Hi! This was supposed to come out over a month ago, but then the state caught fire! And more specifically, Spokane did! Also I got a possibly related respiratory illness! So Please Understand. [Satoru Iwata Pose]
The Kraken are in the doldrums of the offseason, and with preseason on the horizon, much still remains unknown about who this team is. Unless something crazy happens in the next week, it can reasonably be assumed that Seattle will be staying put as they are, and saying whether or not they’ve improved enough to make the NHL playoffs in the upcoming, slightly extended 2026-27 season is…
Tricky.
While they have begun the painful but necessary business of starting to shed the influences of their previous regime, the Kraken still exist in a division where Leo Carlsson, Connor McDavid, Mitch Marner, Artemi Panarin, and Macklin Celebrini play, and they will be seeing a lot of them. It’s also a division where just about every team has chosen to impose at least one serious flaw on themselves, but still! High skill forwards and offenses live in the Mountain/Pacific time zones, and the Kraken…have not integrated much of that onto their roster.
Saying this upcoming will be an easy battle, even with some teams bowing out of being good for a little bit, would be lying to you.
So where the Kraken go next, and what the expectations for their upcoming season are today, should be figured out along the way, either before camp starts in earnest, or during the season. That begins by answering some hard questions.
Some important vets are up at the end of the year. Who should stay?
The Kraken have a lot of money coming off the books at the conclusion of the 2026-27 season.
While their forward corps seems fairly stable for the time being, the Kraken will be putting a good portion of their defense corps up for grabs as UFAs by the end of the season. That puts the Kraken in an interesting situation: they probably owe at least one defender on their blueline a Jordan Eberle contract or two, and Ryker Evans probably deserves a second contract, but they also have an abundance of players who could probably take those next few steps and join the team full time as players like Adam Larsson move into the final years of his time in Seattle. Guys like Lukas Dragicevic and Tyson Jugnauth and Caden Price will be competing hard for these spots, and if they manage to impress the coaches and management enough…there’s not gonna be space enough left.
Bringing back Vince Dunn feels like a no-brainer on paper; a reasonably strong defender who has been given the semi-unenviable task of having to be the most effective offense-first blueliner on the team for years at this point, having 40+ points in another strong year for him. He’s also been lucky enough to actually almost finish a season entirely, something his 2023 and 2024 seasons were not able to do.
The same could also be said for Jared McCann; in most of his time here he’s been the most valuable player the Kraken have had. Probably will be this year as well. Which presents a problem; He’s due for another contract at the end of the year. He’s also going to be 31 come the end of the season, and unless he has a catastrophic injury, there isn’t much to suggest he’s going to slow down before he’s 35. His goalscoring and consistency has made him, by all accounts, the single greatest jewel on this lopsided crown called the Seattle Kraken. He probably deserves one last deal to stick around, and nobody would bat an eye at it. Losing him would be an agony beyond words. Losing both would be a sure sign of a shift in priorities.
However.
Because there are plenty of teams who would happily pay through the nose for a player of McCann’s caliber; McCann could also be a major asset for potential shopping around. The East is looking to be a war of attrition as suddenly everyone has to take Carolina seriously as a multi-year threat. The West meanwhile will be looking for any advantage they can get up on Colorado and Vegas. Having a comically cheap by 2026 standards known quantity of goalscoring in both the front and back end is a HUGE opportunity that Jason Botterill has been handed. If he played his cards right and identified teams who already struggle at wing and left defense, he could come away with an absolute haul of futures.
I’m not saying do it, I would be very, very sad to see him go, especially if he ends up meshing well with Bobby McMann, and losing that kind of player would probably cause the already hard up for goals Kraken to become a level of barely watchable not seen since the inaugural season. It would be a great way for Jason Botterill to engender nothing but bad vibes unless he absolutely nails it.
But it is an opportunity afforded to him.
And then…there’s Grubauer. Oh boy what a can of worms that is.
