The Seattle Kraken managed two out of four possible points in a light week on the schedule. If you had told me that the Seattle Kraken would come away with two points from games against the red-hot Montreal Canadiens and the New York Rangers, I would have been happy. Still, something about these two games left me a little concerned.
Generating offense
We knew this team would look different this season, with a greater focus on structure and a more defensive mindset. Naturally, that means some offensive output would have to take a hit. Gone are the risky offensive-zone pinches or dicey forechecks that might lead to an odd-man advantage the other way.
So far, it’s working. This Kraken team continues to enjoy the best start in franchise history, and as of Monday morning, they’re sitting in a Wild Card spot with a 5-2-4 record.
That said, they’ve struggled to generate much offense. Seattle is averaging 2.73 goals per game, down 0.26 from last season, which ranks 24th in the NHL. It’s hard to call that an “issue,” given their record, but it’s at least an area for improvement.
A big driver behind the lower scoring rate appears to be a lack of shot volume. The Kraken are averaging the fewest shots on goal per game in team history and currently sit dead last in the league in that category.
In a vacuum, that trend is concerning, but given their record, it may just be the cost of winning with this system. It’s also worth noting that Jared McCann has now missed six straight games, and his return could certainly help spark the offense.
Other musings
- One thing I worried about early this season was whether this team could come back from multi-goal deficits with such a defense-first approach. While it didn’t end in victory, the Kraken erased a three-goal deficit in the third period against Montreal, proof that they can still come back. I was pleasantly surprised.
- Saturday’s 13 shots on goal against the Rangers marked the lowest total in a game in franchise history.
- The Rangers’ top line of Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, and J.T. Miller dominated on Saturday. They didn’t get on the scoresheet, but they combined for 11 of New York’s 25 shots in regulation and seemed to play all their shifts in the offensive zone.
- One area that still needs work for Seattle is the penalty kill. The good news: the Kraken killed all three of their penalties on Saturday. The bad news: they gave up a season-high nine shots against while doing it.
- Saturday also marked the sixth overtime game of the season. The Kraken only had 13 all of last year. They’re now 2-0-4 in games that reach overtime.
- The San Jose Sharks have also played six overtime games this season, and they will visit Seattle on Wednesday.
- It was great to see Kaapo Kakko back in the lineup on Saturday, though it’ll take some time for him to look like the Kakko we saw late last season. He played most of the game alongside Shane Wright and Mason Marchment, but about halfway through the third, he ended up playing a few shifts with Matty Beniers and Jordan Eberle.
- One thing that could help Seattle’s scoring woes: getting Eeli Tolvanen going. He has yet to score this season. At this same point last year, he had four goals.
- Joey Daccord started his ninth game of the season. I’ve been a little concerned about him being overworked, but there are actually 14 goalies league-wide with nine or more starts, and the schedule has allowed him time to recuperate between games, so maybe I shouldn’t worry (yet).
- Berkly Catton had just two shifts and 1:17 of ice time in the third period on Saturday. I think he’s shown he can play in the NHL, but once the roster is fully healthy, I’m not sure he gives them the best chance to win every night.
- In case you missed it, Kraken prospect Jake O’Brien was named the OHL Player of the Month for October after posting seven goals and 19 assists in 12 games for the Brantford Bulldogs. He’s already added six more points in two games to start November.
Jake O’Brien was unstoppable this weekend!
The @SeattleKraken prospect tallied 8 points this weekend, earning him the @cogeco #OHLPOTW honours.
DETAILS 🗞️: https://t.co/4A1oSkD2Y3@BulldogsOHL | @Flohockey pic.twitter.com/KiFDfNIRrA
— Ontario Hockey League (@OHLHockey) October 13, 2025
Goal of the week
Nice goal by former Kraken Andre Burakovsky
ANDRE BURAKOVSKY GOES THROUGH HIS LEGS *AND* THE DEFENDER’S FOR THIS GOAL 🤯🚨
WHAT. A. GOAL. pic.twitter.com/fLdUOjWY49
— TSN (@TSN_Sports) October 31, 2025
Player performances
Brandon Montour (SEA) – Monty had three goals and one assist in two games this week. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the Kraken might have come away empty-handed without him.
Julius Miettinen (EVT/SEA) – The big Finnish prospect is off to a strong start with the Everett Silvertips, posting two goals and three assists over the weekend.
Connor Bedard (CHI) – The 2023 first-overall pick had three goals and four assists in his last three games. He enters Monday’s matchup against Seattle riding a four-game point streak.
The week ahead
The Kraken play four games this week, Monday vs. Chicago, Wednesday vs. San Jose, then a dreaded back-to-back road set on Saturday and Sunday against St. Louis and Dallas, respectively.
The Blackhawks and Sharks won’t be easy matchups; both have been playing well lately. Chicago (5-4-3) has been hovering around the wild card bubble, and Monday marks Burakovsky’s first game back in Seattle since being traded to the Blackhawks this summer. Burky is off to his best start since his first season with the Kraken in 2022–23.
