Articles in Seattle Kraken

from Mike Vorel of the Seattle Times,

Starting, of course, with the fates of Francis and Hakstol. While it’s unlikely the Kraken exile their 61-year-old GM, Francis’ player-personnel decisions warrant scrutiny. After Seattle surprised last season on the strength of its scoring depth, that versatility vanished. Departees Daniel Sprong (18 goals and 25 assists for Detroit), Morgan Geekie (17 goals and 22 assists for Boston) and Ryan Donato (12 goals and 18 assists for Chicago) all made positive impressions elsewhere, while additions like Kailer Yamamoto (eight goals and eight assists) and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare (four goals and three assists) provided no such playmaking.

Still, it’s a coach’s job to put his players in positions to succeed. And while injuries to Dunn, Andre Burakovsky and Jaden Schwartz certainly didn’t help, it’s difficult to argue Hakstol maximized his talent.

Aside from injuries and unmerciful hockey gods, mainstays like McCann (70 points in 2022-23 to 62 in 2023-24), Beniers (57 to 37), Eberle (63 to 44), Gourde (48 to 33), Brandon Tanev (35 to 16) and Eeli Tolvanen (16 goals in 48 games last season, 16 goals in 81 games this season) all saw their statistics slip.

That comprehensive corrosion typically comes down to coaching.

After three seasons under Hakstol, the second-longest-tenured Western Conference coach, it may be time for a new voice and system in Seattle.

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NEW YORK, March 6, 2024 – New York Rangers President and General Manager Chris Drury announced today that the team has acquired forward Alex Wennberg from the Seattle Kraken in exchange for the Rangers’ own second-round selection in the 2024 NHL Draft and a conditional fourth-round selection in the 2025 NHL Draft (originally belonging to Dallas).

Wennberg, 29, has tallied nine goals and 16 assists for 25 points in 60 games for the Kraken this season. Wennberg leads Seattle with four game-winning goals and his 65 blocked shots rank first among team forwards. He ranks seventh on the team in points.

Watch below.

from Geoff Baker of The Seattle Times,

This past Monday was really the type of break the Kraken have desperately needed when it comes to reaching a broader fan base.

After all, between Monday’s late-morning burn-off of a thick fog and Tuesday’s all-day rain fest, they clearly threaded a weather needle on their NHL Winter Classic outdoor game against the Vegas Golden Knights at T-Mobile Park. But weather fortunes aside, the Kraken also made their own luck during a showpiece event that should convert new fans within this highly competitive sports market.

Perhaps expectation levels being relatively low for the Winter Classic wound up helping. After all, it was easily the city’s third most anticipated sports event of the holiday weekend, sandwiched between the Seahawks hosting Pittsburgh in a Sunday contest with NFL playoff ramifications and the Washington Huskies playing Texas in the College Football Playoff semifinal in New Orleans on Monday night.

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Puck drop is 3pm ET on TNT, streamed on MAX, Sportsnet and TVA Sports.

Feel free to comment on the game.

SEATTLE (Dec. 30, 2023) – A look at the 2024 Discover NHL Winter Classic® “By the Numbers.”

1 – The Seattle Kraken will make their outdoor game debut, doing so in a venue located just three miles from Climate Pledge Arena. Seattle will become the 29th NHL franchise to contest an outdoor game and the youngest NHL franchise to compete in such a game.

2 – The 2024 Discover NHL Winter Classic will be the second outdoor game for the Vegas Golden Knights, following a loss to the Colorado Avalanche in the 2021 NHL Outdoors at Lake Tahoe. Reigning Stanley Cup champions are 5-1-0 in outdoor games.

from Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times,

Fast forward three decades, and it’s all imploding, with TV viewers deserting cable in favor of streaming and leaving teams and RSN operators scrambling to find a future. One option increasingly eyed by teams — especially NHL squads such as the Kraken in search of broader audiences — is what’s been likened to a “Back to the Future” approach of showing games on free channels as in the 1980s and prior.

