from Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times,

Home cooking is a holiday theme throughout the land this week, but none more so than for Spokane native Kailer Yamamoto and his Kraken teammates.

The last time the Kraken won at Climate Pledge Arena — which doesn’t happen all that often — was last Thursday against the New York Islanders, with Yamamoto scoring a tying goal in the third period and then a decisive shootout winner. They’ll need to start winning at home more, and this week seems a timely place to start, with games on Wednesday against the lowly San Jose Sharks and another Friday against the more formidable Vancouver Canucks.

“I think we have all the right intentions,” Yamamoto said when the week began. “But sometimes, we just don’t have it at home.”

That’s putting it mildly. The Kraken play in a relatively brand-new $1.2 billion facility in Climate Pledge Arena, constructed from scratch beneath the old KeyArena roof. They get vocally rabid support from fans attending games, even if the announced sellout crowds of 17,151 tend to include an increasingly visible bit of Halloween holdovers wearing their empty-seat costumes.

Perhaps those disguised patrons wouldn’t be quite as visible, though, if the Kraken could actually win consistently in front of them. They are 80-85-19 overall as a franchise since inception, with a record of just 39-44-8 in their own building.

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