Data Dump: The Seattle Kraken’s back-to-back games conundrum

As the offseason winds down for the Seattle Kraken, they look to the 2025-26 season with hopes for massive improvement in a particular area; because they literally couldn’t have gotten worse in this area last season. The Kraken went winless (and even pointless) in the second leg of back-to-back games in 2024-25, finishing 0-12-0 in that scenario.

Going 0-12 was enough to raise questions, prompting president of hockey operations Ron Francis to address the issue in his end-of-season press conference.

“So [losing all back-to-back games] was a question that we struggled with finding an answer to, and asking the players, there really wasn’t a simple solution to it. We’ve got to find a way to be better in back-to-back games.

“I mean, 0-12, if you go .500, which is probably the norm, that’s 12 points and puts us in a different position at the trade deadline. So that’s something we need to address, especially with the schedule again probably being even more condensed next year. Our mindset right out of the gate has to be much better in that second game of back-to-backs,”

Francis suggested .500 is the norm, but the 2024-25 season league average was .472. A break-even target would actually be better than the league average, which is worth keeping in mind as we look for trends that explain the slide and where improvement could come.

Game-level team data was sourced from MoneyPuck and compared Seattle’s results to the rest of the league. Unless otherwise noted, data reflects the 2024-25 season and is split into buckets based on how much rest the team had between games: zero days of rest (second leg of a back-to-back), one day, and two or more days of rest.

What counts as a back-to-back game?

A back-to-back is simple: games on consecutive days. Most NHL games have at least one day of rest between them. Because goalies usually need a day’s rest between starts, teams often start the backup in one of the two legs. Less rest plus a backup frequently leads to lower league-wide performance in the second game.

If you remove those back-to-back games, Seattle would have finished the season 35-29-6. That’s a .543 points percentage — likely still short of the playoffs — but it shows how costly those nights became.

Days of rest

First, the obvious trend: as rest decreases, points percentage drops. The rest of the league follows this curve cleanly. The Kraken are different — they actually posted their best points percentage on one day of rest, with two-plus days still solid but slipping to second-best. The alarming part remains the zero points in the second leg of back-to-backs.

To get a wider view of how rest impacts success across the NHL, we expanded the scope back to 2008-09 and found that the pattern holds. More rest yields more regulation wins across the NHL. Since the Kraken have only been around for four years, their data below covers the lifetime of the franchise.

Kraken back-to-backs

Through four seasons, Seattle has struggled in the second leg of back-to-backs, going 11-29 overall. The lone bright spot came in 2022-23, when the Kraken went 5-3 in second legs. In the other three seasons they combined for six wins — three in 2021-22, three in 2023-24, and none in 2024-25. They track closer to the rest-of-league (ROL) point percentage averages with one or two days of rest, but the second leg remains a clear weakness.

Offense

So what is causing the Kraken to lose so much more frequently in the second of back-to-backs than the rest of the league? Well, if a team loses 12 straight in that situation, then offense is certainly part of it. Seattle averaged just 1.33 goals per game in those second legs.

In the first of two charts above, the Kraken’s expected goals gap is striking. Expected goals being almost double the actual goals scored in the second of back-to-backs suggests more offense was available, yet scoring lagged by 1.25 goals per game — nearly seven times the ROL delta. As with points percentage, goals track along with rest: more rest, more goals. However, Seattle’s drop is sharper than the rest of the league.

Shot quality is part of the puzzle too. In back-to-back games, low-danger shots go up, while medium- and high-danger shots go down. The Kraken got pucks on net, but from easy-to-save areas. Opposing goalies posted a .952 save percentage in those games.

Corsi adds nuance: it measures shot attempts as a percentage and can sometimes be viewed as an indicator of puck possession. Over 50 percent means your team out-attempted the opponent. Oddly, Seattle’s only above-50 Corsi split was back-to-back games at 51.2 percent. With one day of rest it was 47.1 percent, and with two-plus days, it was 49 percent. For the rest of the league, the metric improves with rest (back-to-back = 48.2 percent, one day = 50.1 percent, two-plus = 51.1 percent). So the Kraken pushed volume on tired legs, but the quality of their chances sagged.

Defense

Where do opponents’ chances and goals come from against Seattle in back-to-back games?

1. Low-danger attempts were down with less rest, but low-danger goals were up. The ROL averaged 1.15 low-danger goals against per game; Seattle allowed far more (1.83) on fewer low-danger shots.
2. Medium-danger attempts and goals both rose in back-to-backs. The jump in goals outpaced the jump in shots.
3. High-danger attempts and goals dipped, which hints at a defensive focus on the slot in that second leg. That’s good in theory, but it may open seams for medium-danger looks, which teams gladly take.

Goaltending likely plays into the low- and medium-danger spikes. We’ll get to that next. The high-danger dip suggests the structure isn’t broken, but the trade-offs are costly.

Goalies

Kraken goalies posted an .867 save percentage in second legs — a glaring weakness the team must address if they want those games to turn into wins. Philipp Grubauer started six of the games, Joey Daccord five, and Ales Stezka one. Grubauer’s numbers were still bad but slightly better than Daccord’s — with a higher save percentage, lower goals-against average, and fewer low-danger goals allowed per game, closer to the ROL average of 1.15. Daccord, meanwhile, gave up 2.6 low-danger goals per game. Stezka’s lone appearance produced better numbers across the board, but the sample size is too small to draw conclusions.

Allowing low‑danger goals can sap a team’s momentum, and when combined with rising medium‑danger chances against, it’s easy to see how a team with limited scoring punch ended up losing all 12 of its back‑to‑backs.

Travel

When starting this research, I expected travel to be a driver. The Kraken did travel more than league average, but not by much. A roughly 50-mile gap in average trip length isn’t decisive. They had nine road back-to-back games and three at home. The average trip was actually longer before the home back-to-back games (about 424.9 miles) than before the road back-to-back games (about 359.7), when NHL schedulers try to lump road games in cities that are close to each other.

Discipline, blocks, and hits

Penalties, blocked shots, and hits all climbed in back-to-back games. With rest days, Seattle typically stayed below the ROL average in penalties taken — a positive trend. In back-to-back games, though, they took nearly a full extra minor penalty. That puts opponents on the power play more often, giving them another edge on nights when 5‑on‑5 play is already a challenge.

Scoring first matters, too. Seattle allowed the first goal in 10 of 12 second legs (83.3 percent). The rest of the league gets scored on first in 52.6 percent of back-to-back games. That early hole forces chase mode and feeds more penalties.

The Kraken must improve in back-to-backs

Seattle did manage an 8-4 record in the first leg of back-to-backs, showing they can handle the front half of the challenge. The issue is carrying that level of play into the second leg, where cleanup is needed on both sides of the puck.

Overall, the keys to winning back-to-back games are no different than on any other game night; they need to get the puck into the high-danger scoring areas and generate chances while the defense limits the opposing team’s chances in those dangerous areas. Being more disciplined with the penalties could be an easily implemented improvement. Starting on time and getting a higher percentage of first goals will also help. The Kraken can’t ease into the game and hope it goes their way.

Goalies all took a step back in the second leg of back-to-back games, and the team will need to figure out if this is due to a strategy change or tired players. While the team has played on back-to-back nights, the goalie is coming off a rest day and should be good to go.

Back-to-backs won’t vanish — Seattle has 13 on the schedule this upcoming season. The focus now must be on turning that zero‑point bucket into a break‑even one. For a bubble team, that could be the difference between April tee times and playoff gates.