The difference now being, instead of one or two weekly games, it would be the majority freely accessed. Sounds great, right? Well, there are obstacles. But right now, the current RSN model is unsustainable and as sports fans you should be very concerned.

Here in Seattle, we’re seeing the not-so-pretty ramifications of RSN model demise on two team fronts with ROOT Sports Northwest.

With the Kraken, who are paid an annual TV rights fee by ROOT Sports said to be within the standard $15 million-$30 million for NHL teams, they haven’t grown their product as well as they’d like. We’ve mentioned previously that Kraken ticket demand has lagged on online resale exchanges, reflecting a lack of demand that goes beyond a poorly performing team.

A great way for any new team to increase interest is through television. But with fewer people willing to pay for packages that include ROOT Sports, the “eyeballs” on Kraken games haven’t been there.

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NHL Public RelationsNovember 22, 2023

NEW YORK / PORTLAND, ORE. (Nov. 22, 2023) – The National Hockey League and adidas today unveiled the uniforms the Seattle Kraken and Vegas Golden Knights will wear when they face off outdoors in the 2024 Discover NHL Winter Classic® at T-Mobile Park, home of the Seattle Mariners, in Seattle on New Year’s Day, Jan. 1. The game will be broadcast live at 12 p.m. PT / 3 p.m. ET pm on TNT and B/R Sports on Max in the U.S. and on Sportsnet and TVA Sports in Canada.

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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from Larry Stone of the Seattle Times,

Home openers come with their own baked-in drama, just by virtue of being the long-awaited great unveiling. For a team with lofty expectations, as the Seattle Kraken have this year, bump it up a few notches.

But what took place Tuesday at Climate Pledge Arena might have been a cut above, by virtue of the multiple layers of grudges, bad blood and scores to settle. It didn’t take long to see that this game between the Kraken and Colorado Avalanche — Stanley Cup playoffs adversaries just six months ago — had something akin to playoff intensity at times. At least early, before this night unraveled for the home team.

How long? The game was a mere 80 seconds old when Colorado’s Logan O’Connor went after Jordan Eberle, presumably the first installment of payoff for Eberle’s hit on Andrew Cogliano in Game 6 of their series that fractured Cogliano’s spine. And everyone wondered if and when the Kraken would retaliate for the hit by Cale Makar in the playoffs that resulted in a concussion for Jared McCann (they never did, though McCann appeared to try to engage with Makar at various times, especially early. The only apparent repercussion for Makar was loud booing every time he touched the puck).

But despite all that angst bubbling under and over the surface, the prime talking point for the Kraken was that they really, really needed a win to turn around a lackluster start. And to get that, they really, really needed some goals after accumulating just two total in their first three games, all losses.

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from Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times,

More than five years after becoming the first front-office hire of a Kraken franchise that technically didn’t yet exist, Dave Tippett was in town Wednesday to launch his new role with the fully grown and operational NHL team.

Tippett, 62, has been named a coaching consultant within the Kraken’s front office, which he insists is as close as he’ll ever come to getting back behind the bench. After being hired as a senior adviser with what was then NHL Seattle in June 2018, Tippett remained with what’s now the Kraken after the then-unnamed franchise was birthed in December 2018 before leaving to become Edmonton Oilers head coach in May 2019.

The Oilers parted ways with Tippett in February 2022 and the onetime Jack Adams Award winner as NHL coach of the year in 2010 with the Phoenix Coyotes, who had a prior seven-year stint with the Dallas Stars, said the nearly 20 months since were enough reflection time to realize those bench-level days are over for good.

“I have no interest in getting back behind the bench,” he said, chuckling.

This latest role will allow Tippett to keep a toe dipped in the NHL while working primarily from his new Flagstaff, Ariz., home he’s spent two years building. He wants to enjoy living closer to nature, spending time with his wife Wendy and their four grandchildren while leaving time for travel.

His work travel in the role will be limited by design, with his job spent watching the team on television and relaying insights to coach Dave Hakstol.

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from Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times,

In short, Kraken tickets are now the NHL’s most expensive by far — averaging $390 on secondary market resale platforms such as Ticketmaster and SeatGeek. That’s 6% higher than the next closest team, the Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights, at $367 per ticket....