I’m especially curious to see how Seattle matches up against San Jose. The Sharks are full of young talent but have struggled defensively, allowing four goals per game, second most in the NHL. Can the Kraken take advantage of that?
It’s still a bit early to throw around “must-win” talk, but this week presents a real opportunity to bank some points. Five out of eight would be solid; six would be outstanding.
And finally…
It’s still early, but the Kraken are above .500 and in a wild card position, and that’s something to be happy about. That said, I’d be lying if I said the lack of offensive production over the last two games doesn’t concern me a little. Based on this week’s matchups, we should get a much clearer picture of whether that concern is warranted.
Are you worried about the offense, or do you think this is just how winning hockey looks with the current roster under Lambert?
If we need to win games like this a serious look needs to be taken in how our roster was constructed and who’s responsible for that. I’m really not sure that we need to go down this path and selecting LL was possibly a knee jerk reaction from management. I was always against this hiring simply because I enjoy watching hockey and I’d prefer to enjoy watching my home team play hockey over whatever sport the Lame train is playing.
But yes we will get more points from his system…..
Where Catton if he lost icer time play? ECHL?A tie is better than a loss even if is boring hockey
There was no checking during the game vs the Rangers. That is always indicative of other issues.
They look like what we expected to see in the inaugural season if Grubauer had been any good and with less defensive lapses.
We would have been happy with this in year 1, but in year 5 I’m bored already.
Nah they’re playing way worse right now than during the inaugural season. That team was very frisky, pesky, physical, grindy…all those things. This one just sucks to watch. Hockey is supposed to be entertaining. This is the most boring team I’ve watched in the past 5 years. Maybe it was just a bad week, but being last in the NHL in 5 on 5 xG% is not a recipe for sustained success. It’s a recipe for another #8 pick (thanks to Joey). If Grubauer were starting, they’d be in the McKenna sweepstakes.
This isn’t sour grapes…
After his start at Penn State I’ve heard from a couple places folks tempering the hype on McKenna. No one has been saying he might not go No.1 overall, they’re just saying he’s starting to look like a more conventional first overall rather than a Bedard or Celebrini. That and prospects like Roobroeck taking a hit may be taking some of the steam out of this next draft. This is just what I’ve been reading here and there.
The knock on McKenna is that he is a slightly built LW that lacks physicality, two way play and isn’t particularly fast. Basically he is exceptionally talented offensively but something of a one trick pony (at this point). Meanwhile there are other prospects taking big strides, such as Alberts Smits (LD, Finnish Liiga) that looks like Schaefer like with his skating and production. Keaton Vaerhoff (Big RD with a great shot) might also take the crown 2026. And so on, it will be interesting to see which prospects shoot up the lists as the season goes on.
Year 5 or Year 100… the root problem is that the Kraken still does not have the elite talent and depth to carry games. They have enough middling/good players to be a bubble team but who wants to make the playoffs with a crappy bubble team anyway? But I digress, ownership clearly demands it and there seems to be a sizeable part of punditry (and ST holders?) on that train as well.
The only *actual* fix is to embrace reality and go dip into the future talent pool to attempt to find the lacking talent and enough of it. That way lies an actual competitive team. The other option is to circle the toilet year in year out like the Kraken are doing now – and that way lies frustration and boredom with the inevitable end that there will be a tear down the road anyway. The third option is to become one of the big horde of teams making up the numbers numbly talking about “making the playoffs” year in year out yet never having an interesting team to show the fans.
NOW is the time to suck and build properly, but management (no doubt whipped on by ownership) has chosen the second option leading to the third path of eternal mediocrity. I wish the org had the balls to build for actual 10-15 years with a truly good team even at the cost of short term pain.
So here we are.
I know there is talent in the current prospect pool, but the majority of it is bottom-6 and bottom-4. I don’t buy for a second the talk of fixing the top line through UFA. That is management/ownership self-soothing talk.
Yawn. We have sucked and have done the pick consolidation. We’ve had 4 top 10 picks. You just have to let your young guys develop. The majority of every team’s talent is bottom of the lineup when they draft. That’s the nature of any pick out of the top 10. It’s weird seeing people think this team is someone stuck with a bunch of bad contracts and doomed to mediocrity. It’s almost like they haven’t actually looked at the contracts we have.
Yawn. Develop the young players then. Montreal looks teeming with talent in comparison to the Kraken right? The Habs actually did let their kids cook rather than talk about it. We play Marchment and Stephenson, Eberle and Schwarz. There’s the big yawn. Most of them are good enough players but at this point they are stopgaps for the Kraken teams of the future. Montreal sucked because they DID let their kids cook, now they are rewarded with Caufield and others. San Jose is developing their kids. And so on. The Kraken will be left in the dust soon enough against those teams. But I guess the Kraken’s lane is to play super defensive hockey against the interesting teams and hope to eke out a point or two.
Montreal doesn’t have a bunch of 5 year season ticket holders on year 5 of their contract in a crowded sports landscape.
Frankly I’m optimistic for the future, the farm system looks good and it’s not my money being spent on pricey free agents and a coaching carousel. It’s entirely possible that their defensive system + Daccord will land them a playoff birth and a bunch of national praise for overachieving.
