Tye Kartye scored against his former team and goaltender Joonas Korpisalo won his season debut as the New York Rangers built a four-goal lead and held on to defeat the host Seattle Kraken 4-3 on Saturday.
Gabe Perreault, Jaroslav Chmelar and Pavel Dorofeyev also scored while Alexis Lafreniere and Mika Zibanejad contributed two assists apiece for the Rangers, who won their third in a row in the opener of their four-game Western trip.
Korpisalo, who missed the first 17 games of the season after suffering a lower-body injury during training camp, made 25 saves.
Kaapo Kakko, Vince Dunn and Jordan Eberle scored third-period goals and Berkly Catton had two assists for the Kraken, who boarded a flight after the game for Helsinki, Finland, to face the defending Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes in the NHL’s Global Series on Thursday and Saturday.
Seattle goalie Joey Daccord was pulled at 13:53 of the first period after allowing three goals on 10 shots. Philipp Grubauer stopped 15 of 16 attempts the rest of the way.
Trailing 4-0, the Kraken mounted a furious third-period comeback in which they outshot New York 13-4.
The Kraken spoiled Korpisalo’s shutout bid as Kakko tallied on an odd-man rush 1:50 into the third. Kakko, the second overall pick by the Rangers in the 2019 draft, collected Catton’s rebound near the left post, went behind the net and stuffed a wraparound past Korpisalo.
Eberle made it 4-2 at 6:38, taking a cross-crease pass from Matty Beniers for a tap-in at the left post on the power play.
Dunn made it a one-goal game at 15:02 on a slap shot from the top of the right faceoff circle after Seattle forced a turnover behind the Rangers’ net.
New York opened the scoring just 1:35 into the game. Perreault tracked down a loose puck in the left corner and shoveled it below the goal line to Zibanejad, who sent a pass to Lafreniere for a shot stopped by Daccord. But Zibanejad collected the rebound and fed Perreault, who skated toward the net and lifted a shot from the bottom of the left faceoff circle over Daccord’s glove and into the far upper corner of the net.
Kartye, who had a goal disallowed by video review at 8:35, scored 30 seconds later, tipping Adam Fox’s shot from the blue line over Daccord’s blocker and into the upper left corner of the net. Oliver Bjorkstrand, another former Seattle player, got a secondary assist.
The Rangers made it 3-0 at 13:53 of the first. Noah Laba took a soft wrist shot from the top of the right faceoff circle that bounced out of Daccord’s glove. Chmelar was in front of the net to hammer home the rebound.
Dorofeyev took a pass from Zibanejad in the slot and put a backhander past Grubauer at 12:46 of the second, which extended the lead to 4-0 just after a power play expired.