I have returned with yet another installment of my series where I apply an astrological lens in trying to understand what makes the players of the Kraken tick. Before you go any further, if you’re new to this series and don’t already know much about astrology, I urge you to check out the first piece in this series I have provided a quick and simple guide there to various terms I’ll be using throughout this piece.
It’s been a hot minute since my last piece – and by a “hot minute,” I mean an entire astrological season came and went. The Sun entered the sign of Sagittarius at around 9:34 pm ET (6:34 pm PT) on November 21, and and it left that sign and entered Capricorn at around 11:00 am ET (8:00 am PT) on December 21. Because of this, before I dive into my player analysis, I’m going to do a quick overview of what Sagittarius season meant to the Kraken.
In fact, the team kicked off the season with a bit of a bang. The game against the Capitals was already underway when that switch was occurring. What happened only a few minutes later? Oh, nothing, just McCann’s goal. You know, the one that turned that game from feeling like it was going to be another drag of a Kraken loss into something that actually felt winnable. Just look at the timestamp on the Kraken’s goal announcement tweet. if you don’t actually believe me. Something shifted for the Kraken in that moment, and it just so happened to coincide with something major astrologically!
The Kraken’s overall record through Sagittarius season was 6-5-2 (14 points), beating their Scorpio season record, which was 3-8-0 (6 points). They left the doom and gloom (which can be considered part of Scorpio’s realm) and became a team that’s playing with a lot more fire and pep in their step (even if not always consistently so, but that’s also Sagittarius for you – there can be scattered energies).
Also of note is that Sagittarius is the most common Sun sign among the Kraken, both across NHL and AHL players: Grubauer, Twarynski, Sheahan, Gourde, Borgen, and possibly Oleksiak (he was born on December 21, when the sun moves into Capricorn, so he could be that instead). Then you have players with Sagittarius placements elsewhere such as Tanev, Larsson, and Appleton. It’s in abundance on the Kraken.
Now, you might think I’d do a belated birthday tribute to one of the above players. But today, I’m choosing to focus on Jordan Eberle. Why? Because his start to the season felt worth to analyze.
Chart: Jordan Eberle
Behold, the astrological placements of the Kraken’s best goal-scorer. Feast your eyes upon the makeup of the stars that have charted his course in life.
An important thing to note is that Eberle’s Moon might actually be in Capricorn instead. CafeAstrology generates birth charts at noon if you click the “birth time unknown” option. With the moon not even being a full degree into Aquarius, it means that if it turns out he was born too much earlier than noon, instead of having a Moon placement that’s airy and spacey, he’ll have one that’s a lot more guarded and intense. Thankfully, I’m not going into Eberle’s emotional core for this piece, but it’s something to note.
Analysis
For this piece, I’m honing in deeply on Eberle’s sun sign. As I explained in my piece on McCann, Taurus placements are grounded, stable, stubborn, and are often very slow-and-steady types. For Eberle, since this is his Sun sign, Taurus rules his main personality. This is his ego and main state of being throughout his life. While other placements will focus on how things are expressed (such as having a Pisces Mars, which will make his inner drive a little more emotional-based, a little more go-with-the-flow, and zen), ultimately Taurus’s dependability will win out.
Now, I used the term “slow-and-steady” for a reason. Taurus is not a placement that is immediately going to jump out and get things going. If you think of “The Tortoise and the Hare”, Mr. Tortoise is probably a Taurus. It didn’t seem like he’d win the race because of how slow he was, but because he kept at it and didn’t get burned out, success was his.
That might be the best way to describe Eberle’s season, considering it took him longer than some might have liked for him to score his first goal. He’s a top line player, why was he getting off to such a slow start? Time showed, though, that it was only that: a slow start. Some players are good at jumping right out of the gate and getting things going early in a season. Leading Goal Scorer Brandon Tanev was the Kraken’s example of this. Yet, the team’s overall poor record throughout the first few weeks (and, let’s be honest, this whole season) would make people rightfully wonder why it’s the former fourth-line grinder who’s leading the team in goals and not the first-liner.
However, starting off slow was never a knock on Eberle’s actual skill. After 7 games, he came out swinging, and he had a stretch of 9 goals spread across 11 games, including the first (natural) hat trick in Kraken history. No, this was all just because he’s got a Taurus Sun leading the way. It takes time for this sign to get itself comfortable. Once it finds that comfort, though, everything can start clicking together.
A counterpoint to this might be to say, “Well, of course it took Eberle time to start scoring. Haven’t you said it in other pieces before that the Kraken needed time to learn and gel?” You wouldn’t be wrong to point at that, but the thing with Eberle is that this has happened before.
