Slumping Senators fall well short against surging Kraken

Tomas Tatar and Andre Burakovsky scored 3:43 apart late in the second period as the Seattle Kraken beat the Ottawa Senators 4-1 on Thursday night for their sixth straight victory.

Yanni Gourde scored in the first period and Vince Dunn had an empty-net goal and an assist for the Kraken, riding a franchise-record 10-game point streak. Joey Daccord followed up his Winter Classic shutout with 32 saves, and Jordan Eberle added two assists.

“It’s fun to see our guys play so well and get rewarded for it,” Daccord said. “We weren’t getting rewarded as much as we would have liked in the first little bit of the season.”

Parker Kelly scored his third goal and Joonas Korpisalo stopped 24 shots for the Senators, who have lost three of four.

“Five minutes cost us the hockey game,” interim coach Jacques Martin said. “Some areas of our game were good. I think it’s a step in the right direction, but we’ve got to learn the game is 60 minutes, and we’ve got to learn to manage the game better.”

Daccord kept Ottawa off the board until Kelly’s deflection with 7:40 left. He hadn’t allowed a goal since early in the first period of Seattle’s win against Philadelphia on Dec. 29, giving him the longest shutout streak in team history.

The expansion Kraken joined the NHL for the 2021-22 season.

“It would have been nicer if I’d got another shutout tonight,” Daccord joked. “A win’s great, and I’m happy to just keep this train rolling.”

Gourde slammed in a rebound midway through the first for his sixth goal this season.

Tatar was given an open lane thanks to a nifty pass from Eberle and beat Korpisalo with 4:40 left in the second. Burakovsky added another with 57 seconds to go in the period when he converted a 2-on-1 pass from Kailer Yamamoto.

It was the first goal this season for Burakovsky, sidelined most of the way with an upper-body injury.

“It was a great play by him. I didn’t expect him to give it back to me,” Burakovsky said. “It feels good to have some luck on your side. I had lots of bad breaks this year and last year. It was good to see it go in, for sure.”

Dunn added his empty-netter with just more than two minutes left in the third.

“We were a little bit too much on our heels for a stretch of minutes, and that’s where the Tatar goal was a huge goal for us in this hockey game,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said. “And for Burky, that’s the type of goal that just helps continue getting him confident and feeling good about himself, so it was really good to see him finish that.”