Seattle Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke expressed confidence in general manager Ron Francis during a KJR-FM interview. His comments on that and other Kraken topics below, in a transcript which has been edited for clarity only.
Prospects coming of age: “There’s a lot to like. I’m certainly excited by our prospects. Berkly Catton, who plays in the Western Hockey League (for the Spokane Chiefs), he’s still in juniors, but he’s scoring about two points every game. I think we have 36 prospects in the system now, so we’re really excited by that. We early on made a decision that that was how you were going to build long term, a competitive team.”
Slow start to season: “There’s a progression that’s going to happen. New coaching staff, lost your captain for a good partof the season. It was hard losing Jordan Eberle, but he was skating with the Firebirds over the break. Those can sound like excuses, but those are real things.”
Don’t use the “R” word: “When you look at the pieces on this roster right now, we have a lot of good players. I love the free agents we picked up. I think there’s areas where we can add some strength. I think we need to chip in some more goals. But we don’t think this is a rebuild.”
Vote of confidence for GM: “I think our ownership has faith in Ron Francis. But mark my words; in my career, if you go look, I’ve been associated with teams that won and eventually got to the promised land. We’re going to do that here. It’s more than a desire, it’s an absolute conviction that we’re going to get there one way or another. We feel the pressure, but we also feel the excitement, because we think good things are coming.”
Season 5 expectations: “All in all, I feel pretty good. But you know, having said that, we’re ready to win now too, and we’ve got to press just a little bit harder. we have an ownership group that wants to go faster and get there sooner. I’d say going into season five, what we expect is that we’re going to have a team that doesn’t just make the playoffs, but stays in the playoffs.”
Moving broadcasts from cable to free TV: “It was back to the future, because that’s actually where I started. All the games were on over the air. That’s certainly what made the NFL so incredibly successful, is all the games have been available free over the air, at least in the home markets where the teams are playing. We’ve done it one year here and it’s been terrific.”
Seattle an attractive destination: “Last thing I’ll say is, there is a piece of research that goes around the league every year on how players feel about franchises. That’s a hard pill to swallow for some, because there are teams where players just don’t want to get traded to. We’re shown very well in that survey, specifically on our facilities, our amazing arena, but also our amazing training center.”
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