“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” – Alan Watts
Will Borgen is gone.
When the news of Borgen’s trade to the New York Rangers dropped, the Kraken fanbase reaction was wide-ranging: you had despair, mega despair, ultra despair, and super despair turbo (championship edition).
I’m here to explain why this happened and how you can support your loved ones in this difficult time.
Remembering Will Borgen
Will Borgen was born December 19, 1996 in Moorhead Minnesota. Now you might be thinking “December 19th, that day sounds familiar” and you would be right! That’s today! It’s Billy Borgen’s 28th birthday! Happy birthday, Bill!
Borgen was an original Kraken, taken in the expansion draft from Buffalo. He grew into a role as a steady top-4 defenseman who didn’t contribute a lot on the scoresheet, but he has a sneaky good shot that I don’t think he uses enough.
And how can you have a discussion about Will Borgen goals without mentioning his goal in the Winter Classic? Borgen’s goal to give the Kraken a 2-0 lead made him permanently a figure in one of the coolest events (literally!) in Seattle sports history.
But maybe you were like “Zaiem this is making me sad, but can we make this just a little sadder?”
How about we make it a lot sadder?
Matty Beniers no longer has his roommate. There will be no Christmas baking show this season.
Why would Ron Francis do this? To me, personally?
Because he hates you and believes you deserve no joy.
That makes sense. Any other reasons?
With the signing of Brandon Montour and the emergence of Ryker Evans on defense, Borgen was the odd man out. Josh Mahura has been a perfectly fine option as a 6th defenseman. He will be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year and there’s very little chance the Kraken would re-sign him. At this point he is kind of who he is at 28 years old (again, happy birthday Bill!), so there isn’t much upside to keeping him.
Trading Borgen saves $300,000 in salary cap space, which is a meaningful amount for the Kraken who are really up against it cap wise when Eberle comes back.
And honestly he just hasn’t been very good this year. In fact, he’s been the worst player on the team. Natural Stat Trick, HockeyStatCards, and MoneyPuck all have Borgen dead last on the team in gamescore and/or expected goals. I don’t think he fits in with what Bylsma wants to do and has really struggled to find his footing this year.
What’s the deal with Kaapo Kakko? He probably came available for very normal reasons, right?
Last year the New York Rangers won the Presidents’ Trophy for having the NHL’s best record at 55-23-4, for 114 points. They went to the conference finals and lost to a very good Florida Panthers team who went on to win the Stanley Cup. The Rangers had two options:
Option 1: Enter the next season with the mindset of “okay we’re close, we just need to work a little harder this season and if we do what was successful and fix what didn’t work, we will be in great shape”
Option 2: Completely melt down and tear apart the roster three months into the season.
I think we all know why we are here, and it’s not because the Rangers exercised option 1.
The Rangers had a decent start to the season until they hit a stretch where they lost 7 out of 8 games and apparently this was enough to start a series of cascading bad decisions by the Rangers. The Rangers wanted to trade their captain Jacob Trouba, but Trouba had a no-trade clause. So the Rangers said “fine, we’ll just put you on waivers and then you’ll get claimed by whoever.” Which, while legal, was not exactly engendering good will. So Trouba allowed a trade to Anaheim, and off he went to geographically the furthest possible team from New York. And all of New York’s problems were solved.*
*All of New York’s problems were not solved
Despite trading their captain midseason (the third consecutive New York Rangers captain to be traded midseason), the Rangers kept on struggling. The locker room did not, in fact, gel together after losing their captain, and the beatings continued as morale didn’t improve. So Rangers coach Peter Laviolette healthy scratched Kaapo Kakko, the #2 overall pick in the 2019 NHL Draft.
Healthy scratching a player to send a message is something we’ve seen work this season in Seattle, when we saw Oliver Bjorkstrand, Shane Wright and André Burakovsky sit out on Coach Bylsma’s orders, and we saw big bouncebacks especially from Bjorkstrand and Wright.
