Kraken 3-4 Rangers: a 14-minute collapse, a furious rally, and Korpisalo's long-awaited debut
New York built a four-goal lead inside two periods and then held its breath as Seattle's third-period surge fell one goal short — on the night the Rangers finally got their post-Shesterkin goaltending plan on the ice.
Fourteen minutes that decided it
The final score at Climate Pledge Arena on Saturday — Rangers 4, Kraken 3 — reads like a coin-flip game. It wasn't. It was two different hockey games stapled together: fourteen opening minutes in which New York scored three times and chased Joey Daccord from the net, and a long Seattle recovery that ran out of road with the tying goal still one shot away.
The Rangers struck almost immediately. Gabe Perreault opened the scoring at 1:35 of the first, one-touched home by way of a Mika Zibanejad feed after an Alexis Lafreniere one-timer produced a rebound. Tye Kartye — more on him below — made it 2-0 on the power play at 9:05, tipping an Adam Fox point shot moments after his first apparent goal was overturned on review for a kick. When Jaroslav Chmelar banked in a rebound off Noah Laba's shot at 13:53, Daccord's night was over: three goals on 10 shots, per NHL.com's game story. Philipp Grubauer came on in relief and was beaten only once — Pavel Dorofeyev, from the low slot off another Zibanejad pass at 12:46 of the second, seconds after a Seattle penalty expired. 4-0.
The rally
To Seattle's credit, the third period belonged entirely to them. Kaapo Kakko started it at 1:50 — his first goal in three meetings with the team that traded him to Seattle in December 2024. Jordan Eberle converted a Matty Beniers cross-crease pass on the power play at 6:38, and when Vince Dunn hammered one home with 4:58 to play off a feed from Berkly Catton, a four-goal blowout had become a one-goal game with the building roaring.
It never got closer. "It's really hard for our hockey team to chase games," Kraken coach Lane Lambert said afterward, per NHL.com — and that sentence is the season-shape worry buried in an entertaining loss. Seattle fell to 9-6-1, having dropped two of three.
The brightest Seattle line on the sheet belonged to Catton, whose two assists stretched his career-high point streak to eight games (three goals, seven assists over the run). Eberle's goal was his fifth of the year, and Beniers' setup was the kind of play Seattle needs from him nightly.
Korpisalo, at last
The quieter headline was in the New York crease. Joonas Korpisalo, acquired from Boston on July 1, made his long-delayed Rangers debut and stopped 25 shots — his first game action of the season after an injury kept him out from the start of the year. The context makes the debut matter: Igor Shesterkin was lost for the season on October 9, and rookie Dylan Garand had appeared in all 12 games since. A functional Korpisalo doesn't just add a goalie; it rescues the workload math for a team that suddenly looked one more injury from crisis.
"I thought we were playing the game the way we wanted to play," Rangers coach Mike Sullivan said, per NHL.com, after his team improved to 10-7-1 with a third straight win — though the third period will get its share of video-room attention.
The Kartye subplot
Games have memories. Kartye, claimed off waivers by the Rangers from Seattle on February 27, scored against his former team in his return to Climate Pledge Arena and now has 13 points (six goals, seven assists) in 18 games — production Seattle surrendered for nothing. "I still know a lot of the guys," he said, per NHL.com. On the other bench, Kakko answering with his own former-team goal gave the night a neat symmetry: two players each scoring on the franchise that let them go.
One more line for the record books, via NHL.com: Fox's assist made him the fastest defenseman in Rangers history to 20 assists in a season, reaching the mark in 18 games and edging Brian Leetch's 19-game pace from 2000-01.
What to watch next
The schedule now pulls these teams in odd directions. Seattle flies to Helsinki for the 2026 NHL Global Series, meeting the Carolina Hurricanes at Veikkaus Arena on November 12 and 14 — a strange backdrop for a team that needs to fix its starts, not its frequent-flyer balance. The pattern Lambert named is real: spot an opponent a multi-goal lead, rally gallantly, lose anyway. The Rangers visit Edmonton on Monday, and their most interesting storyline is now a timeshare: how quickly Korpisalo takes on a full starter's load, and whether Garand's 12-game audition earned him more than a bridge role. On Saturday's evidence, the Rangers' first period and Seattle's third were both real. Only one of them counted for two points.