Montreal is years ahead of us in development. You also seem to be ignoring the kids cooking (Karts, Nyman, Winterton, Shane, Matty and Catton). I get you’re mad but no need to be intellectually dishonest.
Koist we do have some bad contracts but Grubauer and Chandler say hi, but that’s another story.
Witymont I have to disagree a little bit, we do have some decent talent. What we should be doing is playing them and let the chips fall where they fall.
We keep acquiring players like Marchment and Stevenson who are just road blocks for our youth. Think about it we have 4 young talented centers in our system but we lock up an old guard who is in the decline of his career for SIX years!!! This year we clearly see that we have two young prospects who are NHL ready and the best thing for their future careers is to be gaining that experience. What do we do sign Marchment onto an already overcrowded middling lineup.
Play the kids if we make the playoffs great if we don’t it translates to a better pick. Let’s be totally honest our best case scenario right now is scrapping into the playoffs.
Go out and try to win games but do it with the kids that are ready for the NHL this season.
I do like the talent we have. O’Brien is on fire in the OHL and looks very promising indeed, just for one. I’m just greedy and want to have a huge pool, the more the merrier, the surplus also becomes trade ammo. I’d love another top 5 pick or two. My argument really is along what you said – play the kids and develop them > desperate push to make the playoffs with limited vets and boring hockey.
A small gripe is that we have so many similar types in the prospect pool. Fisker Mølgaard eg is a nice prospect, but he is Yet Another Smallish Two Way Player with Limited Offensive Upside – like seemingly dozens of Kraken players – the archetype Kraken player. Among the “middling” prospects my hopes lies with the Miettinen’s and Rehkopf’s players with a bit of size. We have enough Wintertons in the system (I like Winterton a lot but we don’t need 12 of them).
Trade is another angle the Kraken haven’t used to their full advantage imo.
“Trade is another angle the Kraken haven’t used to their full advantage imo.”
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and I’ve posted about it here and there…
I get the arguments for tanking and I don’t simply discount them even though I disagree with them in Seattle’s circumstances… but another way to find those “high end” players is through trade. The Kraken are well stocked with trade assets… but you can’t trade for a “high end” player if you’re not in a playoff position. This is simply how it works. Teams have to either have a hook – like the Rangers or the Habs – or they have to be playoff bound to be in on big names.
We’ve all heard Jason Robertsons name out there. If St. Louis is really in trouble, is Kyrou available? Do the Islanders cash in on Schaefer and move Barzal to go full tank?
If Seattle wants to be in on opportunities like these, they can’t just suck. I totally get why Francis did nothing – which was the right thing to do – when Seattle was in a playoff position two seasons ago at the deadline. Now, however, it seems to me – and that’s worth nothing – if a team wants to be in on acquiring through trade, they need to be in a playoff spot.
Friedman reported recently that Seattle may have been trying to get a pick back from Dallas so they could offer sheet McTavish. Just because deals aren’t happening doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities out there.
I’m gonna wait and see and I’m gonna keep rooting for wins.
Go Kraken!!!
Stephenson isn’t as bad a contract as y’all make it out to be and Gru is a non issue next year. That’s TWO contracts. Less than 10% of the cap after next year. None of our big contracts are blocking anyone. Marchment is a weird pick here. His contact expires next year and we have no NHL level players that can take his spot in the lineup. You kind of proved my point. Look at whose contracts are coming off the books next year. We’ll have more open slots than kids ready to fill them. Playing all the kids is an idiotic idea in general. It’s a sure fire way to make sure all the kids have a terrible development path.
Wow! What a bunch of Debbie Downers. The list seems to get longer every day.
As for me. I say…
Let’s Go Kraken!!!
agree…never knew winning could be so divisive. Go Kraken.
Best team start in their five seasons against the toughest schedule* in the league so far.
Could there be a more clear indication that it needs to be torn down?
*Today’s Pro Rankings Guru SOS.
They didn’t win either game?
…and the Mammoth lost their last two in regulation.
Yeah there seem to be a whole bunch of new ragers in a season where we actually look pretty decent.
I don’t call making the playoffs winning. Competing for the Stanley Cup with a genuine contender is a completely different game to clawing yourself to a WC spot. Being best of the second tier (WC hopefuls) is a very mellow victory lap.
Honest question here… who was the last Cup champion that looked like Montreal?
It’s not binary (Stanley Cup or wild card). Only about 6 teams are really cup contenders every year. Being a continual playoff team is a victory for any franchise. Yet another comment of yours that’s just off base
Ok sure if the games are entertaining be a middling playoff contender whatever. That isn’t the what’s going on with the Kraken, the games are just flat out boring. I don’t want to spend the effort to go to a game only to watch the Kraken try to turn the game into a stalemate for both teams, they to win the F’n game. This is the real issue for me, I don’t want to be board by the hockey my home team plays.
I don’t know man… I’m pretty fucking entertained. I like watching my team accumulate points, and I’d honestly rather see that through tight defensive discipline rather a bunch of shinny hockey and layup drills…