[Knock on wood, knock on wood, knock on wood.] At the risk of jinxing them, the Seattle Kraken seem to be getting healthier with every passing day.
Jaden Schwartz returned to the lineup Saturday in Carolina after missing 19 games with a lower-body injury. His return coincided with Chandler Stephenson exiting and being designated as a non-roster player due to the birth of his third child. Stephenson missed two games and is expected to return Wednesday when the Kraken visit the New Jersey Devils. On Monday, captain Jordan Eberle returned from a two-game absence related to an upper-body injury.
Meanwhile, defenseman Brandon Montour—who has been out with a Mason Marchment-related hand injury since Dec. 16—has returned to practice and skated with the team again on Tuesday. Based on this and his original timeline, Montour could be nearing a return within the next few games.
If nobody else gets sick or injured in the next two contests, difficult decisions will have to be made by the Kraken brass as they decide who to scratch—and eventually who to send down to the Coachella Valley Firebirds—to make room for returning regulars.
The immediate conundrum – who to scratch against the Devils?
Stephenson will almost certainly slot back into his second-line center role Wednesday. Without Stephenson, the forward lines for a 4-2 win at the New York Rangers on Monday looked like this:
Kaapo Kakko // Matty Beniers // Jordan Eberle
Jaden Schwartz // Freddy Gaudreau // Eeli Tolvanen
Berkly Catton // Shane Wright // Jared McCann
Jacob Melanson // Ben Meyers // Ryan Winterton
With Stephenson back, who do you scratch if you’re Lane Lambert? Even that is a tough question to answer because the fourth line of Melanson/Meyers/Winterton has been the lynchpin for this team’s turnaround over the last month. But I would be surprised to see any player from the top three lines come out, especially after all three of those lines contributed to the comeback win at Madison Square Garden on Monday.
Entering a back-to-back with travel against the Devils and Bruins, Lambert was unsurprisingly vague on his plans when asked about this so-called “good problem” by Bob Condor on Tuesday in New Jersey. “You take it one [game] at a time, so we’ll see where we’re at and set our lineup for tomorrow and deal with the Boston game when that comes. But certainly, there are some healthy bodies, and we have some numbers and some people that maybe we can put in some fresh legs.”
If it were my decision, I’d probably put Stephenson at 2C, Gaudreau at 4C, and scratch Meyers—only because that feels like the least disruptive option. My second choice would be to move Gaudreau to fourth-line wing and scratch Winterton.
I don’t particularly like either option, but something will have to give.
What happens when Montour returns?
The bigger question—and again, this is all mooted if somebody gets sick or injured in the next couple of days—is what happens when Montour returns. The Kraken are currently at their 23-man roster limit, and that doesn’t include goaltender Matt Murray, who is still on injured reserve.
Once Montour is activated, Seattle will have to make a corresponding move. There are only three players who can be sent to the Coachella Valley Firebirds without being exposed to waivers: Wright, Winterton, and Melanson. Any other candidates—like Kartye, Meyers, Cale Fleury, or even Josh Mahura (yes, I think Mahura could be a candidate)—would have to be exposed to a claim from another team before they could be sent to the AHL. One could imagine a world in which any of those waivers-eligible players gets snatched up by a banged-up team looking for depth.
My preference would be for the Kraken to make a trade or two to clear out their multiple logjams of middle-to-bottom-six forwards and depth defensemen. But if that doesn’t happen, then my pick—and I really hate this call—would be to send Winterton to CV with the expectation that he comes back as soon as a spot opens up.
If that happens (or if Melanson gets sent down), the reasoning surely wouldn’t be because the Kraken front office thinks the player deserves a demotion. Instead, it would be done purely from an asset-management perspective. I do think this is the right approach, because the second the Kraken lose one of their depth guys to waivers, another player will get hurt, and they’ll be kicking themselves for losing a useful replacement.
This is also the exact reason that waivers exist; to protect the more veteran players from being sent haphazardly to the AHL.
The curious case of Matt Murray
Adding another curious wrinkle to all this is the fact that the Kraken still have a third goalie waiting in the wings in Matt Murray. Murray has been on injured reserve since coming up lame against the San Jose Sharks way back on Nov. 15. He’s been practicing in full for quite some time now and is being slow-played by the Kraken, who are no doubt hesitant to activate him and use up a scarce roster spot.
At some point, they’ll have no choice but to activate Murray because according to the collective bargaining agreement, once a player is healthy enough to play, he must come off IR.
One has to wonder whether Murray gets sent to CV for a conditioning stint, which could buy a little more time before another roster decision has to be made. Murray would have to agree to such a loan, however, and may not want to go to the minors.
