This Sunday night start to a fourth Kraken preseason was all about new beginnings for the franchise on multiple fronts.

A new head coach in Dan Byslma was being talked up on-air by a nascent Kraken Hockey Network as a plethora of young faces in home team uniforms took the ice for their initial NHL taste of any kind. But among the more established faces out there for this 6-1 exhibition loss to the Calgary Flames at Climate Pledge Arena, third-year centerman Matty Beniers was also marking a new beginning with a body now said to be laden with 17 additional pounds of muscle.

That new body mass – four pounds of fat shed and the 17 of muscle added for a net weight gain of 13 – was displayed early and often by Beniers as he mixed it up physically at both net fronts. At one point midway through the game, as a scrum erupted in front of Kraken goaltender Philipp Grubauer, Beniers could be seen jumping into the fray and wrestling Calgary players away from fallen linemate Jared McCann.

The Kraken made it a point this offseason that they wanted to see Beniers get stronger and he clearly took that advice to heart. How he uses that muscle to better position himself as an offensive threat could help dictate a lot of what the team does offensively this season.

Beniers started the game on his early camp line between McCann and Oliver Bjorkstrand. He was on the ice in the final period and helped start a rush that led to the only Kraken goal, with Nathan Villeneuve one-timing a nice cross-ice pass by Bjorkstrand. Villeneuve, a 2^nd round pick, 63^rd overall pick by the Kraken at the NHL Entry Draft last July, was one of a handful of prospects playing in their first NHL game of any kind.

The Kraken have high hopes for Villeneuve, a scrappy type of forward who enjoys mixing it up while boasting some highly-skilled finishing ability he showed when converting the Bjorkstrand pass from just inside the right faceoff circle.

By that point, the Kraken were already down by four goals after yielding three in the opening period alone. The combination of new faces and new linemates made for some uneven play in the early going before the Kraken seemed to find their legs in the middle and final frames.

Kraken 8^th overall draft pick Berkly Catton was another newcomer who saw some of the heaviest Kraken ice time of anyone at both even strength and on the power play. Catton wound up going in alone on a partial breakaway in the third period, only to be dragged down from behind by Adam Klapka on a non-call by the referee.

Play went back up ice, and Klapka wound up scoring the fifth Flames goal.

Catton also lost a faceoff to Clark Bishop on the game’s opening goal just 1:58 in. An ensuing Jake Bean wrist shot from the point was stopped by Grubauer, but Bishop got two cracks at rebounds before backhanding the second one home.

Grubauer got two periods of work, allowing four goals on 19 shots. Ales Stezka came on to work the final period and gave up the Klapka goal and another two minutes later by Martin Frk.

Not surprisingly, with so many new faces trying to make an impression, the game got chippy at times. Kraken AHL prospect Tucker Robertson got into a spirited fight with much bigger Calgary defenseman Artem Grushnikov early in the second period, holding his own as the pair each threw a flurry of punches.

Kraken winger Tye Kartye, always in the thick of things when these teams meet, was also at his feisty best throughout. If one thing, the Kraken seemed eager to serve notice their prior seasons of getting pushed around at times are now a thing of the past.