That news couldn’t be better for the Kraken, who next spring will seek season ticket renewals from fans on minimum three-year plans. It’s a much better outlook than a year ago, after a dismal 60-point Kraken debut campaign sent the secondary market value of their tickets plummeting.

Fans who had prepaid for Kraken tickets in three, five and seven-year packages suddenly found similar single-game seats in their sections selling online for much less. And when they tried to resell their own seats — either because they couldn’t make all games or to subsidize their season ticket outlay — they often did so at a significant money loss.

That’s hardly a selling point for season ticket renewal. In fact, some Kraken fans even tried to escape their season ticket contracts early.

But the team had bought time to turn things around by requiring the minimum three-year commitments. And things began changing last season, with the Kraken jumping to 100 points and making the playoffs — coming within one victory of the Western Conference Final.

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from Greg Wyshynski of ESPN,

The Seattle Kraken have removed TikTok videos marketed to the hockey "BookTok" community after forward Alex Wennberg and his wife Felicia published statements that criticized the objectification of NHL players.

"BookTok" is a commonly used TikTok hashtag by content creators who want to discuss, review or promote books. A subset of that community focuses on hockey romance novels, with some users fixating on actual NHL players as proxies for fictional characters. One of those players was Wennberg, 28, a nine-year veteran who just completed his second season with the Kraken.

His wife Felicia Wennberg had joked about that fan fixation in the past. But last week, she published a statement on Instagram that said videos and comments made about her husband had "crossed the line of what it means to fancy someone" to the point where they sounded "predatory and exploiting" to her.

"What doesn't sit with me is when your desires come with sexual harassment, inappropriate comments and the fact that, with the Internet, we can normalize behavior that would never be OK if we flipped the genders around to a guy doing this to a female athlete," she wrote.

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via the Seattle Kraken,

After leading his team to a 100-point season, an inaugural playoff berth, and the first ever defeat of a Stanley Cup champion by a team making their post-season debut, the Kraken announced Wednesday that they are extending the contract of head coach, Dave Hakstol.

"We believe we are heading in the right direction with Dave as our head coach and it was important to show that confidence with this contract extension," said Ron Francis, General Manager of the Seattle Kraken. "Dave and his staff have done a great job of creating a close-knit, team-first mindset in our locker room and their work ethic helps set the tone for our team. Dave helped guide this team to a 40-point improvement and was a Jack Adams finalist for coach of the year. That recognition is well deserved."

via the Seattle Kraken,

Just 32 people have had the chance to spearhead building hockey operations for an NHL club from the ground up. Ron Francis is one of them. In just under four years as inaugural general manager of the Kraken, the two-time Stanley Cup champion and NHL Hall of Famer has laid foundations for success at all levels of the organization. And now, with the announcement today that the organization has extended Francis' contract, he'll continue that work through at least the 2026-27 season.

"Ron has done remarkable work over the last four years and deserves this recognition," said Seattle Kraken co-owner, Samantha Holloway. "He has built a tremendous team, putting Seattle hockey on the map. He is building for long term success and is dedicated to our city, our fans, and our community." Francis was hired in July 2019, two years before the 2021 Expansion Draft and with a lot to do. He had to build out a staff that included research and development, coaches, scouting and ultimately players. There was also the need to construct a quality group of prospects that could evolve and sustain success at all levels of play.

from Matt Calkins of the Seattle Times,

There is no joy among the Kraken players now, but they shouldn’t be short on pride.

They might not have made any celebratory toasts Monday night, but they spent the past month as the toast of the town.

This fledgling franchise just gave Seattle a gift that spanned 14 games over this postseason, captivating the Emerald City in a way few saw coming before the playoffs began. Pain is understandable after that 2-1 defeat to Dallas in Game 7, but that improbable run was pure pleasure.

It’s wild to juxtapose the Kraken of the past few weeks against the Kraken of the previous three months. It’s even wilder to compare the playoff Kraken to the team that finished with the third-worst record in the NHL last season.

