The Seattle Kraken wrapped up the 2024–25 season in 27th place. Not great! But while we’ve already highlighted some silver linings from this past season, it might be even more important to look at the other side: the subtle, micro-level areas where Seattle struggled. These aren’t always the headline stats, but they’re the kind of details that can influence the outcome of a season.
Today, we’re digging into a few of those micro-opportunities. We will cover things like face-offs, overtime games, outcomes when trailing first, and back-to-back games. None of these categories alone can explain Seattle’s struggles, but together they paint a picture of where the Kraken left points on the table and where improvements could show up next season.
Face-offs
Definition: Nobody really needs a primer on face-offs, but it’s worth pointing out that this is a flawed stat. The more important measure would be possession after a face-off, but the NHL doesn’t provide this publicly. That said, face-off wins and losses are still a leading indicator for possession, so we’re going to use them until better data becomes available.
What the data shows
The Kraken finished 24th in the league in face-off win percentage at 48.6 percent. While they’ve never been a strong face-off team, this was actually the highest win rate in their brief franchise history.
Outlook
The Kraken leaned heavily on left-shot Chandler Stephenson in the circle last season. He led the team in both total draws and win percentage, and he was deployed at an especially high rate during the penalty kill, where he took nearly 50 percent of Seattle’s shorthanded face-offs, regardless of whether it was his strong or weak side. This is where the addition of right-shot center Frédérick Gaudreau should give Lane Lambert more flexibility, particularly on defensive-zone PK draws.
I don’t think Seattle’s success rate will suddenly jump above 50 percent, but in key situations, they should see improvement, and that could indirectly help reduce goals against. We could see some improvement from Shane Wright and Matty Beniers in the circle, as well, which could improve Seattle’s face-off abilities.
Overtime games
Definition: This one might feel a little odd to track, but forcing games into overtime is an easy way to add points in the standings. Of course, it’s easier said than done.
What the data shows
Seattle tied for 27th with just 13 overtime games played. The league median was 17, which, at a minimum, would have meant four more points in the standings. With the Kraken’s OT winning percentage sitting at 54 percent, those extra games could reasonably have netted another two points.
Outlook
I don’t think Lambert has a “strategy” to push games into overtime, but his coaching style may lead to more tight, low-event hockey. That should naturally result in more one-goal games that bleed into extra time. During his tenure with the Islanders, 24.4 percent of games went to OT compared to just 15.8 percent for the Kraken in 2024–25. That’s a big difference.
Trailing first
Definition: Any time the opponent scores the first goal of the game.
What the data shows
The Kraken trailed first in 57 percent of their games, their highest rate since the inaugural season. Last season, teams that gave up the first goal only came back to win 34.3 percent of the time
Outlook
This is another category where Lambert’s structure could help. From 2021–22 through 2024–25, the Islanders played 328 games. In the 127 games Lambert coached, his team allowed the first goal 46.5 percent of the time. In the games he didn’t coach, that number jumped to 54.2 percent. That’s a meaningful gap in an area that could help Seattle fetch a few more points.
Wins in back-to-back games
Definition: Games won when playing on consecutive nights.
What the data shows
This was a sore spot all year and one I brought up often. The Kraken have never been great in back-to-backs, but in their inaugural season, they managed three wins when playing on the second night of a back-to-back. Last year? They won ZERO games when playing on the second night of a back-to-back and didn’t even manage a single point in this scenario, going 0-12-0.
Seattle’s problems went beyond goaltending, though Philipp Grubauer’s numbers didn’t help. He started six of the 12 back-to-back games, but the team averaged just 1.3 goals scored in those situations, dead last in the league.
Outlook
Lambert made it a point in his introductory press conference that back-to-backs were an area Seattle will improve in. “That’s going to change because of the structure and the detail.” Because honestly… it can’t get worse, right? …Right?!?!
Hope for improvement?
When you finish 27th in the standings, it’s easy to get bogged down by the negatives. But zooming in on these micro-level areas shows exactly how thin the margins can be in the NHL. A few more face-off wins, a handful of extra overtime appearances, stronger starts, and better results in back-to-backs, and those little improvements could easily swing a season by six to 10 points in the standings.
These aren’t the major items that the Kraken can change to become a potential playoff team, but it’s clear these are opportunities the Kraken can tighten up. If Lambert’s systems help move the needle in these subtle areas, and if Seattle maintains the things they did do well, then maybe next season we’re talking about meaningful games in March, instead of more micro-opportunities left on the table.
The OT games one is interesting. We are actually in the same neighborhood with FLA, COL, NJD and CAR. The bottom 16 also includes TOR, TBL, DAL and WPG. It’s probably better just to win games in regulation.
