With the offseason lull seemingly in full swing, we thought it would be a good time to break down the 2023-24 Seattle Kraken schedule to get a flavor for what lies ahead. Here we will dig into travel, back-to-back games, and give some interesting factoids to understand what is on the docket for the Kraken this coming season.

Travel distance

One bit of housekeeping before we get into the breakdown. For simplicity, I did not incorporate the travel involved for the NHL Global Series for teams traveling to Sweden in mid-November. This means that Detroit, Minnesota, Ottawa, and Toronto will have understated miles on any charts and references to their travel distance.

Based on the location of Seattle in North America, the Kraken will always have one of the heavier travel schedules across the league. This year is no different in that regard.

The Kraken have the ninth-most travel miles over the regular season with 45,434 miles expected. That is up 600 miles from last season. As you might be able to tell by looking at the teams in the top 10, the Pacific Division teams generally have more travel than other NHL teams.

Here is how it breaks down by division:

The Pacific Division teams are clustered with similar amounts of travel, and Seattle falls just below the average for its divisional rivals.

Number of road trips

One side benefit of the increased travel is that the Kraken have fewer road trips than most other teams. This is because when they hit the road, they tend to also visit more cities and games on a single trip to limit the number of longer-haul flights. Seattle is tied for the fewest road trips in the league.

Here is a look at how homestands and road trips break down by month for this coming season:

November looks a bit crazy, but there are two one-game road trips in there to Edmonton and Vancouver, so that skews things a bit.

Back-to-back games

Statistically speaking, teams playing the second game of a back-to-back scenario have a disadvantage, winning just 181 out of 410 games in 2022-23. The good news for the Kraken is they have the fewest back-to-backs in the league in 2023-24 with just seven of these occasions on their schedule.

The bad news is that the Kraken were 5-3-0 in the second game of back-to-back scenarios last season, so maybe they would have liked to play more of them? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Rolling in the Junior Schedule

Of course, we still have the Seattle Thunderbirds and Everett Silvertips in town, and there are a couple fun overlapping scheduling items of note.

I am declaring Nov. 13-20 as hockey week in the Puget Sound. There are three Kraken home games and two home games each for the Silvertips and Thunderbirds, including a home-and-home against each other. That’s seven games across those eight days. How many games can you (and we) attend?

If a full week of hockey is just too many days for you, there is also a packed hockey weekend in December. There are five games from Dec. 8-10 across the Kraken and local junior teams. If you wanted to, you could see the Tri-City Americans versus the Seattle Thunderbirds Friday night, the Tampa Bay Lightning against the Kraken on Saturday night, and the Portland Winterhawks against the Everett Silvertips on Sunday. That sounds like a heck of a weekend.

There are also seven days where the Everett Silvertips, Seattle Thunderbirds, and Seattle Kraken all play on the same day.

If you are looking to catch glimpses of any Seattle Kraken prospects as they roll through town, you should get ample opportunity to see Lukas Dragicevic (TC), Caden Price (KEL), and Kaden Hammell (EVT), but the two games I am circling on my calendar are when Jagger Firkus and the Moose Jaw Warriors come to town. The Firkus Circus visits the Silvertips on March 1 and the Thunderbirds on March 2.

Epic Seattle Kraken hockey fan road trip

When I saw the Kraken schedule get released, I already blocked off my calendar for March 21 and 22 to see the Kraken take on Vegas and Arizona respectively on the road. But then the AHL schedule came out…

I do not know if I will make all four games of that sequence, but I know I have to get down to Coachella Valley this season for a Firebirds game. That atmosphere looked awesome all year, and it looked extra rowdy in the playoffs.

If you have any questions or games that you are looking forward to, let us know in the comments below. Only 85 days until opening night.