Kraken general manager Ron Francis addressed the local media on Monday afternoon at Kraken Community Iceplex, following his decision to relieve head coach Dave Hakstol of his duties.
While none of what Francis said was particularly surprising, we did take away that this was a difficult decision for the always cautious and guarded GM, and we aren’t convinced he wanted to make this move but may have felt he had no choice based on how the season played out. Francis indicated that he didn’t make his final decision until Sunday and met with Hakstol to inform him on Monday morning in Seattle, calling it “an extremely sad day.”
“It’s never an easy day, it’s never an easy decision,” Francis said. “We let a guy who’s a good coach and a really good person go, and it’s not easy. But, you know, looking at the organization and just looking at the season, I thought we were a little more inconsistent than we had been, a few too many losing streaks, and losing streaks of significant numbers. And so we just felt it was time to try a new voice here.”
Francis made it clear he didn’t think everything that happened this season was Hakstol’s fault. Instead, he commended the coach for his “thorough” approach and reiterated that there were externalities that were outside of Hakstol’s control.
“We had guys that had off seasons, we had guys that missed a lot of time, so there were a lot of challenges to the roster as well.”
Where do the Kraken go from here?
One thing this move does is crank up the heat on Francis to find success next season. Historically, a GM tends to get one coach firing before the attention turns in their direction. Francis has shown he is taking a slower “build from within” type of approach, which eventually worked in Carolina after he left there. It’s a good approach for the long-term health of the organization, but will Seattle’s ownership be patient enough to let some of Francis’ draft picks arrive and become impact players? Or will there be more pressure moving forward to contend?
So, while we think Hakstol was a fine first pick, the next hiring needs to be the perfect fit, and it needs to be somebody who can move the needle right away. Francis said the process to find that next bench boss starts immediately, but there’s no “definite timeline” for a hiring.
In our previous article about the firing, we threw out a few names we thought could be candidates to replace Hakstol, and we did ask Francis what attributes he thought were important, but he declined to fully comment on that.
“If I answer that question, it’s going to be tied to ‘this is what I didn’t think Dave was doing,’ so I’d rather not do that at this point.”
Fair enough. If we were to guess what the team will be looking for moving forward, it will be somebody who can be a players’ coach, one who fits into the dressing room and can have strong relationships with the players. The next coach needs to be able to hold players accountable while showing fairness in approach (meaning, if a player is playing, they get rewarded, and vice versa).
We also do not think the head coach is the only “change” this organization will need. The team announced this morning that assistant coach Paul McFarland will also not return. And Francis mentioned the roster on many occasions Monday, He said in clear terms, “We have to make some changes to the roster and try and get back to where we want to get to next season.”
How the roster changes look remain to be seen, but there’s no doubt Francis will try to uncover some scoring from elsewhere in the league this summer.
Darren Brown
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at soundofhockey.com and the host of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is a member of the PHWA and is also usually SOH’s Twitter intern (but please pretend you don’t know that). Follow him @DarrenFunBrown and @sound_hockey or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
“will try to uncover some scoring from elsewhere in the league this summer.”
This is really the key issue, but what could possibly be the solution. While there are some names out there in UFA, the risk of those kind of moves is pretty high. A trade? One would need to look for a a disaffected talent, like an Eichel or Reinhart a few years back. Again, pretty high risk and what future potential are you giving up?
Maybe the emphasis should instead be on a new on-ice system from the new coach and on getting as many of the draft picks as possible to the NHL level sooner. And on having the lighter players bulk up over the summer. A few trades/UFA signings combined with more than just Wright and Evans on the roster next year would be a good starting point.
To barrow from the headline… Emily Kaplan added color about the firing on ESPN’s The Point “pretty significant players” made it clear to management that they “don’t want to play on this team in the future if Dave Hakstol is still the coach.”
Ouch!
Yeah this is really interesting. Hakstol seemed too vanilla to be offensive, but maybe the “prominent players” had no faith in him to turn it around given how this season ended. I doubt we’ll ever really know why, but the important points here are that a) Francis listened to the players, and b) Francis acknowledged that the roster also needs to be better. It’s not unusual for a GM to basically blame the coach and then do nothing significant to improve the roster, but that thankfully doesn’t seem to be the case here. It should be an interesting offseason, hopefully.
