Rock bottom for a season spiraling beyond control came with two minutes to go in Sunday night’s opening period when the Kraken surrendered a fourth goal before the third one could even be announced to the stunned home crowd.

That crowd had actually been bolstered by ample fans in visiting Montreal Canadiens red jerseys among the usual and growing assortment of empty Climate Pledge Arena seats as the Kraken dropped their eighth consecutive game, 5-1.

The four first-period goals surrendered by the Kraken made the loss to Montreal an inevitable outcome for a team facing the unenviable task of figuring out where to take things from here.

Philipp Grubauer had a pair of goals tipped behind him by Juraj Slafkovsky and Alex Newhook on Montreal’s first two shots before the game was seven minutes old. He then saw Nick Suzuki bury one upstairs on him on a 2-on-1 break with under three minutes to go in the period before Newhook scored again 33 seconds later on just the seventh Canadiens’ shot to chase the netminder for good.

For the Kraken, coming off a pair of road defeats in which they largely controlled play but couldn’t score, this game saw them pile up some early shots against young netminder Cayden Primeau but none that were really difference-makers. Then, after the Canadiens went up a pair, the usual body language began creeping in on a Kraken team that looked headed toward another defeat.

They headed to intermission down four before Jordan Eberle finally got them on the board just 56 seconds into the middle period with a long snap-shot goal from the right circle that Primeau should have had. But any hope the Kraken had of getting back into this one ended when a video review erased an apparent Matty Beniers power-play goal by ruling they’d gone offside on the prior zone entry.

That left it a 4-1 game and the way the Kraken offense has struggled to generate goals, it was fairly obvious they wouldn’t manage to score four before regulation play ended. They’d wind up taking 17 shots in the second period alone — outshooting Montreal 36-17 overall — but only one of them found the back of the net.

Mike Matheson ended all doubt for Montreal the latter half of the second period by outracing Tomas Tatar for a puck while short-handed, going in alone and putting an all-star deke move on newly inserted Kraken goalie Joey Daccord to make it 5-1 in the latter half of the middle frame.

This is the second losing streak of at least eight games for the Kraken, reminiscent of some extended bad stretches in their inaugural expansion season. While the team’s record of 28-29-13 is already one win better than the 60-point debut campaign, it’s also 18 fewer than a year ago with just a dozen contests remaining.

In other words, this is fast becoming ugly well beyond just missing the playoffs. The Kraken have scored just 11 goals in the eight straight losses — notching one goal in five of their last six contests and only two in the sixth game.

Kraken coach Dave Hakstol, trying desperately to keep his team motivated in these final lame duck weeks, was dealt an additional first-period blow when rookie defenseman Ryker Evans left the game with a lower body injury. The absence of Evans caused the Kraken to go with five forwards on their second power-play unit in the second period, which resulted in Tatar getting beat at the point by Matheson on his highlight reel breakaway goal.

With Vince Dunn already injured and out for the past three weeks — though practicing Sunday in a red noncontact jersey — and Jamie Oleksiak still sore but playing after a blocked shot a couple of games back, the Kraken were feeling the hurt defensively in this one. Evans took his final shift when it was still a 2-0 game, but the Kraken had already allowed too many chances for opposing forwards to roam free in dangerous spaces and deflect pucks behind Grubauer.

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