What We Learned: Seattle Kraken getting left behind again
I've been thinking a lot about the Seattle Kraken since they were sellers at the trade deadline.
This is their fourth season of existence, and they haven't made the playoffs since they lucked into doing so in their second season. Two years. Not that long a drought. But it's long enough now that what comes next feels a little uncertain, because even after they got three out of four points this weekend, they're 10 points out of a playoff spot and sitting behind the Anaheim Ducks in the standings.
Everyone kind of acknowledged that the success of the Vegas Golden Knights would be impossible to replicate, but the fact is that they don't seem to be gaining much ground on the rest of a Pacific Division that isn't exactly loaded with extremely competitive teams. The best you can say about the division, in fact, is there two teams that are elite, one that's competent, two that are iffy, and three that are struggling to varying degrees. In theory, it should be easy for a club like Seattle, which did fine but not great in its expansion draft, to gain ground. But they aren't doing that. And they don't seem like they're particularly close to doing so, either.
Since they came into the league, they are 26th in points percentage, behind the Buffalo Sabres. Despite these difficulties — and certainly because they haven't been around very long — they only entered this season with the 10th-best prospect group in the league. They've done well enough to collect the talent they have down on the farm, but there aren't a bunch of guaranteed difference-makers there, either. You might argue there are none at all. At least, there aren't any of the type who can be expected to lead this club out of the wilderness in which it currently finds itself.
And hey, maybe that's just how it goes. After all, we're talking about a recent expansion team and Vegas is unique, basically in the history of North American sports, in the level of success it found in its first few years of existence. Believing Seattle could even come close to matching that was always a fool's errand, and at least they don't look like, I dunno, the early 2000s Thrashers or Blue Jackets. They're a .490ish hockey club, not .400.
The question, then, is which would be better. Making the playoffs that second season sure felt nice, but it also created a perception that such success was repeatable, when they should have been trying to stockpile picks and prospects. Maybe it's easy to say that in retrospect — would you trade the revenue and good vibes that come with beating the reigning Cup winner in the first round for a top prospect? — but I wonder how much that 100-point campaign and beating the Avalanche in the playoffs tricked them into thinking they were farther along, organizationally, than they really were. The Kraken wouldn't be the first or last team to see one season of outsized success they never had a real shot at replicating… and still thinking they could replicate it. It's not that the organization was ever looking to tank in the way Buffalo or Chicago has in the past several years. Nor did they lack the smart front office hires that allow teams to find value at the draft and in trades. But a slight shift in mindset from "get picks and be vaguely competitive" to "believing we're a perennial playoff team" probably set the organization back significantly. There was, for example, no good reason to go out and sign Chandler Stephenson or Brandon Montour last summer (signings I gave a C and a D+, respectively, day-of), other than perhaps the idea that it was the 2023-24 season that was the outlier in their long-term trend. Most people could have told you that was a misguided viewpoint, but that's now been fully hammered home. It's not even that those guys have necessarily been bad, but it didn't take a crystal ball to tell you those contracts were overpays in terms of both AAV and term, got the club exactly nowhere in the standings, and that those players would potentially block younger contributors from high-in-the-lineup opportunities two or three years down the road.
This team seems like it's heading for another top-five pick this season (they picked 20th and eighth overall in the previous two drafts), but it only has the one first-round pick this season, then two apiece in the 2026 and 2027 drafts. So, I think it's safe to say they're seeing the writing on the wall in terms of what they can get out of this group — which features 11 players with some form of movement protection for reasons that aren't easy to figure out. They're not likely to be a cap-ceiling team next season, nor should they be, but they've also never really sat out a free-agent signing period without doing at least one semi-splashy deal, and at some point you just have more veterans than a team that's building out its farm system needs.
Especially with a growing feeling of inevitability around the NBA expanding to Seattle — a topic that has come up at least occasionally since before the first NHL game was played at Climate Pledge Arena — and the idea that this was always really more of a Basketball City anyway, the need for the Kraken to establish themselves as something more than just an occasionally playoff qualifier was always obvious. Now, though, the pressure is on, and GM Ron Francis has indicated his preference is not to just sit on all the draft picks they've acquired, but to move them in hopes of making more immediate roster improvements. Not how I'd do it, given the state of the roster, but it's easy to see why that's the vision.
There is good news here: Just because players have movement protection doesn't mean you can't move them. If you can package those players with all the picks they racked up at the deadline, to potentially get younger — eight of their highest-paid players are over 30 and not exactly pulling their weight, financially — by adding more theoretically high-upside, youngish guys in the Kaapo Kakko mold, that would be a pretty good way of finding a middle road between tanking and just kinda being bad until all those 30-plus-year-old players play out their contracts. As you may have heard, The Cap Is Going Up™ and other teams may be more willing to part with some guys who need a change of scenery (Trevor Zegras much???) because they can now absorb a veteran's larger AAV.
