Seattle releases the Kraken on the NHL
The second-year team's success is one of several storylines at the All-Star Break.
The NHL is a young man’s league. Young franchises do OK, too.
In its sophomore year, the Seattle Kraken embarked on an seven-game tour, beginning Jan. 3. The SS Minnow had better odds of survival. The Kraken would visit Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Buffalo, Boston and Chicago. When it returned to Seattle it would obviously return to reality, deep in the Western Conference standings.
Seattle prepared for the odyssey with a 4-1 home win over the Islanders. Then it won 5-2 at Edmonton, after it fell behind 2-0 and Edmonton appeared to score a third goal that was disallowed. Then came a 5-1 win at Toronto, the nerve center of the sport. If the Kraken could make it there, it could make it anywhere, and it went on to win all seven games by a composite score of 38-16 and holding some of the league’s most dynamic players to a 6-for-22 showing on the power play.
Most impressive was a 3-0 win at Boston, which lowered the Bruins’ record to 32-5-4. Instead of bagging the final game at Chicago and pleading road-weariness, the Kraken won, 8-5, and scored five goals in a 3:41 span. All 12 Kraken forwards put at least one point on the sheet.
Add it up and it was a 7-0 trip for the Kraken. That’s the first time any NHL club has done that since…ever. The league has been around for 105 years. Granted, seven-game trips are not commonplace, but that’s a lot of transit time and at least two trips through customs. And, by the way, no NBA team has done it either.
The Kraken has cooled since then, but it still leads the Pacific Division, through games of Jan. 31, with a 29-15-5 record. Seattle and Los Angeles have 63 points, Vegas 62 and Edmonton 60. The Kraken has won more games and, more important, has played four fewer games than the Kings two fewer than Vegas..
Opposing goaltenders are not surprised by this. Seattle has averaged 3.61 goals, fifth in the NHL, and is capable of epicurean production. It won at L.A., 9-8, on Nov. 28 and has scored eight times in three other games.
The defense pair of Adam Larsson and Vince Dunn is the proximate cause for all this. Larsson is third in the league at plus-30, and Dunn is fifth at plus-26 with 36 points. Of the 19 pairs who have played over 500 minutes this year, Larsson-Dunn is No. 1 in goal percentage; the Kraken has scored 56 times and given up 30 when they’re playing at even strength.
But the scoring comes from everywhere. Eight players have scored 10 or more goals, eight have 25 or more points. General manager Ron Francis, who built the 2006 Stanley Cup winner at Carolina, made quiet off-season pickups. Andre Burakovsky has 13 goals and 39 points, Oliver Bjorkstrand 26 points, and Brandon Tanev 24 points and the toughness he’s shown through seven years. When Eeli Toivanen was waived by Nashville, Francis called immediately, and Toivanen responded with eight quick goals.
Jared McCann is the club leader with 23 goals. This is his fourth team in nine years. His shooting percentage is a fanciful 23.7, which means a reversion to his career 11.8 figure might be imminent. But that’s a concern for another season.
Goalies Philipp Grubauer and Martin Jones have ridden the wave, facing relatively few “high-danger” shots, but they’ve kept the Kraken in games and generally made the saves that matter, which is enough in today’s offensive festivals.
The Kraken’s inaugural voyage was disappointing to those who expected something like Vegas’ first season, when the Golden Knights streaked into the 2018 Stanley Cup Finals. Seattle went 27-49-6 and finished last in the division. But Francis was able to beef up the roster without bumping into the salary cap for the same reason Vegas was able to add talent.
Expansion teams have a huge advantage. They have no bad contracts to unload, no mistakes to correct. And the NHL’s talent pool is still deep enough to provide winnable talent in expansion drafts.
No Seatle player is making more than $6.25 million this season (Grubauer and Burakovsky). With four capable lines, coach Dave Hakstol can count on solid play for 60 minutes, most nights.
It also means the Kraken isn’t dependent on young players, although it has a special one in center Matty Beniers. Last year Seattle was drafting fourth and was delighted when Shane Wright, a celebrity from his youth hockey days, was still available. But Wright couldn’t carve out playing time, among Seattle’s veterans, and is back in the OHL with the Windsor Spitfires.
Predictably, all of this has ignited Seattle, which hasn’t had winter pro sports since the Supersonics fled to Oklahoma City 14 seasons ago. Seattle got only one year of Kevin Durant. There was considerable bitterness and grief, because the Sonics were the subjects of the Emerald City’s first sporting love affair. But NBA commissioner David Stern had repeatedly warned Seattle, and Sonics owner and erstwhile Presidential candidate Howard Schultz, that it needed a modern building to keep its team. Nothing happened, and Oklahoma City proved it was NBA-worthy by the way it played host to the Hornets in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and there went the romance.
Now there’s Climate Pledge Arena, which has reported all of its 17,151 seats have been sold so far this season, and the NBA is interested in returning someday. The Kraken is among the top five revenue teams in the NHL, and all seems sunny and bright, at least until expectations soar, the club has to make long-term commitments, and the term “salary cap hell” becomes part of the local vocabulary.
Other NHL topics:
Connor McDavid: All of his pre-NHL hype was an understatement and, in fact, McDavid has become the Best Player In The World by a larger margin than anyone else is, in any sport. In his eighth year he will lead the NHL in scoring for the fifth time, and has 41 goals, three off his career high, in 50 games. He is likely to become the first player to score 150 points in a season since Mario Lemieux scocred 161, 27 years ago. In doing so he is dragging his teammates to their career highs, and he is guaranteed to be the No. 1 boogeyman for everyone else in the playoffs. Yet his $12.5 million annual wage would make him the sixth highest-paid player on the Red Sox. Obscene.
Connor Bedard: Commissioner Gary Bettman, in his 30th year of masterminding growth and alienating people, said recently that nobody in the NHL was “tanking” to get a prime lottery positon to draft Bedard. Actually he carefully said the teams and players aren’t tanking. Anyone can see that the management groups of the Blackhawks, Ducks, Sharks and Coyotes have positioned themselves well in the Dishonor For Connor campaign, and Columbus unintentionally has fallen into that backwards race as well. Bedard was the best player at the World Juniors and has 86 points in 54 games for the Regina Pats. He has been there for a season and a half and scored 185 points in 96.
Boston Bruins: Depsite a recent hiccup they have been the league’s best team by far. They’ll have to maintain that standard to escape Carolina, New Jersey and Tampa Bay in the East. They also need to sign David Pastrnak, who has 38 goals and 71 points in 50 games. The Bruins have been salary-cap magicians over the years, with Brad Marchand tied to a $6.15M-a-year deal through 2024-25, and Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci playing heroic hockey for a total of $3.5 million this year. They did splurge for defensemen Charlie McAvoy ($9.5 million a year over eight years) and Hampus Lindholm ($6.5 million over eight).
Trade deadline: The Islanders struck early by getting center Bo Horvat frm Vancouver, but now they need to sign him. Arizona defenseman Jakob Chychrun has been the hot commodity for a couple of years now. He’s making $4.6 millon for two years beyond this one, and he would look appropriate on the Kings’ back line. Florida also needs him, as does Toronto. Then there’s Erik Karlsson, having a renaissance with the Sharks but still making $11.5 million per annum through 2026-27. Another target in San Jose would be power forward Tino Meier, who becomes a restricted free agent. And the main reason the Ducks signed John Klingberg was to flip him at the deadline for another draft pick, but has he played well enough to bring a first-rounder?