Business is presumably booming at the Seattle Kraken’s souvenir store.
Because a lot of fans are again unnecessarily in need of a new hat entering Monday’s game against the visiting Carolina Hurricanes.
For the second time in five weeks, Kraken fans rained their headwear down on the ice at Climate Pledge Arena thinking one of the home team’s players had netted a hat trick with three goals.
And for the second time, Matty Beniers nixed the party hats.
Back on Jan. 27 against Washington, a delayed penalty against Beniers — called by a linesman, so neither referee hand their arms raised — wiped away a hat trick by Jared McCann.
It happened again Saturday in a 5-1 victory against Vancouver.
Captain Jordan Eberle, who tallied on a breakaway in the second period, appeared to score a power-play goal at 11:56 of the third when he took a pass in the left-wing corner, skated to the front of the net and stuffed the puck past the Canucks’ goaltender and just inside the far post.
When Eberle scored into an empty net with three minutes left, fans littered the ice with their hats.
But they were unaware the official scorer had changed Eberle’s previous goal, which apparently glanced off the toe of Beniers’ skate.
“I think we owe the fans some hats,” said Eberle, who has a team-leading 22 goals this season.
After McCann’s fiasco, the Kraken announced a “Hat Tricked” promo which allowed 1,000 fans who were in attendance to fill out a form to receive a new hat.
There was no immediate word on whether the Kraken would do that again after Saturday’s mishap.
Eberle (two goals, one assist) and Chandler Stephenson (one goal, two assists) both had three-point nights for the Kraken, who snapped a two-game skid. Seattle currently holds the second and final wild-card spot in the Western Conference, three points ahead of the San Jose Sharks, Nashville Predators and Los Angeles Kings.
“I liked our consistency from start to finish,” Kraken coach Lane Lambert said. “It was nice for us putting some pucks on net. We had talked about shot mentality. I still think we can do a better job of that. … If you look at the first two goals, we’ve got traffic (net front), and that’s the way you’re going to have to score down the stretch.”
The Hurricanes, who are riding a five-game winning streak and have points in 12 straight (10-0-2), lead the Metropolitan Division and are first overall in the Eastern Conference with 82 points.
The Hurricanes are opening a four-game trip that will also take them to Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary in a span of six days.
They are coming off a 5-2 victory Saturday against visiting Detroit. Taylor Hall and Shayne Gostisbehere each had a goal and two assists in the win.
“There was a stretch there where we took our foot off the gas and it didn’t look so good, but I thought overall the D played really well,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said.
This will be the second and final regular-season meeting between the teams. Carolina rallied with two goals in the final 10 minutes to win 3-2 on Jan. 10 in Raleigh, N.C., snapping Seattle’s 10-game point streak (8-0-2).
