Well, if the Kraken’s “prolific” offseason hinged on landing a particular big fish, then general manager Jason Botterill took a massive swing at doing just that this week… and missed.
According to reporting from Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the Kraken had worked out a trade with the Dallas Stars for high-scoring winger Jason Robertson. The catch, though, is that Robertson is a restricted free agent and would have needed a new contract upon joining Seattle. So, with the trade in place, Dallas gave Seattle permission to speak with Robertson and his agent, Andy Scott. Again, according to Friedman’s report, the Kraken offered Robertson an eight-year contract worth about $15 million per season.
Robertson rejected the offer.
It’s certainly a crushing blow to Seattle’s offseason plans. You can’t take much bigger of a cut at landing a player than that, and this is the second time Seattle has reportedly offered north of $14 million per year in an attempt to recruit a star, only to be denied. The previous was Artemi Panarin, who reportedly received that offer for two years before opting to go to Los Angeles during the 2025-26 season.
It also serves as another reminder that Seattle is not yet an appealing enough destination for elite players. Once middle-tier players get into the organization and experience how first class everything is, they are often willing to stay (think Vince Dunn, Jared McCann, Jordan Eberle, Adam Larsson, and, more recently, Bobby McMann, all of whom have re-upped with the Kraken at least once). But until the team proves it can ice a winning roster capable of supporting those top-flight players, reeling in elite talent will remain a massive uphill battle.
What could have been
Assuming the conversation is now dead in the water, Robertson would have been an incredible get for Botterill. The 26-year-old Arcadia, Calif., native has scored 40 or more goals three times in his still relatively young career and racked up an impressive 45 goals and 51 assists last season for Dallas.
Of course, he’s been just one piece of the puzzle there, whereas in Seattle he would have been the centerpiece. Would he put up those kinds of numbers on a less talented club? Would his addition make the Kraken a Stanley Cup contender?
The answer to that last question is no, so Botterill and the rest of the front office would have had to sell Robertson on the organization’s vision for getting there quickly. Obviously, whatever the pitch was, it didn’t work.
From a fan’s perspective, there are two ways to look at this outcome. Some will appreciate that the Kraken were willing to make such an aggressive play, even if it ultimately failed. It shows the organization is putting its money where its mouth is in trying to quickly improve its on-ice product.
On the other hand, it surely creates even more frustration that the organization has still not built enough of a winning reputation for an eight-year contract that would have been among the most lucrative in NHL history to be enough to land a star scorer.
Where do the Kraken go from here?
Botterill and the Kraken appear bound and determined to land a star forward this offseason and make good on the promises they have made to their fanbase. As the trade frenzy has unfolded this week, though, it feels like many of the significant players Seattle may have been interested in—Jordan Kyrou, Alex Tuch, and now Jason Robertson—are either off the board or have turned them down. Meanwhile, Frank Seravalli has reported that the St. Louis Blues plan to keep Robert Thomas.
The options for landing top-tier talent are quickly dwindling.
UPDATE: It seems the Kraken are not the only ones who have been rebuffed by Robertson.
Sources indicating the St Louis Blues offered a package that included multiple first round picks to the Dallas Stars for Jason Robertson but he is not interested in signing there.
— Jeff Marek (@JeffMarek) June 26, 2026
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.
I certainly hope some of the folks in that locker room are getting a chip on their shoulder.
If I were this FO, I would consider a short term deal with Gudas to throw an unreasonable amount of gasoline on that fire…
I wanted Gudas last time he was available. We need toughness and grit to get this roster to gel. With Gudas causing chaos and making a commitment, every one of the players would grow 2 inches.
The way nhl players have been behaving lately, instead of that, they’ll demand trades to Florida or Vegas.
Nice to hear they took a swing. C’est la vie. I appreciate players making decisions beyond money, and hopefully he finds the success he is looking for. Maybe he wants to go to Toronto to play with his brother. 🙂
I think it’s also possible he wanted even more money than that.
Not surprising. This is Buffalo West, except Buffalo from way before this year. It’s a losing franchise with a bad reputation among the players. Even Beniers alluded to it in an SOH interview (way to go Darren asking him for follow-up on that offhand comment). It’s a catch-22: the only solution is winning, but you can’t win with bad players, and you can’t sign good players when you lose. Hence, TANK!! It’s the only way they’re going to reliably get good players. The sooner leadership realizes this, the better. I am glad they at least tried for Robertson. Makes me nervous they’re going to do something desperate and stupid, though.
Something desperate and stupid like tanking?
Is that why every single Stanley cup winner in the cap era has done it at one point? Maybe the Hurricanes are the one exception out of 21, but they also had almost a decade of regular season success leading up to it.
The thing you keep forgetting is we did this when we entered the League. Literally have 4 years of top 8 picks.
