The Seattle Kraken are enjoying a successful road trip so far, while the Philadelphia Flyers are not enjoying much of anything these days.
The Kraken look to remain perfect on their current trek Tuesday when they visit the winless Flyers.
Seattle took its lumps on Oct. 6 with a 6-2 home loss to the Vegas Golden Knights, but the team rebounded quickly with road wins over the Detroit Red Wings and Washington Capitals.
In Sunday’s 5-3 triumph over the Capitals, the Kraken snapped a late tie on a goal by Jared McCann. Frederick Gaudreau and Ryan Winterton each contributed a goal and an assist for Seattle, while Ben Meyers had two assists.
Joey Daccord made 33 saves to earn the win.
“Joey stood on his head a little bit and we scored five, and that was enough,” Meyers said.
The Kraken have scored 11 goals in the first two games of their five-game trip, which continues with a Florida leg to play the Lightning and Panthers later this week.
“We’re getting pucks at the net and we’re banging them home,” said McCann, who leads Seattle with seven points. “You know things are going in for us right now. We’ve just got to keep going. We know what makes us successful.”
Gaudreau has scored a team-high four times after totaling seven goals in 68 games a season ago. He has scored three times in the first two games of the road trip.
“I think there was some pretty good commitment all over the place,” Seattle coach Lane Lambert said of the effort by Gaudreau and company. “We had a lot of blocked shots and stuff like that. It was a hard-fought game and our guys did a good job of finding a way to win.”
Philadelphia, meanwhile, is 0-5-2 in the early going — a franchise record for most consecutive losses to begin a campaign. The team has been outscored 28-8 so far, including another lopsided defeat Sunday in a 4-1 home loss to the Carolina Hurricanes.
“It’s frustrating, especially to start the year,” Philadelphia captain Sean Couturier said. “We’re out of sync right now. There are not really any excuses, honestly. We’re just not winning battles. We’ve just got to be better overall. … But we’ve got to take it one game at a time, even one shift at a time. Just focus on winning each shift, finding a way to put that together for 60 minutes and get a win. And then hopefully build our confidence.”
Christian Dvorak scored the Flyers’ only goal against the Hurricanes. The team has scored exactly one goal in each of the last four games and has yet to tally more than twice in any game this season.
“We know we’ve got to turn it around ASAP,” Dvorak said. “Got to try not to let it snowball here and focus on the next one. We showed at times (Sunday) what we can do, just got to be consistent with it.”
The Flyers and Kraken split two meetings a season ago. Owen Tippett scored twice in a 5-2 home victory by Philadelphia before Jordan Eberle and Chandler Stephenson tallied goals in the rematch — a 4-1 home win by Seattle.
