So. Here we are.
The Kraken, by virtue of having played the most games of any team this year and having their prerequisite week off deep into the season, are in the 2nd wildcard spot of the NHL’s Western Conference standings, which means that had the season ended sometime over the weekend, Seattle would be in the playoffs. That should be good, right?
Well…the devil is in the details.
What’s Gone Right
While it’s definitely taken a minute for their team analytics to catch up, the Kraken are still in the top half of the league in terms of generating shot attempts. Further, they’ve continued to show their canny in player evaluation as players like Jaden Schwartz and Oliver Bjorkstrand are not just key contributors, but active point leaders in Deep Blue.
It’s also pretty important to note that while they started very poorly, the Kraken have not allowed a losing streak to grow past the 4 they had at the beginning of the year.
They’ve also been able to pretty definitively acknowledge that Joey Daccord is probably the goalie of the future, and that they’ve often done him (and Grubauer) wrong this year, and they’re willing to work on that. Further, they’re now getting goals from Matty Beniers, Jared McCann, Vince Dunn, and Eeli Tolvanen once more, indicating that at some point, this dam could very much break, and we’ll all look back on this early season period and laugh and laugh and laugh.
And of course, their Winter Classic sweater is probably in the top 2 of all-time Winter Classic sweaters. Just can’t beat that killer look, in my humble opinion.
What’s Gone Wrong
If there’s one caveat we can add before we go anywhere else; they’re beat to s#!t right now. Burakovsky was made out for months, Jordan Eberle’s spent time on injured reserve from having his leg sliced open (!!!!!!), Brandon Tanev’s currently serving his second stint on the mend though mercifully day-to-day, Philipp Grubauer’s out for an indeterminate amount of time though he’s getting better…if you wanted a good reason for why any of what I’m about to kvetch about has happened, you couldn’t ask for a better reason; they’ve had major contributors and character players out from injuries. That happens.
What’s not excusable is this dramatic drop-off. Because just about every other thing has had a step backwards.
The Kraken’s big claim to fame last year was their astonishing level of Even Strength danger. Few teams in the NHL last year were as good at 5 vs. 5 hockey than they were. That has otherwise collapsed as every single forward and defenseman’s shooting-%’s crashed back down to what most would call sustainable levels, and as a result the 5-on-5 play has suffered dramatically in just about every facet; board battles don’t go anywhere or are not won in a meaningful fashion. Passes don’t connect. Transition passes become icings. Cycles stay far to the outside of the dangerous areas of the ice outside of very specific plays. The defense cannot block and then follow it up by getting the puck once it’s hit them, and their scheming in front of their goaltender seems to account for the first shot and a potential follow-up, with the plan falling apart quickly as zone time accrues to the point that it becomes hard to think of any goaltender, past or present, who could have a clean-sheet with the ineptitude in front of them.
For their shot attempts being fine, their Expected Goals aren’t translating; their shots are of extremely varying quality, and that’s not going to work. All of that is the systems level stuff.
Pretty much every defender has had a moment this year where they get caught completely flat-footed, and that’s on a team where they generally ask their defense to hang back. Matty Beniers is going through a major sophomore slump. Rookies are not given chances to succeed, or if they are, they can only kind of make things work, and then have their minutes slashed. Bellemare and Dumoulin look every bit of their age, and while Yamamoto is a nice story, he’s still mostly a depth player playing like a depth player most nights. He is a far cry from the found money of Daniel Sprong and Ryan Donato. Previously, their speed made trying to beat them with physicality a dangerous game; take yourself out of the play against the Kraken? You’d better block that puck on the way in or that’s a scoring chance. Or at least, that’s how it felt; you don’t get to absolutely pants the Boston Bruins at the height of their powers without doing something right.
Very few players have been able to keep that level of speed this year. Even fewer have been able to do it consistently. It’s allowed for a team who used it’s footspeed as a deterrent to become a team to be picked on; one to be pushed around. One to be taken advantage of. Only guys like Tye Kartye and Yanni Gourde have stepped up. Everyone else is trying to force that old feeling back into place and it’s not working.
