When a season unravels the way the Seattle Kraken’s did, there’s usually a laundry list of things people want to point to as the cause. I won’t hit everything on everyone’s list, but when you zoom out and look at the entire year, these are the areas that went wrong for the 2025–26 Seattle Kraken.
Penalty kill
Let’s start with the most obvious one. The Kraken penalty kill finished the season 31st in the league, operating at just 72 percent. It wasn’t consistently bad, but the lows were really low. There was a stretch in November where the team gave up a power‑play goal in nine straight games. Just three games after that streak finally ended, they allowed another seven power‑play goals against on eight shorthanded opportunities over a three‑game span. It stabilized a bit in the middle of the season, only to collapse again toward the end.
Injuries did disrupt the personnel, but the issues felt more systemic than situational. Problems like that often lead to assistant coaching changes, but we’ll have to wait and see if that ends up being the case for the Kraken.
Scoring
Another obvious category is goal scoring, which is nothing new for this franchise. The Kraken finished 28th in the NHL at just 2.7 goals per game. Scoring has always been a struggle (outside of 2022–23), but I don’t think anyone expected nearly a quarter‑goal drop from last season.
The real question is why scoring dipped the way it did. Expect a deeper dive into the Kraken’s offensive issues from the 2025–26 season in the coming weeks.
Middle‑of‑the‑lineup contributions
Part of the scoring problem can be traced to the drop in depth production. I’m not talking about a fourth line masquerading as a third line; since their inception, the Kraken have made up for a lack of elite scoring with reliable contributions throughout the middle of their lineup. Even last season—when the team was worse—they had seven players hit 15 goals or more. This season, only four players reached that mark, the fewest since the inaugural year.
Jaden Schwartz, Brandon Montour, Shane Wright, and Eeli Tolvanen all hit 15 goals last season but failed to do so this year. Injuries played a role for these players, but you can’t blame injuries for the decrease across the whole roster. Injuries happen every year, so they should not be used as an excuse.
Mason Marchment was supposed to be one of those middle‑six drivers, and he was just that… for Columbus after the Kraken moved him midseason when it became clear the fit wasn’t there in Seattle. Berkly Catton also occupied a middle‑six role but contributed only seven goals.
Defensive-zone time
The NHL doesn’t publish team zone‑time data, but it doesn’t take a leap to say the Kraken spent far too much time defending. It’s not a random sample, but in the final seven games of the season, the Kraken averaged 35 percent of their 5‑on‑5 time in the offensive zone and 42 percent in the defensive zone. When you’re defending that much, you’re not generating offense, and the scoring dries up.
Pinpointing the root cause is tough with the limited public data available. Possession stats like face-offs help, but even those are incomplete. The Kraken ranked 27th in face-off win percentage, still better than playoff teams like Tampa Bay, Minnesota, and Buffalo, which only reinforces that public face-off data isn’t always telling the full story.
Consistency
Above all else, this team struggled with consistency across almost every aspect of its game. Early on, it looked like the Kraken were committed to limiting chances and grinding out tight games, and they were banking points however they could. Then they drifted away from that identity.
The swings were wild: 11‑6‑6 (.609) before Thanksgiving, followed by a 1‑8‑0 (.111) stretch, then a 15‑6‑3 (.688) run heading into the Olympic break, and finally a 7‑17‑2 (.308) collapse over the final 26 games. Even the best teams hit rough patches, but this was the most volatile season to date for the Kraken.
Where the Kraken go from here
These issues won’t be solved with a quick patch. Some will require personnel changes, some will demand structural adjustments, and some will hinge on players simply performing closer to their career norms. The front office has major decisions to make: more coaching evaluations beyond just parting ways with Jessica Campbell (she decided to seek new opportunities after her contract expired), roster construction, and determining how aggressively they want to reshape this team’s identity.
With the potential departures of three middle‑six forwards in Bobby McMann, Jaden Schwartz, and Eeli Tolvanen, they already have some built‑in roster flexibility to work with. They’ve promised an aggressive offseason; now we wait to see whether they can actually deliver on it.