Philipp Grubauer’s time here in Seattle has been long dissected and discussed. The team played like butt in front of him a lot of the time, but he also played like butt when they were trying as well…and then he kind of got it back through last year, which was a frankly quite welcome surprise! Not enough to get them to the playoffs mind you, but he’s been their guy through their one playoff run, and a fan favorite divorced from his on-ice play. Most hockey players could only dream of having that kind of luck.
The problem is…what do you do with him now? If he’s good again this year, posts another .909 or 910 SV% in a league where the average SV% is around .900…that means he’s not just above average, he’s startlingly close to good. That’d mean he’s back. Even at Age 34, his style of play doesn’t seem hobbled by much, so it feels like dearest Grubert could in fact be in for a late career renaissance.
Do you give him an Eberle contract while you get your ducks in a row in Coachella? Do you trade him? Could you trade him? Do you hang onto him?!
Frankly, this question is harder than almost all the others, but they will be vital to taking the first steps into a new era of Kraken hockey.
Speaking of taking those next few steps…
Is Lane Lambert and his system still worth keeping in place?
Lane Lambert’s system, for the most part, works as intended.
It is one that does not have the puck very often, does not collapse as frequently as the previous pair of coach’s systems tended to in the defensive zone, and lives on the counterattack. It is not what you would call a perfect system, but it did clear out the middle of the ice, the most dangerous scoring area, which was a major pain point for a team selling itself on being the Defense Team of the Pacific™.
Thing is…being the Defense team of the Pacific requires a little more than shot blocking and strong positioning to stop the kind of forward that’s about to be extremely commonplace in this division. You need to keep up with them, identify ways to get them stapled to the wall while they’re trying to get around your big boys, you need to identify passing lanes and make them traps for giveaways before they happen. Lambert’s system needs to be determined to be worth the price of admission for such a deal or he needs to be gone.
And don’t say “It’s too soon to tell!”. This is no longer a league that venerates the idea of a coach sticking it through.
Hell, I would argue that due to the way the game is structured, the hockey coach at the NHL level almost exists entirely for motivational purposes. If things aren’t working, teams are less and less hesitant to can a coach, and that could mean name brand coaches or even ones that are quite good could be available as early as November.
There is no reason to hesitate anymore. If they look like they have a decent shot of making the playoffs, then keep him. If not, get the slip ready.
How exactly do you get the most out of Chandler Stephenson?
The Kraken signed Chandler Stephenson in the 2024 offseason to a 7 year contract worth $6.25 million AAV. I’m sure the official answer as to why this is happening is that they needed a veteran Center to help give the Kraken’s youth a mentor to lean on, especially since they were pretty young down the middle through their first couple of years.
From the outside perspective, the signing can only be interpreted as Ron Francis’ beloved process being interrupted by people above him either begging him or telling him in no uncertain terms to be an active participant in the NHL Offseason; something he’d otherwise chosen to avoid doing much of through his first couple of years, and him going “Fine! Here, damn!”.
This decision, whether made in haste or with sincere desire to make the most of Stephenson as a Kraken, is currently haunting the team.
While yes, Stephenson in the stats that count for something is reasonably productive; being top 3 on the team in points on the year through the last two, he is deep, deep underwater analytically.
Like, REALLY deep underwater. Squirming tied to cinderblocks deep. Light becoming a bug and not a feature deep. Megapinnia deep.
Stephenson, as multiple members of DJLR have come to find, is a 5v5 nightmare when it comes to his on-ice impact; difficult to justify playing in any situation but especially in the defensive zone, where whatever he is currently doing is actively detrimental to the team and allowing not just an excess of shots, but specifically quality ones while he is on the ice. His sole positive being a decent shot generator when he’s on the power play. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not nearly enough to justify his TOI.
Now, this would be a problem for any player who was getting minutes on an NHL team, and certainly a problem for the Kraken if anyone else with these kinds of impact numbers. If say, Ryan Winterton was having this kind of impact on the game around him, I would be just as worried about him as I would be Stephenson. The problem is that Ryan Winterton smells of roses in terms of on-ice impact, and critically; Ryan Winterton only plays about 12 minutes a night on the team’s 4th line. If he has an off night, then it’s not gonna be a huge deal unless he’s getting absolutely victimized on a per-shift basis.
