Well, it’s about time!
At the moment the Seattle Kraken and Anaheim Ducks drop the puck on their 2025-26 season (7 pm Pacific time tonight, Climate Pledge Arena), 29 of the 32 other NHL teams will have already played. Eight teams – Chicago, Florida, Pittsburgh, Colorado, Los Angeles, Montreal, Boston, and the Rangers – will have already concluded two games.
But on the theory that good things come to those who wait, here are a trio of early season storylines Kraken fans can look forward to.
Accountability
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That’s been new Kraken coach Lane Lambert’s mantra since the day he was hired. “Our team has a mandate. We’ll be hard to play against. To do that, you’ve got to compete, you’ve got to work. And we want to be fast, aggressive, we want to pressure. Our mandate is to get better every day. So we’ll challenge ourselves to do that.
“You have to have an element of competition in every practice. If something’s not right, don’t let it go, stop practice. It doesn’t matter if you’re a 14-year veteran or a rookie. Everybody wants to learn. It’s not just younger players. You can still develop your older players, different concepts that you can bring to them and help enhance their game.”
Defenseman Vince Dunn is one of those veterans, 542 NHL games and a Stanley Cup on his resume, who’s bought in. “I think the coaching staff that we’ve brought in is really reliable and they’ve done a great job of understanding players and how they need to be coached. And we’re learning how they coach, too.
“It’s very black and white what coach expects from you out there. I think that goes for systems and that goes for your personal game. He has expectations out of everyone and he wants to hold everyone accountable. He’s slowing drills down when he wants to call things out. And it’s not necessarily to pick on a guy, but to just kind of point things out that maybe we’re unaware of.
“When everyone’s accountable and everyone’s feeling good about their game, then the confidence just follows through. When you’re not thinking the game so much, you’re able to make better plays, and then the game slows down for you as a defenseman.
“It’s been a letdown in the dressing room and for the city the way we’ve played these last couple of years. We’ve turned bad games into bad stretches and bad periods into bad games. I think you’re going to see a new identity for this team. It’s exciting to see the pace and the accountability, the work ethic that you’re seeing in camp. Guys working for each other when it’s not always easy to do and it’s not always fun to do.”
Berkly Catton
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How long Catton stays a Seattle Kraken depends on how he performs, and the health of other forwards. If he sticks for more than nine games, that burns a year of his entry-level contract. The ramification is that the team will have to negotiate a new, higher-priced deal with the forward a year earlier.
The 19-year old brings a tantalizing variety of offensive skills, an area the Kraken have sorely lacked since their inception. Last season for the WHL Spokane Chiefs, Catton in the regular season and playoffs combined scored 49 goals and 102 assists. Even a fraction of those drool-worthy numbers would be a B-12 shot to Seattle’s output.
“He controls the puck so well,” says veteran Kraken forward Jared McCann, the team’s top scorer for each its first four seasons. “I know he’s not a big guy, but he can fight you off in the corner, too. We’re not trying to overload him too much. Let him play hockey. You don’t add too much pressure to a kid like that. He’s obviously here for a reason.”
Coach Lambert has been impressed with Catton’s defensive mindset, too (aside from his three stick penalties in the final pre-season game against Edmonton). “He’s doing a great job of absorbing everything.
“When you’re junior players, the biggest thing they can learn is how to play in their own zone. As an offensive guy, you have to learn that, because it’s about gaining trust from the coaching staff. There are new concepts in the defensive zone that we introduced. He grasped it right away.”
Catton also has a wise-beyond-his-years perspective. “There’s so many ups and downs. Even if it’s a good day, I try and flush it. It’s a bad thing, I flush it the next shift. That’s something I’ve been working on.
“This whole (2024-25) season and past summer, I knew the stuff I had to work on. It feels better this year, in corner battles and the pressure of the game. I’m not going to go in a battle with (defenseman Adam) Larsson and out-muscle him. I have to be a little quicker, try and get to the puck before him, and little things like that. Just continue working on being heavy in battles, coming up with pucks, and whenever you have the puck, making plays.
“I’m smiling because it’s awesome being in the NHL with all these guys. It’s a grind and these days are tough, but I enjoy being on the ice with all these good hockey players. It’s a lot of fun.”
The Backup Goalie Battle
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It’s not a given that Philipp Grubauer will be Joey Daccord’s partner in goal all year. How he performs in his fifth Kraken season compared to newcomer Matt Murray will determine who stays and who goes – or whether both stay in a three-goalie rotation, made necessary by the Olympics-influenced condensed schedule.
Murray, a two-time Cup champ, must be considered uber-motivated. He and the team claim he’s healthy, and he knows Seattle may be his last opportunity to stick with an NHL club. What he’s already demonstrated is an advanced understanding of goaltending.
“The mental game is so important,” Murray explained one day after practice. “A lot of times goalies improve as they get older, even though physically they’re fighting off that aging process. But as they get older, the mental game and stability out there improves. Your ability to read the play, the trust. I’ve got thousands of reps of almost every play. Being able to turn my brain off and let that subconscious kind of take over. That’s the biggest advantage of getting older and having those reps.
“Goaltenders, especially young ones, tend to panic a little bit with the puck. It’s the one scenario in hockey when as a goalie, you’re the one controlling, you have the puck, you’re not reacting to something else. Goalies aren’t really used to that.
“When you get into that situation, you have a lot more time than you think. You learn as you get older, you can relax back there a little bit, dictate where the play goes, take a second to make the right play, not just the first play or the quickest play. Breakouts are huge in today’s game, the way teams forecheck now.”
Murray also has an interesting theory about when a goalie should concentrate his communication with teammates. “It’s important that communication happens before the game. A lot of times, especially between goaltenders and defensemen, if you’re talking out there (during a game), it can be a bit of a distraction.
“You really want to get on the same page early. The way we play two-on-ones, the way we like to do our goalie handles (of the puck), our calls and stuff like that. So when the game comes, we can just play. We know exactly what we’re doing without having to talk. If you’re talking, it’s slowing down just a little bit. So you want to be able to do so non-verbally.”