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These things have had a way of working themselves out so far this season. Every time Seattle has appeared to be getting healthy, somebody else has gone down with yet another injury, and the decisions have made themselves.
But if that doesn’t happen this time, and everyone ends up available at once, how would you solve these conundrums?
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.
Since you asked, I would solve the first conundrum scratching Stephenson. Easy call. Just look how much better Tolvanen and Schwartz did when not anchored to Stephenson. Beniers can take all of those tough defensive assignments and matchups and handle them way better. And then when Montour comes back, Stephenson would SAIL through waivers to the AHL. No one outside Seattle — where we are all obligated to pretend that Stephenson is not one of the worst forwards in the NHL — would touch that contract with a ten-foot pole. And if they did — hallelujah!
2nd choice would be scratching Gaudreau. He’s been pretty good lately, but Meyers has been better and he’s hungry to prove himself, and he’s been killing penalties just like Gaudraeu. But again, they’ll never do it because Gaudreau is the respected veteran guy.
Among realistic options, assuming Stephenson gets reinserted into his mandatory role of tanking the 2nd line, then I agree with your first choice, Darren — it’s gotta be Meyers who rides the pine, with Freddy going to the 4th line.
In terms of realistic options when Montour come back, I really think they should decide which of Fleury and Mahura they like better and put the other one through waivers. A good chance no one makes a claim, and if they do, c’est la vie. They don’t really need both of those guys. Winterton has really stepped up, is hitting his stride and has speed that no one else in the lineup has. He absolutely needs to stay in the NHL and play.
P.S. haven’t both Fleury and Mahura cleared waivers before? I know they’ve acquitted themselves well lately as 6th defensemen, but has anything really changed?
[Whispers]: “I think Chandler Stephenson is one of Seattle’s best players.” [Hides.]
https://bfarrell27.substack.com/p/the-seattle-kraken-are-an-outlier
“Chandler Stephenson is in the second year of a seven-year deal worth $6.25 million per year, and while his first season in Seattle wasn’t great, he’s been basically unplayable in his second. Stephenson is currently the fifth-worst player in the NHL by Evolving-Hockey’s Standing Points Above Replacement metric at minus-2.2.”
Paul, it would seem to me the obvious thing would be to question the analytics to some degree. I’m not saying Stephenson is a “world beater”, but the idea that the guy is “basically unplayable”? There’s been more and more chatter lately about how broken NHL analytics are and this seems to be pretty consistent with that.
It is remarkable how, all throughout Stephenson’s career, every coach he has played for has trusted him with tough assignments and big minutes, and yet the analytics guys have constantly been down on him. I don’t know about y’all, but when coaches disagree with statisticians concerning the performance of athletes, I tend to give more weight to the opinions of coaches. It is odd, however, that the opinions of coaches and the opinions of statisticians are so profoundly divergent in regard to one particular player. What is it about Stephenson? It is also odd how his counting stats appear to be so much better than his advanced stats. The man is on pace for over fifty points on the year despite taking the lion’s share of his draws in the defensive zone, and his plus/minus is consistent with someone playing his role and better than Alex Wennberg’s was, for example. I would like an explanation from a statistician as to how it is possible for a player who is producing in real terms as well as Stephenson is to consistently have such abysmal advanced statistics. Like you said, Daryl W, the simplest answer is that the model is broken. Occam’s Razor applies absent a better answer.
That’s not the bombshell you think it is. That’s a data nerd being too in the weeds in data to understand his data isn’t showing the full picture… eg he’s not a good data nerd
Stephenson has been “unplayable”??? There hasn’t been a single player on this team that has earned that type of praise this year. Based on what? Our top scorer is like 150th or something and he isn’t it.
I’m not anti Stephenson (I hate his contract). He’s been pretty good but c’mon that’s silly.
Sigh, I know you do Darren, we still love you.
The KHN in studio panel on Stevenson also pretty much agrees with Darren.
Go Kraken!!!
To listen to the KHN panel talk about him you’d think he was the greatest player who ever picked up a stick.
By the way, the Athletic podcast yesterday had an interesting discussion of how the gap between “underlying numbers” per public analytics data and actual performance/records seems to be growing in the last couple years, perhaps because some teams are finding other ways to succeed not yet reflected in those public analytics. John and Darren would be nodding along if they were listening. And indeed that could be true — I am not qualified to say — and I would believe that Stephenson is not, in reality, one of the VERY WORST players in the NHL like the analytics say. But even if something is missing in the public data, there is no just no way that there is ENOUGH missing in that data to get him all the way from “one of the worst players in the league” to actually GOOD.