Yes, it’s postseason hockey, where unpredictability is a factory setting. But to knock out the Stanley Cup-champion Avalanche in the first round and then take the Stars to seven in the second? It will likely go down as the foundation for the long-term love affair between this team and its city.

“It won’t register tonight, but this group changed the landscape of hockey in Seattle,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “This group changed the culture, and the trajectory and the belief of our franchise.”

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Dallas defeated the Seattle Kraken 2-1 tonight to win their series 4-3.

The Stars will face the Vegas Golden Knights beginning Friday night.

Below watch the game highlights and then the handshakes.

from Anthony Trudeau of The Daily Faceoff,

The Seattle Kraken sent their series with the Dallas Stars to Game 7 by winning 6-3 at home on Saturday. The NHL’s newest team has taken it to more talented squads throughout their first postseason and finds itself just a game from the Western Conference Finals. ESPN’s Ryan S. Clark joined host Frank Seravalli on Monday’s edition of Daily Faceoff Live to explain how the Kraken have brought Dallas to the brink.

Frank Seravalli: Ryan you’ve been at all the Seattle home games so far in the playoffs, you’ve watched this team up close and personal, and you’ve seen them save their season yet again. Over the weekend they forced a Game 7 against the Dallas Stars. Every time I have thought the Stars or the Avalanche were in a great position to win their series with Seattle, the Kraken stay right there in their way. Now, they have another opportunity to win Game 7. What do you like about the Seattle Kraken and how they have adjusted to the different pace that the Stars have from Colorado?

Ryan Clark: It has been just how layered and multi-functional they are. We’ve talked so much this postseason about teams that not only have depth, but have depth that can adapt to different situations. Think about what the Kraken did in Game 6, that’s a really strong example. In Games 4 and 5, that was a team that really struggled to get to the low slot and those high danger areas. The result was they were held below their 5-on-5 averages in shots, scoring chances, high-danger scoring chances.

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NEW YORK (May 14, 2023) – The Dallas Stars and Seattle Kraken will contest Game 7 of their Second Round series on Monday, May 15 at American Airlines Center in Dallas. The winner will advance to the Western Conference Final to face the winner of the Vegas Golden Knights-Edmonton Oilers series.

National rightsholders ESPN (U.S.), Sportsnet (Canada) and TVAS (Canada) will broadcast Monday's game, beginning at 8 p.m., ET.

from Iain MacxIntyre of Sportsnet,

For hockey teams, a high floor is nice. But a high ceiling is better.

The Seattle Kraken have a high floor. Their talent is balanced, their effort and mindset uniform and consistent. But in terms of players, they haven’t yet built a high ceiling. The Dallas Stars have a soaring, vaulted canopy — pushed skyward by a showpiece top line of Roope Hintz, Jason Robertson and Joe Pavelski.

On Thursday, with the Kraken and Stars tied 2-2 in their National Hockey League playoff series, Seattle was probably the better team. Certainly, they were the dominant one in the first half of Game 5 in Dallas. But the Kraken have no line that can elevate like Hintz, Robertson and Pavelski, who generated two early goals against the run of play and then manufactured the third-period clincher as the Stars won 5-2 to move within one game of the Western Conference Final.

Hintz scored twice and assisted on Pavelski’s goal that made it 3-0 for Dallas 35 seconds into the middle period, moving into a tie with the Edmonton Oilers' Leon Draisaitl for the Stanley Cup Playoffs scoring lead at 18 points through 12 games. And Robertson, the 46-goal scorer from the regular season whose lack of impact through the first three games of the series was concerning, had three assists to make it an eight-point night for the Stars’ No. 1 line.

Dallas goalie Jake Oettinger, pulled in Game 3 as the Kraken took a 2-1 series lead, stopped 29 of 31 shots and looks again like the best goalie still butterflying in the playoffs.

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from Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet,

The Seattle Kraken are all energy — until they have none. The Dallas Stars look vulnerable — and then they don’t.

This carnival ride of a second-round National Hockey League playoff series is even through four games after the Stars won 6-3 Tuesday in Seattle, one game after getting embarrassed 7-2 by the Kraken.

