The 2025–26 Seattle Kraken season didn’t end the way anyone hoped. A team that spent most of the year in the playoff mix unraveled after the Olympic break, leaving fans frustrated, confused, and staring down another long offseason.
But seasons are rarely defined by a single stretch of games, and they’re never as simple as “good” or “bad.” So, before diving into the roster questions, coaching debates, and offseason hypotheticals, we’re kicking off a short series looking at what actually happened this year: what went right, what went wrong, and a deep dive into some of these areas.
This first installment focuses on the positives. Yes, there were some.
Meaningful games in April
A realistic goal entering the season was simply to play meaningful games in March. The Kraken cleared that bar comfortably. On March 1, they held a playoff spot; on April 1, they sat three points out of a wild card.
We all know what happened after the Olympic break, so there’s no need to rehash it. The games remained meaningful, even if the performances didn’t always match the stakes. And yes, the Pacific Division’s overall mediocrity helped, but meaningful hockey in April is still a step forward.
Team goaltending
If you had predicted last summer that goaltending, and specifically Philipp Grubauer, would be a bright spot, you would’ve been laughed out of the room. Grubauer ended 2024–25 with a career‑low .875 save percentage and spent time in the AHL to “re-find” his game.
This season, Kraken goaltending finished at .903, eighth in the NHL. Before the Olympic break, they were even better at .909, good enough for fourth at that point in time. The post‑break dip mirrored the team’s collapse, but the larger story remains: Seattle got stabilizing, above‑average goaltending for most of the year, and that alone kept them competitive.
As for Grubauer, he finished the season with 14 goals saved above expected which was the team best.
A glimpse of a real power play (for three quarters of the season)
Since the franchise’s inception, the power play has lived near the bottom of the NHL. Chemistry matters with the man advantage, and the Kraken have rarely had it prior to this season.
For most of 2025-26, though, Seattle iced a legitimately dangerous unit, converting at 23 percent before the Olympic break. It felt strange, almost suspicious, to see the Kraken near the top half of the league in power‑play efficiency. And, as it turned out, it wasn’t sustainable. After the break, the unit cratered to 10.5 percent, last in the league over that span.
Still, for the majority of the season, the Kraken finally had a special‑teams weapon. That’s progress.
Back‑to‑back games
The 2024–25 Kraken went 0–12–0 in the second half of back‑to‑backs. Zero points. Not even a pity OT loss.
This year, they collected 12 of a possible 26 points in 13 such games. That’s not elite, but it’s a massive improvement. Predictably, this too dipped after the Olympic break, just two of eight possible points, but the overall trend was positive.
Arrival of the kids
With five drafts now in the books, it makes sense that the pipeline would start producing NHL contributors. Seattle got 437 total games played from players drafted since 2021, the fifth‑most in the league from that draft range.
Four of the seven players drafted in 2021 made meaningful contributions. Ryan Winterton established himself as an everyday NHLer. Jacob Melanson brought a different element and, at times, forced the coaching staff to keep him in the lineup.
Berkly Catton, the No. 8 overall pick in 2024, played 66 games, which was far more than most of us expected. His 17 points don’t jump off the page, but he showed flashes throughout the year and, in the later stages, cut down on the careless mistakes that were prevalent over the first two‑thirds of his season.
It’s still too early to fully evaluate the Kraken’s drafting, but the initial returns, especially from 2021, suggest the organization is trending in the right direction.
Closing it out
The ending of the season will dominate the conversation for a while, and understandably so. But it shouldn’t erase the progress the Kraken made in several foundational areas: internal development, stabilizing goaltending, improved power play, and the ability to stay in the playoff mix deep into the spring.
In the next installment of this series, we’ll shift to the other side of the ledger: what went wrong.