According to NHL EDGE, the Kraken’s even strength o-zone average for the season was 39.1%. The d-zone number was 42.3%. While that first number is better that the 35% of the final seven games, it was still bad enough to rank 31st in the league. They were 27th at the other end. If I remember correctly, they were 27th in d-zone time the season before too.
It’s hard to “shoot the puck” when you’re spending all night in your own end.
We ran a great system clearly
Personally, I think it was more about not being able to complete passes and giving away the puck way too much.
A good place to have started our ” aggressive off-season” would to have been to attempt to hire Bruce Cassidy.
I think one simple reason the goal production was lacking was because when McCann and Tolvanen were on the ice, they rarely saw the puck. When either one of them is out there the play should be getting them the puck in their shooting position. These two players should not be on any trade list. They are also good defensively but lets start using their shooting skills correctly instead of looking for players to replace them. Other teams manage to feed the pick to their shooters effectively why don’t we? This one is on Lambert. He should go way before these guys.
What I think I saw go wrong, with no appeal to statistics, apart from the above-mentioned two nose-dives in penalty kill performance, was firstly clearing the defensive zone. The really bizarre thing about that was who appeared to be guilty of a lot of failed clears and defensive zone turnovers: the historically rock solid Vince Dunn and Adam Larsson. It was strange to see arguably the team’s two best dudes be responsible for so many give-aways, although a lot of that may be the result of them getting matched against the opposing teams’ best players. I will chalk it up to a bad year for good players. Ryan Lindgren and Bradnon Montour had some notable errors as well, but not an extraordinary number given how often the team was playing from behind. On the other hand, I really liked what I saw from Ryker Evans and Jamie Oleksiak. Evans is about to be damn good.
Another major recurring issue was the ineffectiveness of the Wright line. The Stephenson and Beniers lines were frequently effective with some tough matchups, especially when Berkley Catton and Ryan Winterton were healthy and producing. Lambert’s season-long plan to play tight and win tough is a winning formula when the depth lines outmatch opponents’ depth lines, but that never happened apart from some good performances by Ben Meyers and his linemates. On paper, Wright and whichever two of the Kraken’s many depth scorers should have feasted on most of the other third lines in the league. Why didn’t they? Despite the low average ice time (guess who takes a powder when the bench gets shortened) and consistently choice draws, the Wright line never found any consistent production. Without that, it fell to Matty Beniers, Jared McCann, and Jordan Eberle to be offensive heroes (Ebs in particular stepped up), and that broke the model.
So, what went wrong? Godawful penalty killing, defensive zone flubs, and the third line staying ice cold.
The biggest problem is this team doesn’t have one first line forward and they are going to keep trying to make the playoffs because they feel they need to be a playoff team before the Sonics come back, but I think that will mire them in mediocrity.
I just don’t know how this team is going to get better, they aren’t going to get the high draft picks they need to get the good young star players that can provide a base to turn their fortunes around and the cap is going up again so unless a team has a dissatisfied player on an expiring contract any players worth keeping will be kept and how many players unhappy with another organization will want to come to Seattle who is a team of middle and bottom 6 forwards? So that leaves trades, what does this team really have to trade besides draft picks? Any player a team is willing to trade in the rising cap era will probably be because they are disgruntled. Will that player want to perform for the Kraken or will we be getting Marchment 2.0. I guess they could trade veterans like McCann to contending teams for young prospects, but that isn’t going to acheive the objective of getting to the playoff next year so I’m not sure that would be on the table. Maybe there is some value in Dunn if you can find a team that needs to add some offense at the blue line and has solid enough defenders to cover for him, but is that going to net you a forward who can make a difference now? I think this year has killed any trade value you’d have for Wright unless you are looking to get a similarly mismanaged young player in return so that is going to be a wash, maybe you can get a winger and clear up some of the congestion in the middle of the ice in the organizattion. I also can’t imagine the players at CV having much trade value.
I listened to The Deep Dive podcast today and they had some interesting points on where the rest of the division is. Vancouver and Calgary below us and going full rebuild. LA probably coming back our way toward the bottom. San Jose and Anaheim on the rise with young cores and star players. Vegas and Edmonton probably have staying power for now at the top of the division. Can the Kraken overtake any of the 4 teams solidly infront of us when every one of those teams has multiple star or superstar players and the Kraken don’t even have one star player?