Game 5 is Thursday in Dallas and, after the eight-goal swing, we’re out of predictions.

With a chance to ride momentum and seize a 3-1 series lead on home ice, the Kraken displayed only a fraction of the energy of their fans, delighted by playoff hockey in just the franchise’s second season.

So fast and physical when they’re on, the Kraken inexplicably switched off through the first two periods Tuesday, managing only 10 shots on net while falling behind 4-0 and 5-1. Maybe it wasn’t quite inexplicable; the sturdy Stars and their experienced veteran leaders had a lot to do with it.

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The game highlights are below.

from Matt Calkins of the Seattle Times,

his ain’t no fairy tale. This is the Kraken kickin’ tail.

Don’t talk about pixie dust like Seattle has Tinkerbell on its side. The only bells involved are the opponents getting theirs rung.

Cinderella? No. You’re watching the stepsisters out there — bullying and bruising these so called “favorites” the sportsbooks picked to roll over this fledgling franchise.

The Kraken’s 7-2 win over Dallas in Game 3 on Sunday night might have prompted a celebration from their fans — but what it really was a declaration. Or in the players’ minds, a confirmation: that they not only belong with the best teams in the league but should be as feared as any other team remaining in these playoffs.

Look at their postseason résumé: They began by knocking out the defending Stanley Cup champion Avalanche in seven games in the first round. And this wasn’t a Colorado team hung over from reaching the NHL summit the previous June, but one that won the Central Division with 109 points.

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Watch the game highlights below.

from Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet,

Until they eliminated the Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche on Sunday, the Seattle Kraken's most incredible accomplishment this season was constructing a 100-point campaign despite some of the poorest goaltending in the National Hockey League.

Starting goalie Philipp Grubauer’s .895 save percentage ranked 40^th among 52 goalies in the league who logged at least 25 games. One of the 12 guys behind him was Kraken teammate Martin Jones, whose .887 save rate was 48^th.

But the sub-par goaltending was evidence of how strong the Kraken actually were as a team. They outscored opponents by 49 goals at five-on-five and profiled as an elite team at even-strength. And now that Grubauer is giving them excellent playoff goaltending, the Kraken are playing like an elite team.

It was Dallas Star Joe Pavelski’s night on Tuesday when he scored four times, but it was still the Kraken’s game as the second-year team won 5-4 on Yanni Gourde’s overtime goal to take a 1-0 lead in the teams’ Western Conference semi-final.

It was Seattle’s fourth win in five games since the Kraken took over their first-round series against the Avalanche.

Seattle scored 18 times in that seven-game win and the Kraken got goals from 15 players, which says everything you need to know about coach Dave Hakstol’s team. On Tuesday, five different players scored: Gourde, Jordan Eberle, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Justin Schultz and Jaden Schwartz.

And while Gourde’s winner at 12:17 of OT was opportunistic, as the two-time Cup winner with the Tampa Bay Lightning spun and fired a standing puck over Dallas goalie Jake Oettinger’s shoulder from a sharp angle after Gourde’s attempted pass bounced back to him off Star Wyatt Johnston, there was nothing lucky about Seattle’s win.

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Watch the highlights below.

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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from Mark Kiszla of the Denver Post,

Where did the good times go? A scant 305 days after parading the Stanley Cup through the streets of Denver, the Avalanche dynasty crumbled.

With a 2-1 home loss on a sad Sunday night to an upstart Seattle team that had no business beating the defending NHL champs, the Avs unlaced their skates and headed home early from the playoffs, carrying with them hard questions that go far beyond woulda, shoulda, coulda.

Is this Colorado team, despite the star power of Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar and Mikko Rantanen, a one-hit wonder?

Can Valeri Nichushkin, who mysteriously disappeared from this first-round series, be trusted as a key member of this squad going forward?

And if injured captain Gabe Landeskog, whose troubling knee injury cost him the entire season, can’t return to full health, might the roster need a major renovation instead of minor retooling?

It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

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from Eric Duhatschek of The Athletic,