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Kraken CEO promises improvement, team gets rare boost with win over Golden Knights

Darren Brown

There was a palpable irony to how Thursday played out at Climate Pledge Arena. In the morning, Seattle Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke sat before a full media room, located deep in the bowels of the mostly underground venue, explaining to the assembled press why the team and its original general manager and current president were parting ways after hitting rock bottom, then finding a new rock bottom, and then another after that.

During the extended and wide-ranging press conference, Leiweke reminisced about all the things the organization had accomplished under Ron Francis’ guidance, admitted that the team has failed to meet expectations, and even got emotional at times when talking about how great the Seattle fanbase is and how it deserves so much more than what this franchise has delivered so far.

While Leiweke spoke, the Vegas Golden Knights, who joined the NHL four years earlier than the Kraken and immediately set a new bar for what an expansion franchise can be—a bar so high that Seattle hasn’t even reached base camp in its climb toward it—was filing past that same media room to prepare for the night’s game against the Kraken.

Of course, Vegas has had some tumult of its own this season. But even after Seattle rallied back from two goals down in the third period to earn an unlikely and also somewhat ironic 4-3 shootout win, Vegas is within a point of the top of the Pacific Division and destined for its eighth playoff appearance in nine years of existence. The Golden Knights are still very much in “win now” mode and are constantly finding creative (albeit sometimes ruthless) ways to improve, while the Kraken remain bogged down with no obvious path to true contention.

As Leiweke said, the Kraken are far from being in the same echelon as the Vegas Golden Knights.

“We have not delivered on the promise of this team,” Leiweke said. “When we went away on the [Olympic] break, we were sitting in a playoff spot, and now we’re faced with not making the playoffs for the third year in a row, and it’s not acceptable. And we’re committed to fixing it, and we’re committed to improving every single aspect of the organization.”

Leiweke promises more transparency

One thing Leiweke made clear in the press conference is that he and the organization are acutely aware they have not met the expectations of fans or of themselves. With Ron Francis in the general manager seat for four years and one year as president of hockey ops, they put some good pieces in place but didn’t come close to accomplishing their goal of becoming a perennial playoff team.

So part of Leiweke’s pitch on Thursday was to try to instill trust in the fans by admitting that everyone involved needs to do a better job and that they aren’t going to rest on their laurels and hope things improve on their own.

“I am very, very, very confident that we’re going to get this team to a good place, but it’s going to take a plan, and we’re going to set mile markers,” Leiweke said. “Our fans are going to know where we are, and we’re going to share some of those plans in May with our fans. And we’ve talked about actually instituting an annual report to our fans, and we’re going to do that, and that first one will come in this May.”

What’s included in that plan remains to be seen, but in the Francis era, cards were held extremely close to the vest, surely adding to the frustration of the fanbase. What exactly was the plan? Drafting and developing is all well and good, but what else are you doing to make this team better? Those types of questions were never answered with real transparency, and while it is smart for front offices to be careful about what they divulge, even members of the media who are constantly around the team struggled to see the direction. So a commitment to more transparency is a big deal.

Jason Botterill remaining in his role

There was also some discussion in the presser about what happens next in the post-Francis era of Kraken hockey.

Leiweke confirmed he expects Jason Botterill to remain in his role as general manager, and although he wouldn’t confirm that Lane Lambert will remain the head coach, he also said he thinks Lambert “coached his ass off this year, and I think that we owe a lot of people better.”

“We have a hell of a lot of work to do here. We want this to be a prolific offseason. I think with change, you can do things differently that you perhaps otherwise wouldn’t have done differently. And I think there’s things that we can do differently to improve our hand here, and we’ll do it with [Botterill].”

In a way, Leiweke seemed to be implying that more change could have happened last offseason if Francis had already been out of the picture, and perhaps his presence was causing Botterill to remain cautious. But that doesn’t jive with what Sound Of Hockey has heard recently. We have come to believe that Botterill truly has been the one calling the shots for the last year, with minimal input on hockey-related decisions from Francis.

So, for the Kraken to have a “prolific” offseason, as Leiweke mentioned, Botterill will need to change his own approach. He will need to get creative, make difficult decisions quickly, and be willing to take a hard look at what is actually happening inside Seattle’s locker room and the roster that he had a hand in building.

It’s also worth noting that the team promised big offseason changes to the personnel last year after Botterill was promoted into the GM chair and Francis moved into the president of hockey ops role.

Also of note, Leiweke mentioned there will be a “full independent audit” of the hockey ops department. That does not mean KPMG or Deloitte will be dropping into Kraken Community Iceplex, but rather some sort of outside resource (or resources) with knowledge of successful NHL teams coming in to give an unbiased look at what is happening behind the scenes. The details of how that audit will play out are still being determined.

Kraken earn ironic win

After all that, there was still a game to be played Thursday between the perpetually diverging teams, the Kraken and the Golden Knights. The Kraken—who are back in a “race” for a top-three spot in the NHL Draft Lottery—came in on a six-game losing streak and had lost 10 of their previous 11. There has not been a good feeling to be found in that dressing room for some time now, and absolutely ZERO puck luck to help the guys get out of their misery.

On the other side, the Golden Knights had won four straight since yet another shocking “win at all costs” move last week in which they fired coach Bruce Cassidy and replaced him with John Tortorella.

Considering the mood around Seattle lately and how things were going, when the Kraken fell behind 3-1 in the third period, it felt like they would pack it in. Instead, they got an incredible break for once when Adam Larsson’s rim-around attempt took a weird 90-degree turn off the glass and caromed onto Berkly Catton’s stick in the slot. With Adin Hill already out of the crease to cut off Larsson’s dump-in, Catton had an open net and cut the deficit to 3-2 at 6:11 of the third.

“I don’t know how it ended up on my stick, really,” Catton said with a big smile on his face. “So I was kind of surprised, I guess. And then relieved a bit that it went in, too.”

Bobby McMann followed that up at 9:16 with his ninth goal in 14 games since joining the Kraken at the NHL Trade Deadline, after a great play by Jordan Eberle to win a puck battle in the corner and dig it out to McMann in the left circle.

But even after that surprising comeback, surely the Kraken would find a way to lose in overtime, right? No. Instead, it was Catton who played the hero with a nice move in the shootout, deking to his left and chipping it over Hill.

At this stage, the Kraken need to continue losing. They’re not making the playoffs, and a top pick can actually help the organization in the long run. Whether the organization’s latest promises get fulfilled is a question for another day, but for one night, at least, the Kraken showed some fight, got a bounce, and gave a frustrated fanbase a reason cheer.

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.

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