Exactly. Claiming Stephenson is good would mean that basically all public analytics are entirely useless, or they are only useful for select players, but of course the whole reason they even exist as a meaningful entity is that positive analytics correlates with success on the ice for all players. And it’s expected KHN will heap praise on Stephenson, they know who signs their paychecks and are just towing the company line. Doesn’t anyone find it weird that Alison is an analytics guru, yet whenever she talks about Stephenson, any discussion of analytics is conspicuously absent? It’s always general talk about “smart player” and “good leader.” The real question is: when can we all stop pretending that he’s good? Year 4 of the contract? Year 5?
Is it such a stretch to say that hockey analytics are inaccurate? They were not collected via a scientific method, and their supposed predictive qualities are entirely based upon perception. Actual scientific statistics do not answer vague questions like “how good is an athlete at a particular game?” Rather they provide evidence either for or against a specific and very limited hypothesis. Analytics, on the other hand, give gamblers tips and provide sports fans with something to argue about. Both the method and the scope of analytics are highly suspect. Note that, while professional teams often make use of analytics departments, they all defer to coaches for determining player usage and assignments. They also employ, as much as budget constraints allow, scouts who watch hockey games to assess players who the team may be interested in acquiring. They do not trust analytics to make those predictions for them, merely to give them leads.
Stephenson is the sacrificial lamb. The article admits that but never makes the next logical jump to ask why it is Stephenson and not someone else that gets chosen for the most difficult shifts. The public stats do not correct for the difficulty of the opponent.
This isn’t rocket science. If you’re always on the ice against the top line of the opposition your numbers are going to look like crap relative to the entire league. The unanswered question is, what happens when you compare apples to apples? Look at the entire league and restrict specifically to defensive zone faceoffs against opposition top lines?
I would guess that not many other teams are deploying a player like what the Kraken do for Stephenson, so there are not equivalent players that look bad in an aggregate comparison like Stephenson does. So I conclude that the Kraken are doing something pretty smart here and Stephenson gets credit for being a team player and taking on the grunt work.
Also I think the full season stats are mostly representative of the pre-Marchment trade Kraken with no McCann, an ineffective Kakko, and prior to finding a working 4th line.
“I would guess that not many other teams are deploying a player like what the Kraken do for Stephenson, so there are not equivalent players that look bad in an aggregate comparison like Stephenson does.”
Incorrect. Lots of teams have a line that primarily takes on defensive assignments. None perform worse at the role than Stephenson. And just look what happened when Beniers took on those assignment while Stephenson was out.
Also, the “analytics are not science” point is also wrong. It can be and has been scientifically tested by going back and applying it against the actual results. If you go back, the public analytics — while not perfect –are highly predictive of actual performance and wins/losses. And historically, every time some team has vastly outperformed their analytics, and the team’s management says “analytics are stupid, watch the games, our team has figured out another way,” the team has then come crashing back to earth. Some have observed that the gap between public analytics and performance *might* be widening a bit in the last couple years perhaps because of *even better* analytics that certain teams are using. But the idea that analytics are just useless and categorically “inaccurate” is just not true.
No, hockey analytics are not science. Science is its methodology, and hockey analytics do not follow that method. Instead, it is a series of logic leaps and assumptions based on tangental data. Case in point is Foist’s example of correlating individual player performance–not even goalies–with wins and losses. What nonsense! There is no clear causal relationship there and a multitude caveats. No scientific conclusion can rightly be drawn from that. Conflating individual player performance with team performance is a sterling example of the failure of analytics to either support or refute any clear hypothesis.
“Just look how much better Tolvanen and Schwartz did when not anchored to Stephenson. Beniers can take all of those tough defensive assignments and matchups and handle them way better.”
That is what you saw? What I saw of the Stephenson-less Kraken was an offense so anemic that it set a franchise record for fewest shot attempts in a game. I saw Matty Beniers, when matched against Carolina’s top line, get lured behind the net on the goal that cost them the game. Then I saw them play the Rangers.
The smart man would hear Allison praise Stephenson on the broadcast and think they’re missing something. The not so smart man writes the above.
A smart man would not spend two seconds considering anything from Allison Lukin.
Stephenson had the 2nd most points last year and currently in 3rd this year…
There’s a third highest scorer on every team. That bar on this team is low.
I’d say it’s time for some trades. The most obvious one is Oleksiak. As much as I’ve enjoyed his play over the last 4 1/2 years, he is an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year. Cale Fleury has proven he can handle the third pairing, and it also restores the right/left balance. Second, I’d trade Schwartz. Again, a UFA, and as much as he has contributed to the team, he doesn’t seem like he’s necessarily part of the plan going forward and moving him would create opportunity for some of the younger players who are the future of the franchise. Both of these players should have some value on the trade market, especially Schwartz, who has a reputation for elevating his game come playoff time.