Stephenson by contrast is nearly averaging 19 and a half minutes playing in the top 6, and is getting absolutely annihilated. That simply is not tenable for the short or long term future of this team if this is what his game is going to result in. With possession and defensive acumen being at the forefront of what the team wants to be and currently at a premium according to the results, these results are nothing short of unacceptable.
Therefor, the conundrum is this: He’s going to be here for awhile, unless he gets white hot to start the season, his value is in hell. So shipping him out is…probably not viable without someone/thing else going the other way. Therefor, the Kraken need to figure out how to best use him. I’m sure Lane Lambert has a mind to put him out there again for 20 minutes or so, but that really can’t be the answer again.
…So where does he play?
In my opinion, Stephenson almost needs to be treated like a rookie again; given extremely favorable matchups in the offensive zone with players who can help him survive the minute that the puck leaves a Kraken stick and exits the zone.
It’s not a perfect deployment, and it’s certainly an easy pickup if the other coach is paying attention, but the alternatives are not especially enticing.
Are you trading Shane or not, and if so, how quickly can you get it done?
Shane Wright wants out of Seattle, but is planning to stick it out, it seems. The fact that he didn’t get any bites on his previous attempt to get a trade out of town should be clear about that.
So the question is this: do you still want him here or not? It’s a simple, cruel question, but it is a question worth asking at this point.
If the Kraken still believe that Shane Wright still has value to them, which he almost certainly does, then they should make it clear to them that there isn’t much interest in trading him, and that he should find a way to make it work here in Seattle. He is still a fairly productive player that has shown plenty of promise offensively and defensively for the Kraken, and losing him would open yet another gaping hole in a position that doesn’t need any more weak threads in it. If they can guarantee him the kind of ice time expected of a top 6 guy and can find a way to finally maximize his potential, then they should create a way to do so.
If not, then the Kraken should, in my opinion, take their medicine, and work with him to find a spot that works. Quickly.
While he still very much as potential, I think it would be stretching it at this point to say Wright’s a top prospect at this point. Sure, he’s still on his ELC, and sure he’s under 25…But that doesn’t make him a top prospect anymore. His first round potential, as I am sure we’ve made abundantly clear and we’re all tired of hearing about, has either been largely mismanaged by an organization trying to maximize his playing time under a stupid agreement that got undercut by the NCAA years later, or actively squandered by a desire for vets to teach him, and thus smush him down the lineup where his skillset has bounced between invaluable and replaceable. Whatever his agent and Jason Botterill seems to think this player is, is frankly not what the rest of the league is seeing. They’re seeing the player who has 78 points in almost 170 NHL games. Which is pretty good!
Just not “sell the farm” good. If he was, he’d already be out of town.
There are plenty of teams looking for young centers that could use a change of scenery, and a new CBA that limits how many years you can get out of a player in signing. So if he wants out? Cool! Let’s make a deal before you lose the capacity to sign him for 8 years. Sorry for the rocky start, enjoy wherever it is you go. Am I looking for a first round pick out of this? Or perhaps another player back? I’d certainly like one, but I’m fine with a Shane Wright return being a couple of second round picks as well. I am willing to accept that this did not work out, and make the most out of it to get both sides happy.
Would fans be mad? Absolutely, it’s infuriating, and a damning indictment of the Kraken’s development track for young players. Especially when some have done so well otherwise.
But whatever the plan is, it’s gotta be done. We do not need to linger on this. We don’t need to make this the story of the Kraken for the upcoming year like it’s almost certainly gonna be with Dylan Larkin and Detroit.
Let’s slam the book shut on this before it spirals out of control.
All of these questions are going to be painful for the Kraken. Some of them are potentially franchise-altering. But leaving them unanswered is worse for the team as a whole; the Pacific Division is improving rapidly with it’s ascendent california squads and perennial contenders (for as long as Connor’s in Edmonton, anyway) making the margin for error as thin as it’s ever been. While it may hurt a bit, these questions getting answered are paramount to the Kraken keeping pace with this rapidly changing division.