If the first two days of Seattle Kraken training camp were any indication of what we can expect from a Dan Bylsma-coached team, then the players are going to be… well, tired. Bylsma and his staff worked the players very hard over their first two on-ice sessions, including a fitness test bag skate on Friday that had players doubled over before they moved from Rink 2 to Rink 1 and continued with battle drills and 3-on-2’s.

After the second of three groups finished its practice on Friday, there was a lengthy delay before Andre Burakovsky, who we were waiting to hear from in the Kraken dressing room, emerged to chat with media. “Sorry for [the wait],” Burakovsky said. “I had to get some treatment on my legs. They’re a little sore after that practice.”

Burakovsky elaborated on the pace of the practice. “We go hard. It’s good to be back. It’s been two really hard practices with ups and downs, a lot of battle drills, and it’s good to be back in action.”

Bylsma gave a simple explanation for pushing the players so hard in their first two days of Kraken training camp. “It’s hockey. In order to play this game, you’ve got to be able to skate up and down the rink, and that test we did today, I label it a ‘return to play’ skate. It usually comes after an injury or when you’re trying to return to play, but we’re all trying to return to play at the start of training camp.”

The new coach is setting a standard for the players to be well-conditioned and prepared to play at a high pace, night in and night out. “The pace with which we want to play and the speed we want to play the game at, you need to put yourself under duress to play that way,” Bylsma said. “And that’s what’s expected of them, so you’ve got to get the work in to be able to do it.”

Hints of a Kraken lineup

While there are still three groups of players in Kraken training camp, with the veterans sprinkled throughout, we’ve already been piecing together what Bylsma might envision as his first lineup if everyone makes it through camp healthy.

Here’s who we’ve seen skating together:

Jared McCann // Matty Beniers // Oliver Bjorkstrand
Jaden Schwartz // Chandler Stephenson // Andre Burakovsky
Tye Kartye // Shane Wright // Jordan Eberle
Eeli Tolvanen // Yanni Gourde // Brandon Tanev

Vince Dunn // Adam Larsson
Jamie Oleksiak // Brandon Montour
Ryker Evans // Will Borgen

Of course, take that lineup with a huge grain of salt, but those are the 18 skaters we would all expect to be on the Opening Night roster, and they were taking rushes with players that make sense as linemates.

Regardless of whether the team ever plays a game with that lineup—or even something similar—you can immediately see that the group, if it stays relatively healthy, is deeper than last season. There are no bottom-line fill-ins here, and to have Tolvanen, Gourde, and Tanev on a de facto “fourth line” makes for some difficult matchups for opposing teams.

HOWEVER…

The resolution of Seattle’s cap crunch still remains to be seen. Will all 18 of these players still be with the organization when camp breaks in two weeks? Or will the front office be able to do enough cap gymnastics to keep them all around?

Chip on the shoulder

We’ve been doing a series of player interviews this week, which you’ll hear on upcoming episodes of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. One thing we’ve consistently heard in those interviews from returning players is that there is a bit of a “chip on the shoulder” mentality after such a disappointing result in 2023-24.

One player (we don’t want to spoil who it was before the interview comes out) told us the group wants to “prove” that it’s a good team. They want to show that last season was not representative of how they’re capable of playing.

Matty Beniers and Adam Larsson shared similar sentiments last week when they addressed the media about the contract extensions they signed this summer.

We asked Bylsma if he senses motivation from the returning players to be better than last season. “Yes, I do,” he said. “Even talking to the guys this summer… there’s a lot of sense of disappointment in the results last year. There’s disappointment for me. I don’t like the way we played at the end, I don’t like the results of last season, from my own standpoint. We think there’s a… I don’t want to call it a ‘chip on the shoulder,’ but I think there’s a lot of motivation, a lot of energy going into turning the script and putting that disappointment behind us and getting to the point where we think we can go like two years ago.”

Hearing this consistent message from so many players and now even the new coach is interesting. It reminds us very much of how the players were talking entering camp for the team’s second season. They were embarrassed at how the inaugural year went and wanted to do everything in their power to be a competitive team in 2022-23. That season, they racked up 100 standings points and came one goal shy of a berth in the Western Conference Finals.

The Kraken are back on the ice Saturday morning and will have their first intra-squad scrimmage. Their first preseason game against the Flames is on Sunday.