For example, in the 2019-2020 season, it took Eberle until December 2 to score his first 2 goals. That was 14 games played without a single goal. He also only had 5 assists through those games. It wasn’t very good point production for him throughout the first two months of NHL action. In the remaining 44 games he played that season (including the December 2 contest), he had 16 goals and 19 assists. December through mid-March (when the COVID-19 pause hit) were much kinder months to him.
In fact, I got curious as to how deep of a trend this has actually been for Eberle. What is his point production like across each season? Does he always have lower production rates to start a season as compared to the rest? In a chart that might make more experienced data viz people say, “Em, there was a much better way to do this,” we have his point trajectory over months:
As a note, I labeled each month 1-7 instead of, say, October, November, etc. just because throughout Eberle’s career, there have been a few seasons that have started in January instead. If I’m trying to prove that Eberle’s season starts can be slow, we don’t want the first-month data from those seasons winding up in the middle of the chart!
With the exception of the very tail end of a season (which makes sense considering the last month of the year is usually just a couple games in April before the playoffs begin), the first month of a season appears to be his lowest-producing on average. Also looking at the chart, his most productive months over his career (16 total points in one month) have never happened at the start of a season. It just takes him time to get going. It’s his Taurus Sun. No need to worry about it.
Now, the question is, what’s leading him to suddenly have such a dominant stretch faster than it has in some other seasons? After all, if he’s got that Taurus energy, shouldn’t it have taken him longer to adjust to a brand new franchise? While he’s no stranger to moving teams, he still played with the Islanders for four seasons, and that’s more than enough time for Taurus placements to feel settled in. Shouldn’t the disruption to Seattle have had more of an impact?
The possible answer? Linemate chemistry. Any sign can click with any other sign, but there is a higher likelihood that good chemistry forms when people’s signs align just right. The two rules of thumb tend to be when people have the same elements (example: I’m a Gemini Sun and one of my best friends is a Libra Sun, and it can be very obvious that we’re both air signs in how easy it is for us to bounce ideas off each other) or when it’s elements that are in harmony (fire and air, earth and water).
Jordan Eberle has his Sun (ego, major essence) in an earth sign, and his Mars (energy, drive) in a water sign. Well, what about the charts of his most frequent linemates? It doesn’t feel like a headscratcher to say those two are Jaden Schwartz and Alex Wennberg, but NaturalStatTrick confirms that outside of goaltender Philipp Grubauer, they are the two players on the ice with Eberle the most.
When we look at the charts of his two most frequent linemates, we find in Wennberg a Virgo Sun (earth) and a Cancer Mars (water), and we find in Schwartz a Cancer Sun (water) and a Taurus Mars (earth). I won’t go in too deeply about Wennberg and Schwartz’s charts beyond that (because it would just defeat the purpose of future pieces on them), but having that kind of elemental alignment in Sun and Mars signs across linemates is a really positive thing to see. You want your linemates to click with each other. You want them to not just understand each other’s tendencies but to play roles that compliment each other well.
When these three play together, the points all seem to wrack up. It’s mostly in the form of Schwartz and Wennberg setting up the assists to Eberle’s goals, but it’s still a noticeable difference. As of today, Eberle is tied for leading goal scorer on the team with 12, and he leads the Kraken in total points with 21, Also, Schwartz is tied for the lead in assists with 14, and Wennberg isn’t too far behind with 13 of his own. While this line has been broken up recently, it feels like most of their points were being generated together. Their chemistry shows. Astrology seems to insist that said chemistry between the three is to be expected.
“So why did Eberle’s production start to slow down after that hot streak?” Well, even for a Taurus, eventually that happens. They’re determined souls, but also, hockey is a flukey game. Goal scorers tend to be streaky. Even Alex Ovechkin has had periods where the goals haven’t come as easily. It’s just how it all goes.
As for a personality tidbit, because astrology begs for that, did you know Eberle first dated his wife, Lauren, when they were both 15? They weren’t always together throughout the years, as Lauren detailed on her Instagram profile, but to go back and marry your high school sweetheart is strong Taurus energy. Also so is maybe admitting your favorite band is Nickelback, who were already a contentious choice back in the day, but feel even more stigmatized as the years go on. Taurus energies are stubborn energies. No amount of hate against his favorite band will change his mind.
Having a Taurus Sun on your team points towards a teammate who is dependable, hard-working, and determined. Even if it can sometimes take people with Taurus placements some time to settle in, once they do, they’re comfortable souls for a long time. Additionally – as I touched on a bit with McCann’s Taurus Mars – these signs are the kind that once they do get comfortable, they’ll want to settle there for a long time. An early fan theory has been that when Giordano leaves the team some day, Eberle will be trading in his current A for a C. It’s a theory that suggests Eberle is not going anywhere anytime soon, and his chart points to exactly that possibility.
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