If your holiday cheer is based entirely on the success of the Seattle Kraken, then you’re surely feeling a bit Ebenezer Scrooge-ish right now. And while you’ve been hoping to see your team break out of its pre-holiday doldrums, Seattle has instead said, “bah humbug,” sinking farther and farther out of the playoff picture.
The Kraken hobbled into a four-day holiday break looking like the Wet Bandits after a tough trip through Kevin McCallister’s house of horrors, dropping five straight games—their worst streak of the season—including a weekend back-to-back sweep at the hands of the Golden Knights and Avalanche. They have been outscored 22-6 during the skid.
Desperate for a break and a whole lot of answers, the Kraken are now seven points out of the last wild card spot, with four teams to leapfrog to get back in. Such a deficit is not insurmountable; a big hot streak to start the 2025 calendar year could close that gap. But with the way things have been going for this team—and this deep into the season—it really feels like we’re heading toward Seattle’s third season of missing the playoffs in four tries.
What has gone wrong?
The answer to the question “what has gone wrong?” is… a lot has gone wrong. It’s no secret that the Kraken lack elite players who can put their team on their backs and carry them through times when the scoring dries up.
Jared McCann is the closest thing to that type of player Seattle has, but even he has been struggling to find the net for a long time. In some good news, he finally got his first non-empty-net goal in the entire month of December on Sunday in Colorado, so hopefully he regains his scoring touch.
Of course, it’s not just McCann. Matty Beniers hasn’t scored since Nov. 14 and has just four goals on the year. Andre Burakovsky has two total goals in 34 games. And let’s not forget that captain and top-line winger Jordan Eberle has been out since Nov. 14 and won’t be back for at least two more months.
When the top guys are struggling and/or absent, you either need: A.) secondary and tertiary scoring to come through, the way Seattle scored in 2022-23, or B.) to play an almost impenetrable defensive game.
On the first part, the Kraken have gotten offensive production in December from their third line of Eeli Tolvanen, Shane Wright, and Oliver Bjorkstrand. But even that trio went relatively quiet lately and was split up Sunday in an effort to spark other parts of the lineup (one could argue it sort of worked, since McCann scored off a beautiful feed from Wright).
On the second part, the Kraken had a little stretch of success earlier in December with a 3-1-0 East Coast road trip, followed by a shootout loss to the Florida Panthers and a 5-1 win over the Boston Bruins at home. During that six-game run, Seattle started to show that it had found an identity as a staunch defensive team, allowing almost nothing through the middle of the defensive zone and counter-striking to create scoring opportunities off the rush.
But since that 5-1 win over Boston, the Kraken have gotten away from that style of play for some reason. Now, passes from opposing offenses seem to be getting through the slot with ease, while a propensity for overcommitting to offensive chances has led to odd-man rushes against—Seattle’s big killer in the game against the Avs.
So, they’re giving up goals too easily, and they aren’t scoring. That’s not a recipe for success. On the season, the Kraken are now 23rd in the league with 2.78 goals for per game while giving up 3.11 goals against per game, 22nd in the league. As a result, they sit 25th in the league standings.
Any reasons for optimism?
The Kraken front office and coaching staff have pulled a lot of different levers to help the team find success, although nothing has really worked so far. The biggest lever was Ron Francis trading Will Borgen and two draft picks for Kaapo Kakko last week.
If we’re looking for reasons for optimism (trust me, I’m feeling very pessimistic about this team’s chances right now), then Kakko’s game on Sunday might be one. Kakko scored off a face-off and battled to the front of the net for a late chance that could have tied the game if it weren’t thwarted by an outstanding Mackenzie Blackwood save. His line with Beniers and Jaden Schwartz was—as coach Dan Bylsma said—Seattle’s best line on Sunday, snagging 94 percent of the shot quality when they were on the ice, according to Natural Stat Trick.
Meanwhile, getting McCann off the schneid is potentially massive for this club if he can get hot following the hiatus.
You never want to crawl into a break in the schedule feeling bad about the way things have been going, but sometimes getting away from it all and not thinking about hockey for a bit is just what a struggling team needs. Surely, that’s the hope right now—that the players who are struggling the most will come back feeling refreshed when Seattle returns to game action on Saturday in Vancouver.
“We need to [reset],” Bylsma said after the 5-2 loss to the Avs on Sunday. “I think a lot’s been said, there’s a lot of searching… from the guys going on. We didn’t want to use the last two games as throw away and get to the break. We wanted to dig some growth as a team in these two games, and I think the effort that we put in tonight is considered growth for our group.
“But the four-day break we have to take as a break, both mentally… get away from the game a little bit, get refreshed.”
To be honest, I’m at a point where I’m writing off any hope of this team playing meaningful hockey for too much longer. So, give me a holiday gift and write some reasons for optimism in the comments section, please!
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.