I can certainly understand why the players would feel that way. His system absolutely sucked, if i was a player being asked to do the same thing over and over when you knew that it wasn’t going to work you’d start to question the coaching. Not only that but I never heard him one time ever take any responsibility for a loss, always pointing the finger at his players. It’s the coaches job to get players ready to play, take some responsibility. I have huge respect for the players even getting through the season without making it obvious that they are done with H. I think if H proved anything it was that he was responsible for what happened in Philadelphia, something that he was vocal about disproving at the start of his kraken job. I find it very unlikely that he ever coaches again in the NHL, teams would have to be very desperate to look in his direction. Possibly in the AHL or college level again?
That sounds to me like coach was complaisant about certain things and maybe let things be “just okay” when he really should have dug in. Maybe Hak just wasn’t tough enough where he needed to be. Ultimately players want to play well, they all know their jobs depend on performance.
Big if true. It does not jive with Vince Dunn’s exit interview where Dunn said that Hakstol “never lost the room,” but that could have just been Dunn looking out for his coach. It also could be that Dunn is not one of the “pretty significant players” that Kaplan mentioned, which would make sense since Dunn does not have an A. It would be silly and pointless to speculate too much on that point, but I do wonder if he and other guys who played hard every game this season, like Jared McCann and Oliver Bjorkstrand, were more loyal to the coach than the guys wearing the As were. Their exit interviews were certainly more pointed towards the players having been the problem. Of course, this is all just baseless guessing on my part.
Fan hot take: Vince Dunn needs an A. As the team’s all-around best player he should have one, because performance matters. McCann and Bjorkstrand as well. Even though they are younger guys and occasionally hot-headed, they are the kind of relentless competitors who a winning culture gets built upon.
Just caught the Emergency Pod!
Cooper contract status unknown on Capfriendly
Stamkos UFA
Cooper would be interesting.
I think Stamkos would be a perfect fit in Seattle as he could definitely help short term and wouldn’t be looking for a long contract, 2 years I’d think. I can’t imagine that at 35 he would want to come to a building team though, lots of teams that have shots at a cup run would be lined up ahead of us. I feel like we only have shots at players that are looking for the highest bid with the longest term, the thought scares me.
I’m not on the Twitter so I missed this yesterday… but this post from Kevin Weekes sounds like:
A) The Kraken are willing to sign Rod Brind’Amour to the largest coach contract in NHL history.
B) Brind’Amour’s agent is leaning on Dundon using Weekes the same way Gerry Johansson used Bergevin and an offer sheet for Sebastian Aho to lean on Dundon.
“There could be 1 current
@NHL Head Coach that might potentially hit or surpass Mike Babcock’s industry leading 7M per Yr deal he signed with the
@MapleLeafs.🤐 👀. It would take plenty of factors for it to align , but plots are thickening. #HockeyX #HockeyTwitter”
Darren Dreger reporting Canes have pulled their contract offer for Rod Brind’Amour!
I would not complain about the team hiring Brind’Amour. Apart from the nostalgia of reuniting him with Francis, Brind’Amour’s Hurricans have a clear winning culture. That, I imagine, will go a long way with the Kraken players at the moment. Brind’Amour also likes players who play defense, which the current roster has in abundance. I would expect that they will be eager to play for him. With him there is the issue of his team’s poor playoff record, but at least we can expect that he will not burn out his top goaltender before the playoffs begin as happened with Grubauer in season one, Jones in season two, and Daccord in season three.
I know y’all mentioned this briefly in the first article, and discussed the “human element” of firing H multiple times, but he is getting paid 7 figures for the next 2 years to do nothing. It’s not like he’s going to be out of a job and living on the streets. He and his family will be just fine.
His financial well-being aside, I think the point of the human element they mentioned is more-so about the fact that Dave Hakstol seems to be a good and well respected guy who treated people with respect. Regardless of his financial situation, I think he tried and gave a lot to the job and losing it is going to be painful for him. It’s ok to talk about his short-comings as the Kraken coach, but celebrating his firing or gloating about it are things the SOH writers would like to avoid. He’s still a human with feelings.
The human element comment also extends to assistant coaches and other staff members who’s job security could be more up in the air with a new hire coming in, it affects more than just Hakstol and Paul McFarland.
I’m just talking about Hakstol, not the assistants. Being a good person and a well respected guy is a very low bar to clear. I hope they would screen for that in the interview process. And I’m not saying we should gloat, it sucks to be fired, but I think Darren had more of a personal relationship with him than fans did, which colors his perception. To fans, he came to the club having had zero NHL success, he was extremely vanilla, never took responsibility for any losses himself, didn’t seem to have any insightful answers as to how to improve the club, and allowed the club to spiral multiple times this season. Plus again, he gets basically two years full severance pay which amounts to millions of dollars. Sure, it sucks in the NHL sphere, but in the grand scheme of everyday joes, I just don’t feel bad for him.