Their speed is lesser, their compete level is lesser, their impactful hockey is lesser, and as a result their record of 8-9-5 speaks volumes. Dave Hakstol’s system, which has generally kept them capable through at least 40 minutes or so of your average NHL game, becomes oversimplified and safe in times of crisis and it’s burned them near every time when it becomes clear the Kraken are only barely capable of controlling games at the moment, and as a result, the opposing team only has to weather their
The Seattle Kraken, in spite of being probably okay on-paper, are deeply, painfully flawed and buoyed by the rest of the Pacific seemingly choosing to be so much worse, and by a league points system that impresses nobody. By the time you read this, they could’ve very easily ended up tumbling out of said playoff spot after Arizona or Nashville or Calgary or Anaheim got their act together long enough to get into it.
That’s not going to cut it in a conference, and especially division, that’s looking to be a major power in the league in some way or another for the next few years.
Why did this happen?
Because Seattle sports is ultimately about pain, but pain in a unique, whirlwindy type way. The same way I imagine those who get swept out to sea in a tsunami experience pain. A great rush of power that ultimately pulls you in, robs you of their sense of balance and place, and then pops you back up bobbing in the surf, just wondering what the hell just happened to you.
As for specifics, I firmly believe that Ron Francis tried to fix the Kraken special teams through player acquisitions instead of coaching-level change, and that approach has had consequences.
My reasoning is as follows; the Kraken’s biggest strengths were in it’s ability to not just control games, but play potentially loosey-goosey regular season games where they could score their way out of predicaments…At evens. They got there by putting less emphasis on their net-front defense (another thing that might’ve been a major misstep) and instead of forcing the opponent to be constantly on the lookout to potentially have to backcheck. They got there by making sure every single line could be uniquely dangerous when they were out on the ice. Some were muckers and grinders, others dazzled with puck possession and skill, and others just skated as fast and as hard as they could with the puck and forced turnovers and scoring chances that way.
But all of that was predicated on being good at even-strength and betting on that being enough to get you to the NHL Playoffs, which it did! This was not a perfect formula, but it was working. Then they ran into the Dallas Stars.
The Stars were far older, had a higher talent ceiling than Seattle, and lots of playoff experience throughout the roster. They knew what they could get away with, and further they knew what they needed to do. One could make the strong argument that the power play doomed Seattle, I sure as hell did, but the need for impact players on defense, and impact players who could potentially be difference makers on their power play or penalty kill, which were frequently in the basement of the league last year, superseded that to many a fan…and apparently, the front office. This balance in roster composition was working, but it needed that balance to keep working.
As a result, they prioritized players who had ample experience in penalty killing over practically everything else…and now you know the rest.
So what do they about it?
Traditionally speaking, the time to decide if you’re in or you’re out is right around now; the thought is that by American Thanksgiving, where you are in the standings is roughly where you’ll be the entire rest of the way, accepting space for winning streaks and losing streaks in equal measure. While most of the league started late and thus has a bit of a cushion, Seattle has had the unusual position of having to charge ahead and will be doing so until well into the upcoming year.
If conventional wisdom’s the case, then the Kraken are barely hanging in there, with an assured 5 or 6-team dogfight for the wildcard spots in the West in their future. Their rough start and even rougher play recently has left little room for error. The optimist can see that there’s something going on here that really only needs one or two tweaks and a good motivator to get the final 20 minutes of quality hockey out of these guys. The pessimist likely sees the chickens coming home to roost for Dave Hakstol’s merry band of shooting number outperformers.
Me personally…I lean optimistic, but realistic. They need to make changes to their defense corps eventually; get younger, get faster, get better at play recognition, the works. I’m not terribly worried about the forwards right now. They’ve got world-beaters in junior and in the AHL; they’ll get their goalscoring. But they need to figure out a way to harmonize the strides in power play success with their even-strength play, or it’s possible they could be left in the dust. Be that with yet another sit-down with the coaching staff, give some further chances to Shane Wright, Ryan Winterton, Andrew Poturalski or any number of Firebirds down in Coachella…or start to draft a short-list of swift-skating defenders who could use a change of scenery for post-Winter Classic discussion.
Point is, they need to make that decision, and soon. Waiting and seeing is all we’ve been doing to this point, and it hasn’t been enough.
Leave a tip to support our writers and staff!