The widely-held belief that Seattle Kraken goalie Philipp Grubauer would be bought out of his contract? Not happening.
The native of Rosenheim, Germany has two seasons left on a six-year, $35.4 million deal in which he’s generally under-performed. Inconsistent play and repeated bites of the injury bug caused Grubauer to cede his number-one netminder spot to Joey Daccord.
Regardless, during a Friday night press conference at Kraken Community Iceplex, general manager Jason Botterill told me Grubauer would be back between the Seattle pipes in 2025-26.
Botterill is pinning hopes for a “Grubi” resurgence to work with newly-hired goalie coach Colin Zulianello. The pair were said to have developed a rapport at AHL Coachella Valley when Grubauer was briefly sent down to work on his game last season.
Here’s how my conversation with the GM went.
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Glenn Dreyfuss, DJLR: Have you made a decision about whether Philipp Grubauer is going to be remaining with the organization?
Jason Botterill, Kraken GM: Yeah, Philipp will be with part of our group here for sure. We’ll continue to work on different things (with him).
We brought in Colin to be our goalie coach. We’ll continue to look at different ways that we can improve.
The team in front of him is one of the things that Lane (Lambert, new coach) has talked a lot about; making sure that we play strong in front of him. We’ll continue to look at different ways to improve our goalie position both with Joey (Daccord) and Philipp.
Dreyfuss: Why did you decide not to buy Grubauer out?
Botterill: Look, it’s a situation that people assume certain things, (that) if you buy out a player, it just automatically goes away. There’s still a cap hit and stuff from that standpoint. And, you know, we believe that Philipp can bounce back from that situation and we think there’s an opportunity still for success.
The Grubauer Gamble
The risk Botterill is taking isn’t so much Grubauer’s cap hit of $5.9 million next season. The risk is expecting the 33-year-old goalie to regain the form that made him attractive to the Kraken in the first place.
According to MoneyPuck.com, 73 goalies appeared in at least 10 games last season. In the advanced metric “Goals saved above expected per 60 minutes,” Grubauer ranked 71st. Daccord finished 8th with the same team in front of him. This isn’t an outlier; Grubauer in past seasons has ranked 57th of 73 (2023-24), 41st of 79 (2022-23), and 67th of 74 (2021-22).
Those numbers say Grubauer rarely provided the Kraken with a game-changing save – the kind a netminder isn’t supposed to make, but somehow does. In each of Grubauer’s four seasons, his goals-against average remained depressingly steady between .875-.899.
Those believing Zulianello’s influence will pay dividends say it already has. After returning from the goalie coach AHL tutelage, Grubauer posted a 3-2-0 record. He surrendered just 11 goals in those five games. The Kraken are placing a large bet on a small sample size Grubauer’s improved performance will carry over to their pivotal fifth season.