from Sonny Sachdeva of Sportsnet,

You only get one first step. For the NHL’s Seattle Kraken, this is it — October 12, 2021 will forever mark the first game in the first season in franchise history. And for every single player granted the opportunity to don a Kraken jersey, the year ahead will be one to remember, no matter how it goes down.

Only a select group of players is fated to wind up in that oddly exclusive club, to go on the unique ride that comes with being a franchise’s very first team. Only those who’ve worn the jersey and stepped on the ice in those games can understand the experience of playing an inaugural season, of planting NHL hockey where it had never been before, of turning strangers on the ice and in the crowd into a big-league family.

From Ottawa to Anaheim, Columbus to Tampa Bay, Minnesota to San Jose, this is what it feels like to be part of the First Year, from those who were there and lived to tell the stories.

For some, the news comes out of nowhere. Others get the chance to make the decision themselves. But it all leads to the same message: Leave behind your team, your teammates, your city. You’ve been selected. You’re headed into the unknown.

NORM MACIVER (First Ottawa Senators season, 1992–93): I got a phone call saying that I was left unprotected in the waiver draft, and Ottawa had selected me. That was like two days before the season opened. That’s how I found out I was going to Ottawa. And I honestly didn’t know anything about it — hadn’t really paid much attention to it or who was on the team. I was pretty naive to the whole situation until I got there.

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