Seattle Kraken beat first-place Golden Knights for 4th straight win

Kate Shefte, The Seattle Times on Feb 1, 2026

Published in Hockey

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The Seattle Kraken got through a tense final minute and logged a fourth straight victory Saturday, winning a Pacific Division tussle with first-place Vegas 3-2.

Afterward the Kraken remained in third place but only three points behind the leaders.

Both of Seattle’s Finnish Olympians got a goal at T-Mobile Arena. Eeli Tolvanen kicked off the scoring nearly seven minutes into the first period. Chandler Stephenson dropped the puck off near the crease for new linemate Ryan Winterton, whose shot was stopped. Tolvanen’s follow-up made it through.

“That’s the third game in a row, I think, where we’ve scored first,” Kraken coach Lane Lambert guessed correctly.

“The stats don’t lie. The guys have done a good job of making sure they’re ready to go. It’s not that they weren’t before, but there’s a little extra focus that we’ve had to have.”

Jared McCann then tied linemate Matty Beniers’ two-day-old Kraken record with his 10th goal in a single month. It was a power-play goal, 13 minutes into the game. McCann whipped a Vince Dunn feed into the back door before Vegas goalie Akira Schmid could slide over.

It was also McCann’s 200th career goal.

The Kraken (26-19-9) exited the first period up by two, and the second period tied at 2. Ivan Barbashev got Vegas within a goal, then Seattle defensemen took back-to-back penalties late in the period. The Kraken managed to kill off Ryker Evans’, but Dunn sent the PK right back out and Mitch Marner scored with 12 seconds left until the intermission.

Leaving it up to the final 20 minutes wasn’t an ideal plan. The third period is by far Vegas’ best this season. The Golden Knights were outscoring opponents 71-44, while being outscored in the previous two periods.

They also don’t mind settling it after regulation. According to StatMuse, only the L.A. Kings have played more overtime games than the Golden Knights this season with 22 to Vegas’ 21.

“It’s still a good spot, 2-2 over here going into the third,” Kaapo Kakko said. “That was the mindset – we’ve got to win the period, and we did.”

Last-second goals often have a carry-over effect, but Seattle surged into the third period. A blocked shot dropped at future Olympian Kakko’s feet and he shoveled it past Schmid to give Seattle another lead.

Seattle goaltender Joey Daccord stopped Barbashev on a breakaway shortly after Kakko made it 3-2. Daccord made 27 saves.

In the final minute of the game, with Schmid pulled for the extra attacker, Daccord stopped and smothered three shots. While his teammates couldn’t seem to help him out with a defensive-zone faceoff win, Freddy Gaudreau did block two Vegas bids in that last minute of play.

The Kraken have gone 4-0 since a home loss to their next opponent, the Anaheim Ducks. That Jan. 23 game featured “the worst 40 minutes we’ve played all year,” according to Lambert.

“Over the course of 82 games, you’re going to have a stinker here and there,” Lambert said Saturday. “Whether or not you learn from it is the key. I think we learned from it.

“We’re not going to be perfect. But certainly, we’ve been a lot better since that game.”

Fourth-line winger Jacob Melanson appeared in his 20th Kraken game this season, spread across two recalls. He sported nine hits around the game’s halfway point, and while his pace dipped, he still topped his franchise-record 10. He finished with 12 and is averaging 5.4 per game.

He’s played less than half the season, but the top seven single-game hit totals this season are all Melanson’s.

Tye Kartye reentered the lineup after 10 straight healthy scratches. The Kraken announced earlier Saturday that rookie forward Berkly Catton would miss the last three games before the NHL break for the 2026 Winter Games with an upper-body injury.

Catton left Thursday’s victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs following an open-ice collision with Oliver Ekman-Larsson. On Catton’s fourth shift of the game, the 20-year-old stretched out to swipe at the puck while Ekman-Larsson was coming in hot. Catton’s head connected with the Toronto defenseman’s hip area.

Catton was down on the ice for a bit. Ekman-Larsson was not penalized.

“Ekman-Larsson’s a little bit bigger than Berkly,” Lambert said after that game. “I thought (Catton) got sort of stretched and exposed. It was, in my mind, a little bit of a ‘hockey play.’”