My takes.
1. Burakovsky is gone. Automatic improvement coming.
2. Gru needs to show early and significant improvement or he needs to not play (ie, insert Murray ASAP). At least we need some competition for the net. Having Jones was huge when we made the playoffs and almost won two series.
3. Lambert SHOULD bring more structure, confidence, and hopefully accountability.
4. Stephenson and Montour should be feeling more at home and settled after their first seasons in Seattle, and they weren’t bad as it was.
5. Adding Marchment, Lindgren and Gaudreau. These are all improvements over Gourde, Bjorkstrand and Tanev. Some might argue the Bjorkstrand take, but he looked like a passenger for most of last season.
6. Young players will hopefully take big steps. Matty and Shane could be flirting with 50-60 pts each. Nyman seems poised to make a significant impact if he can continue what he started last season. Evans and Kakko have things to prove. Catton is a big question mark, but he has the potential to ignite this team in a whole new way.
7. Hopefully our Captain can stay healthy and show what a great leader he is. That could make a huge difference.
Coaches like Hasktol were not good for overtime. They played their top line and 2nd line too much and when overtime came, they lacked they ability to keep up. Same with teams on the lower tier of overtime wins. They do not have a balanced team of 4 lines. Some vets fall off on their play near the end of a game and overtime.
Regular season OT heavily favors teams with “super stars,” like TOR and EDM. Those same teams seem to suffer in playoff OT without the 3 on 3. I would rather roll 4 decent lines and try to win in regulation. It’s better for the playoffs, too.
Three-on-three is a pure posession game and the thing I found so aggravating watching OT in Hakstol’s final season was there appeared to be no recognition of this. Too often players would attack without numbers and fire off low-percentage shots that resulted in nothing more than surrendering the puck. This is, of course, consistent with his “shoot the f-ing puck” outburst from early season practice, but it is, I think, a terrible approach to overtime.
This is just what I believe I saw, but I’m just some guy on a couch and there’s a very good chance I was missing something. The results, however, were very poor. To me, seeing this over and over, that wasn’t a talent issue, that was a coaching issue and considering 20% of NHL games go to overtime, it matters… but again, guy on a couch.
…VGK also in the bottom 16 in OT games
It’s because they win in regulation. The OT games were particularly important for bubble teams. i.e. STL, CGY, OTT, CBJ, & MTL who were still in the playoff picture in April.
I get it. It’s better to have a chance at a point than nothing. We were surprisingly good at coming back from deficits to actually win games, which showed some great resilience despite the general challenges. It would be nice to see us get ahead in regulation and smother the opposing team defensively, but maybe also less exciting 🙂
On overtime…
A quick look at Hockey Reference and I see the Kraken lost 11 games by a single goal against winning just four by the same. Now I know they lost more than they won, but an almost three-to-one split seems significant. This doesn’t account for late empty net goals leading to two goal differences, but I think it’s likely consistent. Superficially, it seems like there is more available opportunity for improvement rather than deterioration with this skew… which I believe is pretty much what you’re saying here John.
Also, of the 13 overtime games, they only lost three before going to a shootout. This is compared to nine of 19 the season before. The overtime play of Hakstol’s last season was – by both the numbers and the eye test – truly dreadful.
I would like to see that they should extend the overtime to like 10 minutes and do away with the shootout altogether. If after overtime they are still tied then both teams get just a single point.
I’m on board with this approach only with two four minute halves and a 60 second break between.
You want something fun to look up, go check Frederic Gaudreau’s shootout stats.
I think you guys alluded to that on the pod. 👍
Once again: Face offs are not correlated with winning, half the top 10 teams in the chart didn’t even make the playoffs. The extra face offs Stephenson wins are worse for the team than the minutes he is on the ice instead of Wright. The fact CS is horrible defensively more than outweighs his face off %.
Nothing Gaudreau does in the face off circle is worth stifling the development of Catton. Get on with developing the talent in the system rather than relying on the known quantity of mid-level players
Faceoffs are not correlated with winning.. but as John said, they are correlated with posession. There was a paper presented at last year’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference that dove into this very subject. (link below)
From the conclusion:
“We push back against the common pure conclusion that faceoffs are unimportant but concur that their importance comes down to opinions on just how many more faceoffs a team can incrementally win within the scope of reasonable personnel changes, situational usage adjustments, and coaching. We qualify existing arguments to argue that each season features an existent but very small subset of players who net their teams enough expected goals through performance at the faceoff dot to conceivably win meaningfully more games.”