Dom has a worthwhile “pro tank” article in the Athletic today. Conspicuously absent is Seattle who haven’t been the league long enough to even meet the “three top five picks in six drafts” criteria.
LOL
Maybe most US hockey players think Seattle is part of Canada??
Robertson feels that the Kraken are more than a Robertson away from being a contender. No need to make it any more complicated than that.
You’re glossing over a ton and it is far more complicated than that. If he’s trying to force Dallas to negotiate, the best thing he can do is leak that someone gave home a 15 million dollar offer. His agents are also literally the only people with any incentive to leak this.
A desperate team that he doesn’t want to play for, offer done and gone. Dallas is willing to trade him I hardly think this is some big conspiracy theory. They tried to to sign him for what they felt he was worth, if anything it will be Robertson that lowers his asking price if he can’t find a team that’s willing to pay him and that he wants to play for.
No vision and no plan as well as a coach who plays a boring style of hockey.
I recently went back to watch a Kraken v Florida game just to watch Samy, and it was far from boring. Kraken won 6-2 or something. The issue is Larsson, Oleksiak and Tolvanen all suck. Nothing to do with the coach or playing style. Larsson on a pair with Dunn is just bad. But if Larsson were a 3rd pair D and Oleksiak and Tolvanen are replaced with better options, the Kraken probably get 10-15 more points in the standings.
Reposting this because it belongs in this thread…..
Not surprised.
I really feel like we have a road that needs to be traveled before we can be a destination. It’s going to take time and a willingness to build slowly and not worry about the playoffs in the short term.
Bring in a new coach that is willing to play the younger guys even if it doesn’t necessarily give us the best chance at a win. Play the long game and stop screwing around trying to be somewhere you have no business being.
The more I think about it I really wonder what the auditors said. It’s interesting that the only point he brought up was that they needed to be better at player development. There has to be something specifically said in that regards… obviously more then you just need to be better. I would not be surprised if the audit pointed to our way to become a better team is through drafting and developing. I feel that it’s not a route that ownership is willing to take until it’s their only option.
Adding that JB is not a very good GM if he can’t make ownership see the light of day, if that is the case.
I think we should call Toronto for Matthew Knies. Dallas was going to use the 7th pick plus some to get him according to Frank Serravelli
i think we should wait 2 years before landing a big FA swing #McDavid2Seattle
I suppose that in five years, this team won’t exist anymore.
I don’t post here much anymore, as the team’s front office is just hopeless and without a young, smart, aggressive GM (look around the league, you will find them pretty much everywhere except here), this franchise is going nowhere.
To make a pathetic situation even more pathetic, Jason Botterill, who failed in Buffalo and has been failing with the Kraken, just hired Patrik Allvin, who is a few short years absolutely destroyed a promising Canucks’ roster. When you have one failed GM, why not have two?
Botterill is so desperate he keeps launching Hail Mary pass big money contract offers but the plain truth is no star player wants to play here. The franchise has no identity, is a bottom-tier team with no top-tier talent, and employs a dinosaur coach trotting out an outdated system.
As top players can increasingly call the shots on where they play, they want, in some order, a winning culture, low taxes, and good weather. Seattle, with the new millionaire’s tax, now has exactly zero of those criteria. The only UFAs they can sign are those they essentially buy with an overpay.
Botterill’s roster management in the 5.5 years has been pathetic but let’s only look at the last few months. He did not trade away any of his four UFAs for picks at the trade deadline, he did not trade away Grubauer at his new peak to a playoff aspirant, and he did not trade away one of the top players like Dunn, Larsson, or McCann to get another first rounder this year. Instead of 3 or 4 first rounders, they only have one.
He idiotically trades away a first round pick plus a second rounder for a third-liner who has a career high of 32 points. Are you kidding? And the smart guys in Florida are laughing all the way, as they use that to acquire not some bottom of the lineup guy but Brady Tkachuk.
As I predicted five years ago that the Kraken would have to get rid of Francis for his ineptitude, the same will happen to Botterill. Only then, when a smart and aggressive GM comes in, not married to the mistakes of the Francis/Botterill era, will the franchise have any hope of escaping irrelevance.
Amen
What a clownshow. The Kraken are a bad team addicted to pretending they are not a bad team. This is called delusion.
It’s clear that the FO has failed dismally with their stupid approach. They’ve parked their expansion firmly in mediocrity, or worse, and now the fallout begins.
How about building an actual and solid foundation before attempting big signings like this? The Kraken have no direction, no energy, no momentum. Next step is the few good players that remain (the UFAs seeing out their retirement contracts apart) will get the hell out of Dodge first chance they get.
Came here for some ignorant hot takes, left satisfied.
Lol
The new definition of insanity is, saying the same things over and over again but expecting to have a different conversation.