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Bobby McMann scores again, Kraken beat Panthers to leap back into playoff spot

Kate Shefte, The Seattle Times on

Published in Hockey

SEATTLE — The Kraken’s bottom-six forwards combined for the first four goals as resurgent Seattle beat the Florida Panthers 6-2 and swept a weekend back-to-back.

The fifth goal came courtesy of Bobby McMann, Seattle’s only trade-deadline pickup, who scored his third goal in just two games with the Kraken.

McMann’s debut was delayed a week due to visa issues, but he’s making up for lost time. McMann added the primary assist on Jamie Oleksiak’s power-play goal that made it 6-1, giving him five points this weekend.

Seattle dropped six of their first eight games after the Olympic break and four straight before a 5-2 victory over the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday night got them back on track.

The Panthers were rested, having last played Thursday. The two-time defending Stanley Cup champions are 11 points behind the wild-card cutoff in the East.

San Jose lost earlier in the day in Ottawa, so the Kraken (30-26-9) were able to leapfrog the Sharks and reclaim the second wild-card spot in the West with 16 games left in the regular season.

McMann’s early introduction to Climate Pledge Arena was slightly less impressive than his two-goal, three-point outing in Vancouver the night before. He recorded a hit on his first shift Sunday, but then Vince Dunn sent the puck up to McMann at the blue line and the forward never picked it up, which nearly led to a goal against. Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk came down to Joey Daccord’s net and hit the goalpost.

In the third period, during a dominant power-play shift, McMann scored his second man-advantage goal in two nights and made it 5-1 Kraken.

The Kraken fourth line put the home team on the board first. Freddy Gaudreau uncorked a shot that went off both of his linemates, Ryan Winterton and Ben Meyers. Meyers touched it last and nabbed his seventh goal of the season. Winterton later scored the Kraken’s third goal.

 

After another powerful shift from the fourth line, the third hopped on and made it 2-0. Kaapo Kakko dangled Florida’s Mike Benning and followed up on his own rebound, but Panthers netminder Daniil Tarasov gloved the shot to safety. Tarasov was still sprawled out, though, so Berkly Catton put Kakko’s second rebound over the goalie to score his first goal since Jan. 25, 12 games ago.

While that goal was being announced, the Panthers’ Luke Kunin and Vinnie Hinostroza went off on a 2-on-1 and the latter halved Seattle’s lead.

Kakko, like Winterton, upgraded from an assist to a goal later in the game, scoring the Kraken’s fourth.

Kakko’s slick goal was the only second-period scoring change. The Kraken did kill off 57 seconds of 5-on-3 time. Daccord tried to speed up the process on the penalty kill and launch the puck down the ice, as he often does. Winger Jared McCann knows the goalie well enough by now and ducked, narrowly avoiding taking a puck to the face.

Oleksiak scored goals in back-to-back games for the third time in his long career. He has never scored in three straight.

By 6-1, much of the crowd had departed and fans did the wave to entertain themselves. The Panthers scored a true garbage time goal as the final buzzer sounded, with less than a second left in the game.

Daccord made 23 saves.

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©2026 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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