But of course, Kakko hasn't exactly been a difference-maker since coming over from the Rangers, and you can probably only wring so much value out of, say, Jaden Schwartz or Andre Burakovsky, even before facing the reality that they have some say over their destinations.
So at this point the only question for the Kraken is, "How close do they think they are?"
They were right to sell. They might end up being right about their stated goal of moving some of the picks they acquired at the deadline to bring in younger NHL-ready players. But they better be pretty damn sure they're right about how many of those kinds of players they need to be actually competitive. Because it's a pretty soft division right now and the opportunity to consistently push for a playoff spot within the next year or three isn't completely out of reach.
It's good to recognize your mistakes. It's good to draw up potential solutions. But ideally you just don't make those mistakes in the first place.
One or two more missteps on par with the signings they made last July and it might be time for the locals to buy some Supersonics merch. Because they might get that NBA expansion team before the Kraken can make the playoffs consistently.
What We Learned
Anaheim Ducks: The guy I feel the worst for in all these Ducks struggles is Lukas Dostal. He's so good but it feels like he has to steal the game every time they win.
Boston Bruins: At least they know it, I guess. Decent first step.
Buffalo Sabres: Lack of object permanence?
Calgary Flames: Good player and everything but if you're a medium-term Mikael Backlund injury away from feeling like a playoff team, you were always dancing on a razor's edge.
Carolina Hurricanes: Four shots on net, four goals. More guys should try playing like this.
Chicago: Just a frustrating season.
Colorado Avalanche: How are there more layers of this onion to peel back? Feels crazy.
Columbus Blue Jackets: It would be really bad, vibewise, if they didn't make the playoffs at this point. It wouldn't be surprising, given the state of their roster. But it would be a bummer.
Dallas Stars: This is such a funny framing. Like it's objectively true that the Stars are worth less than the Cowboys, Mavericks, and Rangers. But still.
Detroit Red Wings: Not so easy coaching a team that's just not very good, is it?
Edmonton Oilers: These people know Connor Hellebuyck exists, right?
Florida Panthers: They kinda gotta get this done, right?
Los Angeles Kings: This is actually the only thing I've been talking about. A guy at the store was like, "Nice weather, huh?" and I said "Did you know the Los Angeles Kings killed 15 straight penalties and that's why they've won five games in a row?" Then when the cops showed up I said, "Fifteen straight! Can you believe it?" Even just now I said to the guy I'm playing checkers with in the insane asylum, "They only gave up two shot attempts in over two minutes while Gavrikov was out there on the PK against the Predators the other night," but I don't think he's really absorbing it.
Minnesota Wild: The earth maybe isn't falling apart but if you check this weekend's box office receipts, it might be blowing up.
Montreal Canadiens: Breaking: Local fans like it when their team (possibly) doesn't suck for the first time in years.
Nashville Predators: This is the kind of headline you only see when it's going really great with your new signing.
New Jersey Devils: Oh hey, speaking of things going great.
New York Islanders: Can you believe they didn't write this article two months ago?
New York Rangers: If your playoff hopes are so closely tied to "we just gotta play our starting goalie every game for the entire rest of the season," that seems bad.
Ottawa Senators: They're in.
Philadelphia Flyers: Probably not a great sign.
Pittsburgh Penguins: Juuuuust enough for people to pretend they can keep competing next year. Perfect.
San Jose Sharks: I guess that's better than the alternative.
Seattle Kraken: Okay but who was shooting the puck?
St. Louis Blues: If I had to guess, I would say, "By scoring."
Tampa Bay Lightning: Another year, another "good luck to their playoff opponents." This is just such a casually dominant team.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Related to the Bolts note: I'd be getting nervous about that playoff opponent.
Utah [fill in the blank later]: It's really an indictment of the entire Western Conference that the Wild Card race is this close. How is Utah still alive here? Have some self-respect.
Vancouver Canucks: Yeah, brutal to see this.
Vegas Golden Knights: You never want to be in a position where the Sabres beat you and feel good about their future as a result.
Washington Capitals: That's just what's supposed to happen.
Winnipeg Jets: This was a hugely important win for them. They had to have it. If they'd come out with only a six-point division lead and the Stars had two games in hand? Hoo boy.
Gold Star Award
Jordan Kyrou had a hat trick on Saturday. He's 26th in goals over the last three seasons and basically everyone ahead of him is widely viewed as a star player. Isn't it time he joined that party?
Minus of the Weekend
Really tough to guess what's gonna happen with the Devils the rest of the way but you can't be giving up seven to Pittsburgh post-deadline. The playoff spot is basically secured, but…
Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week
User "MHO" sees it clearly:
To Chicago:
To Minnesota:
Arvid Soderblom's rights
Florida's 26 1st