms by both Bjorkstrand and Grubauer. It would be Bjorkstrand snapping a scoreless deadlock just over three minutes into the second period by shoveling a puck out from the corner and off the glove of Avalanche forward Ben Meyers before it headed into the net.
The second goal of the game, just past the period’s seven-minute mark, was more typical Bjorkstrand. He took a Yanni Gourde pass on the fly and streaked down left wing before unleashing the wrister just past Georgiev’s outstretched glove.
That goal stunned the crowd to where you could almost sense a panic race through the building. Almost immediately, fans began imploring the defending champs to mount a comeback, which the Avalanche tried furiously to do.
At one point, they had what looked to be a sustained power play even while the teams were at even strength. They peppered Grubauer with chances, but he stood tall again just as he’d done to keep things scoreless during a first-period onslaught by Colorado.
The Kraken were outshot 16-6 in the opening frame, and without Grubauer the series probably would have been over just 20 minutes in. His highlight save was on an Evan Rodrigues one-timer that appeared headed into the net before Grubauer somehow got in front of it.
As the third period ticked on following the reversed Avalanche goal, Bjorkstrand midway through nearly capped a natural “hat trick” of three consecutive goals with a wrist shot that deflected off Georgiev and hit the cross bar. It remained a one-goal Kraken lead, and the desperate Avalanche kept coming, with Logan O’Connor sending a shot toward an open left side of the net only to have Jamie Oleksiak step in front and block it at the last instant.
Bjorkstrand then nearly had his hat trick again with a point-blank chance from the slot that again rang off the post. That kept it a one-goal lead and enabled the Avalanche to pull Georgiev for one final crack at upholding their title.
But the Kraken held on and lived to tell about the time they took down a giant.