You nailed it TIM
I think they’ll muddle their way up to the NHL trade freeze, then try to make a move immediately after the freeze is lifted. They’ll definitely try to move someone before the freeze, but by the time Montour comes back we’re looking at like two weeks before the freeze? I sure hope they’ll doi something prior, but they’re running out of time.
I’m going to guess they scratch Wright. But, what do I know… (nothing)
Interesting. That would not be my choice but it’s not a crazy prediction, given Wright’s relative lack of production and Lambert’s evident lack of trust in him.
I would just like to say that I very much appreciate Darren’s use of “moot” as a verb…
Thanks Darren. I’m going with Freddy for 4C too. Sending Meyers down, exposing to waivers would be my choice. If he gets claimed, isn’t Mitchell Stephens a similar player if the need occurs?
To me the obvious answer is to waive Magura. There’s a chance he gets claimed but the team seems happier with Cale in the lineup and probably doesn’t want to lose him to a waiver claim. Also a chance Murray goes on a conditioning stint to dodge the problem for a week or two.
I could also see them moving Oleksiak but I think he’s made that decision a bit less obvious since his benching.
I do feel like Fleury is the less likely of the two to get claimed. They’re both on one-way contracts through next season.
I think Mahura’s 2 year NHL contract makes a claim less likely. Most teams don’t want that level of commitment for a #6-7 guy. He’d be my choice as well.
Oh didn’t realize Fleury had the same deal. Well, I think RH D tend to be a hotter commodity so I’d still keep Fleury.
Yesterday, the Athletic published its ranking of all under 23 players in NHL organizations (both NHL players and drafted prospects, must be 22 or under as of 1/1/2026). The Kraken do not have a single player above Tier 6, which is “Bubble top and middle of the lineup player.” Highest ranked player is Catton at 33. No elite players (obviously), no all stars, not even any clear “top of lineup” players. (Beniers has aged out but I’m guessing he would also be Tier 6). For an organization that was supposedly focused on building long-term success and has now had 5 drafts to work with, that is pretty damning and disheartening.
Is that the Corey Pronman eye test rankings you’re talking about? I feel like he’s not very “scientific”.
Yes. They are scouting projections. Obviously not scientific. I guess that is a joke?
Yes a joke… but also pointing out how folks can go from eye test to analytics and still make good points – on all sides of the register.
There’s lots of good stuff on here all around and where this team is at right now, it seems to me hope and despair are both readily defensible.
Debbie Downer Alert !!!
Murray going on a rehab stint to the AHL is likely the best thing for both sides. He will certainly get more games down there than he will here with how strong Gru and Joey have been playing. That gives him a chance to alleviate the inevitable concerns about his health, especially given his history the past few years. Given how desperate teams are for goaltending, if he plays very well down there there would likely be a decent market for him if JB decides to bet on Gru and Joey staying healthy for the rest of the season.
I find it difficult to imagine we want to expose any of the players we have to the waiver wire these days. Mahura and Fleury both have shown they are capable 3rd pairing d-men and with another year of term at basically league minimum they are attractive 6/7 options. Given how he has played lately and the fact he is a key piece to the PK lately, I dont think they risk losing Meyers. Wright has been playing well despite lack of production so that leaves Kartye / Winterton / Melanson. Everyone is high on Melanson these days, but Kartye fills a similar 4th line role and is not waiver exempt so there is a risk to lose him for nothing. I think it comes down to if they think Tolvanen (who i keep hoping they extend) and/or Schwartz can fill the PK spot that Winterton has had lately. If they do then I could see Winterton undeservedly being sent down and having a slightly more traditional grinding 4th line with Melanson and Kartye. If they are big fans of the PK as is then Melanson seems to be the one who should draw the short straw for now.
Given how well the team has played with key pieces out, there seems to be a chance to potentially do some selling at the deadline and still keep things going. Oleksiak’s play this year has made him much more valuable than he was coming into the season. I would imagine we get a good return on him if we eat half his salary to expand the list of teams who could fit his cap hit and I think we can rely on Mahura/Fleury to fill his spot just fine. With so many prospects/picks, we dont really need to stockpile more. So I wonder if we will move Oleksiak/Schwartz and flip the assets we get for them + some existing picks/prospects and/or bottom 6 roster pieces (e.g. Winterton/Kartye) into a big upgrade on the wing.
This guy gets it.
Question answered – Melanson just got sent back to CV. Assuming we stay healthy, it will be interesting if we make any trades before the Feb 4th roster freeze for the Olympics.