from Larry Stone of the Seattle Times at the Spokesman-Review.

As one Seattle icon said on the occasion of another exhilarating, groundbreaking playoff series win, more than a quarter century ago:

It just continues.

The Kraken’s joy ride moves on, given a new tank of gas with Sunday’s unfathomably tense 2-1 victory over the Colorado Avalanche. Playoff hockey, that trendy new venture in Seattle, remains on center stage. In the spirit of “The Double” by Edgar Martinez, we now have “The Save” by Philipp Grubauer – or more accurately, 33 of them by the Kraken goalkeeper to tear the heart out of the Avalanche, time after time.

The Kraken can put aside their razors — those playoff beards will keep growing for another couple of weeks, pending the result of their upcoming second-round series with Dallas. When the Kraken and Avalanche met for the handshake line that marks the end of every playoff series, no matter how chippy – a wonderful and enduring tradition – it was Colorado that bore the mournful faces of a team that will have an entire offseason to mull over what went wrong in Game 7, and the losses that preceded it.

For a team that won the Stanley Cup last year, it’s a shocking turnaround. And for Seattle, a team that hadn’t even played its first game two years ago, it’s just as stunning of a triumph....

In a series that awakened Seattle to the wonders of playoff hockey – and reminded the hockey world that the Kraken are now more than just an expansion oddity – they did the improbable. Some would even deem it the impossible: Knocking out the defending Stanley Cup champions with three road wins.

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