Chandler Stephenson was not in the paper’s very small subset, but Freddy Gaudreau was No.10 on it. The paper also dives into the already established importance of winning offensive zone powerplay draws due to, again, the correlation with posession and maintaining the zone. I agree with John, the addition of Gaudreau should give Lambert more flexibility and hopefully translate to better outcomes.
https://www.sloansportsconference.com/research-papers/how-much-do-faceoffs-matter-translating-faceoffs-to-goals-wins-and-championships-in-hockey
Gaudreau is right shot which will help win possession on the right dot and he kills penalties. Development isn’t just giving a player minutes, you need to set them up for success. Everyone was complaining how they handled Shane Wright in his first two seasons after his draft, but it looks like it is paying off.
Keeping control of the puck is indeed correlated with winning. The more you have controlled possessions, the less opportunity the opposition has to score. It’s odd seeing so many in our community wanting to overplay players which aren’t ready. Shane was not ready to take prime D zone faceoff minutes last year.. period. He made a slew of very obvious mistakes in the D zone when pressured and struggled in the dot. That will get better but until that does, the coach is wise to use the veteran over the rookie. The horrible defensively comment I won’t touch on CS. Context and usage is important but that’s a discussion you’re clearly not ready to have.
That would be awesome if the NHL were a development league, wouldn’t it?
Is there a coach who handles faceoffs? If not, who handles it. There are so many aspects and tricks to winning faceoffs. Manny Malholtra used to be in the Canucks organization and they were always one of the top teams in minors when he played and coached as well. I can’t believe that players who are consistently good at faceoffs, have just a natural ability and if a team wants to improve in that area, they need to hire a coach who can help. Jessica was not a good choice because she could help in those type of skills.
Skills are really developed in the offseason, by the time the season starts it is too late. Kraken’s 2025 1st Rounder Jake Obrien talked about working with a faceoff specialist over the summer.
I would love for Matty B to somehow connect with Patrice Bergeron in the off-season when back in Mass. Learn faceoffs tips from one of the best all time at the dot and in general absorb his knowledge. We all dream of Matty evolving his game into a Bergeron esque fashion.
You forgot the most important stat – Home Game Record On Saturday’s… 🙂
Vancouver and Calgary finished fourteen and twenty points respectively ahead of the Kraken last season. Each of them had eight more loser points than Seattle did on the season. If the Kraken had matched their loser points and had just three wins on the second half of back-to-backs like they did in the inaugural season when they were absolutely terrible they would have overtaken Vancouver, chased Calgary and their ridiculous luck, and finished fifth in the division. Just on those changes alone. Based on Lambert’s coaching record, he is capable of making that happen, and I fully expect that he will do so. Playing tight is what his teams do.
There is potential for regression on one point here, but I am not overly concerned about it. The extraordinary number of come-from-behind victories that they had the previous season appear to be unsustainable, and I am pretty sure that they are. Why that doesn’t worry me so much is that their number was, as the numbers presented above suggest, driven by the fact that they went down early in games way the hell more often than should reasonably be expected. It felt like the team was constantly behind in the first period, and the numbers support the impression. Lambert’s calling card is Trotz’s structure which should have a significant effect on how often the team will surrender stupid early goals. Because of that, a regression in come-from-behind victories should not lead to more loses; they just will not be behind early as often.
To temper optimism on the point of face-offs, Freddy Gaudreau is no face-off ace. Think of him as a right-handed Yanni Gourde. He is not going to move the needle on possession by himself, but not having Matty and Chandler taking so many draws on their off-hands should improve their own numbers. The biggest hope for improvement at the dot that I see is in the form of Shane Wright who had the expected season of failure on the draw that just about every rookie center in the history of ever has, but even given that he posted a 44% win rate on draws. Expect Shane to show up this season looking much better at face-offs having had a full off-season to work on them. If his right-handed self posts around 50%–which is a reasonable jump from year one to year two (Matty jumped more than five percentage points from his rookie season to his sophomore season)–suddenly the team looks league-average on face-off wins.
I agree Freddy Gaudreau is no faceoff ace. I do, however, think John nailed it identifying his value on defensive zone PK draws. Last season his percentage on PK faceoffs was down a bit, but historically he has been very near or above 50%. For whatever reason on the PK he typically draws at a percentage consistent with faceoff master Anze Kopitar. I think you’re correct in assuming his biggest impact will probably be in giving his teammates relief from off-handed draws, but I also think he will help in two areas where the Kraken have lots of room for improvement – the PK and zone posession.
I also agree with your take on Shane. I think the idea that “faceoffs don’t matter” has gotten a bit overplayed and the recent paper I cited earlier seemed to agree with exactly what you’re saying on Wright. By the way, that paper had 20 players identified as being capable through faceoffs to help their team “conceivably win meaningfully more games”. Yanni Gourde was also one of those players. Again, I agree Prime Minister.