The problem is that Kakko wasn’t one of the players playing poorly. But he is a young player. Some coaches think that the way you send a message to player A is to bench player B. You can’t bench a veteran after all. So you just find a young player and say “aha, see! I am willing to bench players, soo…you better watch out!”
Nothing says “I’m holding you accountable” by punishing someone else for your mistakes. Does this sound dumb to you? Well, it also sounded dumb to Kakko, who had this to say to Mollie Walker (New York Post) on December 17th when asked about his benching:
“I was surprised, yeah. I know you got to do something as a coach when you’re losing games, but I think it’s just easy to pick a young guy and boot him out. That’s how I feel, to be honest.”
“Haven’t been on the ice too much when [opponents] score a goal… I have not been the worst guy, but that was me out of the lineup.”
And he’s right. Kakko is 2nd among forwards in expected goals against/60 (Natural Stat Trick). He’s winning his minutes when he’s on the ice.
But a little over 24 hours later, Kakko was sent on a plane to the Pacific Northwest. He did walk back the stance a little today saying he didn’t think the trade had to do with his comments, but the timing strongly suggests otherwise.
Well, I’m sure this will fix all of New York’s problems and it’ll be smooth sailing from here on out. You did it, Rangers!
So who is Kaapo Kakko?
There was a point in time during the lead up to the 2019 NHL draft if Kakko should go first overall to New Jersey, or if the Devils should take Jack Hughes. This was a real discussion. Hughes has turned into one of the best players in the NHL while Kakko has just been traded for a pittance. That debate is firmly over.
Or is it??
Yes. Yes it is. Let’s settle down and temper expectations here.
It is the most natural thing in the world to see a former #2 overall pick who wasn’t used well in New York and who people close to the Rangers have long felt was not properly developed and say “now that he has a change of scenery, he can realize the potential we thought he had in the draft.” But resist the temptation! It’s a fool’s errand. Even if he and Hughes were neck-and-neck back in 2019, the early years of development matter a ton and Kakko wasn’t given the chance to blossom. Peak blossom season has passed.
But the player he is today? Right now, in that toxic environment that doesn’t love him or make him feel like he can be the best version of himself? Even if he doesn’t improve at all, that player is still a strong player.
Kakko never developed the offensive game people hoped for, but he is a fantastic defensive winger, especially when it comes to puck retrievals.
Per Natural Stat Trick, he’s #4 on the team in expected 5-on-5 goal share (minimum 200 minutes). Moneypuck also places him 4th on the team.
His offensive instincts just never really developed and I don’t know if they ever will. I don’t know if he’ll ever show anything showing the creativity or dynamic playmaking that we thought we were getting in 2019, but he’s still a valuable player. And Borgen? He’d been falling off. A lot.
The way you can read that picture is the more grey on the bottom, the worse Borgen is. The more blue on the top, the better Kakko is. Kakko is decent, above average while we have a visual representation of Borgen falling off a cliff. And Kakko is only 23 years old: 5 years younger than Borgen.
I’m also amused (in a not-so-amusing way) that both Matty Beniers and Kaapo Kakko are 2nd overall picks who have not developed the way we’d hoped offensively but are defensive monsters. Put those two on a line together and the other team would have a real real hard time generating shot quality.
Even for what Kakko is right now, it’s hard to see this as anything but a huge win for Ron Francis. If there is any unrealized upside that gets realized in Seattle, this would be upgraded from misdemeanor theft to grand larceny. There’s no downside to this: the Kraken gave up peanuts in compensation in just third- and sixth-round draft picks. And the contract is extremely reasonable. This feels like the Oliver Bjorkstrand or Eeli Tolvanen moves: shrewd, value-heavy deals taking advantage of teams making poor decisions.
Meanwhile with Borgen gone, there are only 9 original Kraken remaining from the expansion draft: Cale Fleury, Joey Daccord, Yanni Gourde, Jared McCann, Jordan Eberle, Brandon Tanev, Jamie Oleksiak, Vince Dunn, and Adam Larsson.
I just hope Will Borgen has fun.