Hoo, boy, the Seattle Kraken desperately need to pick up two points from Vancouver, where they are set to kick off a challenging back-to-back with travel—first taking on the Canucks at Rogers Arena on Saturday before returning home Sunday to face the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers.

While it’s typically a short trip north of the border, the travel has so far proved more difficult than anticipated for the Kraken. With a rare March snowstorm hitting Seattle Friday, the Kraken team plane ended up grounded at Boeing Field for several hours because of issues related to the de-icing process at BFI. Without being able to de-ice the plane, the team sat, and sat, and sat before finally deciding to deplane and allow the players to go back to their respective homes and fly to Vancouver Saturday morning.

“It was pretty crazy,” rookie forward Berkly Catton said after morning skate Saturday. “I mean, we got on the plane just expecting to hop on and go, but there were some weather delays, and I think [the Colorado Avalanche] were experiencing it too. So we just kind of sat on the plane for a couple of hours and eventually got the news that we were going to be flying out this morning. So we just kind of rolled with it.”

As Catton suggested, after defeating the Kraken 5-1 at Climate Pledge Arena on Thursday, the Avs stayed over in Seattle that night and were supposed to depart from BFI on Friday to fly to Winnipeg in advance of their Saturday game at the Jets. But they experienced the same problem as the Kraken, leaving two NHL charter planes stuck side-by-side on the tarmac for hours.

“The plane just didn’t leave,” forward Freddy Gaudreau said with a laugh. “Yeah, that’s the first time, probably, that happened to me, but you take it as it comes. It was a good moment all together on the plane, a couple of extra hours together.”

“We didn’t really know what was going on or how long we were going to be on there,” Catton said. “So I think a couple of us were playing crib for a while, some of the guys were sleeping, some guys were watching movies. And then, I think at a certain point, everyone was just kind of like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then that’s when we went back home and got to get our own supper at home, and then go from there.”

Teams are typically required to travel to and arrive in the road city they’re visiting the night before, specifically to account for these types of unforeseen delays and challenges. If a delay like this one were to happen on a game day, it could put the game itself in jeopardy. In the grand scheme of things, this ended up being only a minor inconvenience because of that requirement to travel the day before.

Contest-delaying travel issues do occasionally happen in the WHL, where teams often bus in on the day of a game. Catton is just one season removed from that type of travel from his Spokane Chiefs days, so although this was the first time a delay like this has happened to him in the NHL, he’s well versed in these situations.

“There were countless times going from [Spokane] to Seattle where we’d show up five minutes before the game was supposed to start, and [the stands for] warm-ups were already packed because people were thinking the game was supposed to start,” Catton remembered.

Thankfully, on the second try for the Kraken, things went off without a hitch Saturday morning, and the players were able to make the very short flight to Vancouver and still go through a relatively normal game-day routine.

“Whether you want to look at it as adversity or what, you just have to deal with adversity,” coach Lane Lambert said after the team’s skate at Rogers Arena. “Things sometimes are out of your control, which they were… Nobody’s complaining. You’ve just got to deal with it and get ready. Obviously, flying in here this morning isn’t exactly the most ideal thing, but that’s just an excuse.”

Bobby McMann’s visa finally cleared, will start on top line

Bobby McMann’s visa issue was finally resolved on Friday, meaning he is eligible to make his Kraken debut Saturday after being forced to sit and watch for three games after being acquired last Friday from the Toronto Maple Leafs in a last-second deal before the NHL Trade Deadline.

“It’s hard playing the waiting game, trying to be ready, but also trying to make sure I get hard skates and make sure I’m staying in game shape,” McMann said. “So that was a hard battle. And when you’re not sure if you’re going to go, you’re trying to save it a little bit, make sure that you’re ready to go. But I’m just happy that’s kind of over with, and I’m ready to go now.”

Now that he’s finally cleared to play (and for those wondering, he is fully eligible to play for the Kraken now, regardless of whether the game is played in the United States or Canada), Lambert is wasting no more time getting him acclimated, throwing him right onto the top line in what has previously been Jared McCann’s spot alongside Matty Beniers and Jordan Eberle.

Hear from Bobby McMann as he prepares for his first #SeaKraken game. pic.twitter.com/2zOpbHdyAS

— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) March 14, 2026

Meanwhile, McCann—who has been struggling to produce since the Olympic break—gets a fresh look on the second line playing with Chandler Stephenson and Eeli Tolvanen. That bumps Gaudreau down to the fourth line and pushes Ryan Winterton out as a healthy scratch.

Bobby McMann / Matty Beniers / Jordan Eberle
Jared McCann / Chandler Stephenson / Eeli Tolvanen
Berkly Catton / Shane Wright / Kaapo Kakko
Ben Meyers / Freddy Gaudreau / Jacob Melanson

Vince Dunn / Adam Larsson
Ryan Lindgren / Brandon Montour
Jamie Oleksiak / Ryker Evans

Philipp Grubauer

Lambert said he thinks McMann’s speed will complement the games of Beniers and Eberle, and that he hopes a little shakeup will snap the team out of its goal-scoring drought.

As for his messaging to the team’s newest addition, Lambert said he told McMann to “Play his game, that’s all. Don’t come in and try and do too much, don’t feel the expectation that you have to do everything. Just play your game, play your hockey game, and that’s what we’re looking forward to seeing. He’s fast, he can shoot the puck, he keeps it simple for the most part. He’s played with enough good players that I don’t think he’ll overpass the puck.”

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Lambert also made one small switch to his own usual routine Saturday. Instead of doing his general media scrum first and then talking to radio broadcasters Everett Fitzhugh and Al Kinisky, he instead did his radio interview first.

After being poked about it by a certain Sound Of Hockey intern, Lambert said with a smile: “Just switching it up. I’m not superstitious, I’m just a little stitious.”