Melanson therefore must have been feeling great by the first intermission, given he\u2019d already been credited with four hits \u2013 which is more than any player other than Buffalo defenseman Bowen Byrum managed all game long. Then again, any gleefulness on his part would have been tempered by his Kraken taking just three shots that opening frame and falling behind on a Noah Ostlund goal off a 2-on-1 break.<\/p>\n
Tage Thompson put Buffalo up by two in the second period when he and Peyton Krebs found themselves all alone in front against Joey Daccord. Krebs slid the puck across to Thompson and Daccord got get only a piece of the ensuing shot that was the deciding goal in the game.<\/p>\n
Chandler Stephenson got the Kraken on the board with just under eight minutes to go in the second on a power play wrist shot through traffic from the left circle on only the 10th shot of the game by his team. The Sabres have the league\u2019s second best penalty kill numbers so Stephenson scoring with the man advantage was a big deal, though the Kraken again could not produce enough at even strength.<\/p>\n
Zach Benson scored an empty net goal in the final minute to clinch it for Buffalo.<\/p>\n
Melanson, a fifth-round pick from the franchise\u2019s very first draft in 2021, found out two hours before Sunday\u2019s late afternoon puck drop that he\u2019d be making his second NHL appearance. That\u2019s because Mason Marchment was deemed too ill to play after a bug swept through the Kraken dressing room for much of the past week.<\/p>\n
The team was already dealing with long-term injury losses of forwards Jared McCann, Jaden Schwartz and Berkly Catton and was going to need Melanson to bring some fire to his shifts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did like it,\u201d Kraken head coach Lane Lambert said. \u201cI thought it was exactly what we needed. He had some youthful energy and certainly he finished his checks. I thought he played well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lambert wasn\u2019t as charitable about other aspects of his team\u2019s game. While he felt the Kraken generated some quality shots, especially in the latter part of the contest, he wasn\u2019t thrilled about defensive breakdowns leading to the Buffalo goals.<\/p>\n
The opening goal came off the 2-on-1 when defenseman Jamie Oleksiak pinched into the Buffalo zone and forward Tye Kartye failed to cover for him. Ostlund and Norris rushed back up-ice the other way and engaged in a masterful passing sequence that left lone defender Ryker Evans with a case of whiplash before the puck wound up in the net.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen our D stands in, our protocol is our forward has to back them up and he doesn\u2019t and it\u2019s a 2-on-1,\u201d Lambert said. \u201cYou can\u2019t do that. It\u2019s happening too often and there\u2019s no excuse for it. These players, the guys have to do the job. They have to do the job. They have to do the job that\u2019s required.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Melanson therefore must have been feeling great by the first intermission, given he\u2019d already been credited with four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-349294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}