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Who’s in and who’s out: the current Kraken lineup

There has been a, uh, lot going on in the NHL in recent weeks, to say the least. After a sizeable chunk of the schedule was postponed the weekend before Christmas, the league decided to start the holiday break a couple days early and sent everyone home after last Tuesday’s games finished. At the time, over 100 players — around a sixth of the league’s rosters — were in Covid protocol.

The Seattle Kraken are at the end of a 10-day stretch of no hockey games. Their last outing was a 5-3 loss to the Oilers that feels like happened a lifetime ago. In the time since, they’ve placed 5 new faces on the league’s Covid protocol:

Fortunately for Seattle, Soucy has able to exit the protocol on Tuesday along with fellow defenseman Jamie Oleksiak, who was placed there prior to the Oilers game. That’s great news for the depleted Kraken blue line. Seattle has been carrying 8 defensemen on the roster all season long, but at one point over the break they were missing half of them — putting them on the brink of calling up a Connor Carrick or Cale Fleury from Charlotte. But with Soucy and Oleksiak back, that no longer should be necessary. Seattle now has 6 active defensemen available for tomorrow night’s game against Philadelphia. The real issue left is that they haven’t been able to play a game or even practice fully in over a week. That could make it difficult to stay in game-shape, but Oleksiak at least isn’t too concerned about that.

The Kraken are still shorthanded, but overall they haven’t been hit by the omicron spread as significantly as some other NHL teams. They’ve still already taken advantage of the NHL bringing back taxi squads though, having recalled goaltender Joey Daccord and forward Kole Lind to serve as ready-to-go replacements in case of sudden additions to the Covid list.

Here’s an updated look at who’s in and who’s out for Seattle as their return to the ice approaches. Lines are based on Tuesday’s practice.

Forwards

Jaden Schwartz / Jared McCann / Jordan Eberle

Calle Järnkrok / Yanni Gourde / Colin Blackwell

Marcus Johansson / Alex Wennberg / Joonas Donskoi

Max McCormick / Riley Sheahan / Morgan Geekie

Alex True

Defense

Mark Giordano / Jamie Oleksiak

Jeremy Lauzon / Carson Soucy

Haydn Fleury / Will Borgen

Goalies

Philipp Grubauer

Chris Driedger

Taxi Squad

Kole Lind, Joey Daccord

Covid Protocol

Adam Larsson, Vince Dunn, Ryan Donato, Mason Appleton

Injured Reserve

Brandon Tanev

As always, things can change quickly this season, but don’t expect any games to get fully cancelled. The NHL has been consistent in calling each missed game “postponed,” meaning they intend to make it up. The league decided that players would not be going to the Olympics this year, and the scheduled Olympic break will now be used to make up the litany of postponed games. The NHL already made the Canucks and Flames play meaningless regular season games last year after the playoffs had already begun, so don’t expect them to shorten the season this year unless they are absolutely forced to.

The Kraken will be back in action tomorrow night against Philadelphia, and are currently scheduled for five more games in the 10 days after that. It should be noted that four of those games are against Canadian teams, which could complicate matters moving forward as Canada has their own set of rules regarding travel and quarantine procedures. The game in Winnipeg on January 8th seems most up-in-the-air as of now. UPDATE: The Jets game on January 8th has officially been postponed.

Until then, we’ll take it day by day and enjoy any amount of hockey we get to watch.

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