Kraken still waiting on Bjorkstrand to become high-scoring self

By Kate Shefte / The Seattle Times

RALEIGH, N.C. — Free Oliver Bjorkstrand.

The Kraken forward has been wearing a face shield in practices and games for several weeks, since taking a puck to the head against the Vegas Golden Knights on Oct. 25.

“Time flies,” he said in a way that suggested time had not, in fact, flown.

Bjorkstrand said he sustained a fracture in a game against the Vegas Golden Knights. The continued use of the headgear is a way of protecting himself from contact — and surgery.

“Hopefully after Christmas” it comes off, he said. “It’s not the best thing to play with, but obviously I don’t want to get hit again.”

It’s another uncomfortable situation in a first 28 games that haven’t seemed comfortable. Bjorkstrand arrived via trade in July with expectations that he’d score — a lot, as usual. He had 57 points in 80 games for the Columbus Blue Jackets last season but is off that pace with 14 in 29 in his first season in Seattle.

The 27-year-old ended a 17-game scoring drought for the Kraken (16-10-3) on Nov. 23, but that wasn’t the opening of the floodgates, as several teammates predicted. He has one goal and three assists in the 10 games since. It looked as if he tipped Carson Soucy’s shot into the net on the Kraken’s second-period goal Thursday, but it was credited to Ryan Donato.

He’s still working on getting going.

“He’s been up and down throughout the year. I think he’d be the first one to talk about that as he finds his comfort level,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “But he’s working his way into that.”

Adjusting takes time, Bjorkstrand acknowledged, and this was his first shift to a new NHL team after five full seasons with the Blue Jackets.

“I’m trying to get back to my game,” he said.

“I want to create offensive situations and score goals. It starts with hard work and from that I think you create your own confidence.”

The move to the third line with Yanni Gourde and Brandon Tanev wasn’t just a brief experiment. The trio stayed together for weeks before Tanev moved down last week, Shane Wright took a turn at center and Ryan Donato assumed the third spot on that line.

“We’re a team that’s built where we need a different line to step up each and every night for us to have success,” Hakstol said. “That line has really showed signs over the last couple of nights of being a line that can get that done for us.”

Together again

Defenseman Justin Schultz, a late scratch in the Kraken’s last game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, didn’t participate in morning skate or suit up against the Carolina Hurricanes.

Jamie Oleksiak served the end of a three-game suspension, while defensive partner Schultz was held out Thursday for undisclosed reasons. Schultz was hit from behind into the boards in his last outing against the Florida Panthers.

The two other defensive pairings stayed together while Cale Fleury, who has been in a seventh-defenseman role all season, and minor-league call-up Gustav Olofsson went out together for the second straight night.

“(Tuesday) was a challenging game for those guys to jump into, and they did that,” Hakstol said of Fleury and Olofsson. “They have a lot of experience playing together last year in the American (Hockey) League. They spent quite a bit of time as D partners.

“There’s some things there that we’re going to look at and hopefully can clean up a little bit for them. But for the most part they played with confidence.”

Case in point

Forward Alex Wennberg pointed to breakouts as an area of frustration lately.

“Sometimes we’re not having the success we want right now,” Wennberg said Thursday morning. “Maybe we (should) just try to stick to what we know, keep it simple.

“If we keep coming up the ice with a lot of speed and we use the forecheck, use our legs, that’s very successful. Right now we’re fading a little bit off it.”

There was a particularly disastrous example of that hours later on the Hurricanes’ first goal. Gourde attempted to redirect the puck to Jared McCann at the Kraken blue line and it jumped his stick and wound up in the skates of Carson Soucy. Soucy inadvertently kicked it to Carolina’s Andrei Svechnikov, who scored the game’s first goal on a partial breakaway.