On Sept. 4, the last of the Seattle Kraken’s restricted free agents, Jacob Melanson, signed a contract with the team. Though additional signings could still come during Training Camp and into the regular season, of course, it seems Seattle’s summer business has now come to a close.
What better time for a quick trip to “Kraken Contract Corner“? Across two posts (because I’m too verbose), we’ll mainly investigate how the Kraken fared in its four most significant summer free-agent signings. In Part II, we’ll address the Curtis Douglas and Melanson signings and conclude with a few rapid-fire contract notes to file away as we approach the 2026-27 regular season.
Let’s dive in to Part I. Check back soon for Part II.
Bobby McMann
Six-year, $5.75 million AAV UFA contract, signed Jul. 1, 2026
The takeaway
The profile brings risk, but the contract is fairly consistent with the limited historical precedent for a late-blooming player like McMann. The average value is reasonable, particularly in this ascending-cap environment. The team likely views McMann as a necessary firewall against offensive failure—even if some in the fanbase could argue that is a bug, not a feature.
Details
Market analysis
There are a few different ways of looking at McMann’s market value.
The first method is to look at his last year before free agency in historical context. McMann scored 29 goals and added 17 assists in the 2025-26 season and hit free agency at age 30. He then received a six-year contract worth 5.53 percent of the Year 1 salary cap from Seattle. (Note that we’ll use cap percentage rather than raw dollar figures in our analysis of contracts to account for the shifting salary cap context.)
Over the last four years, unrestricted free-agent forwards between ages 28 and 32 who scored between 24 and 34 goals and had between 36 and 56 total points in their free-agency season secured contracts that averaged 4.4 years in length and 6.47 percent of the Year 1 cap. (The average age of these players was close to McMann’s current age.) This makes the trade-off simple: McMann got more term (and financial security) in exchange for below-average value—particularly given the fact that it is now apparent the cap will be escalating for the foreseeable future.
Yet, that pool of players differed from McMann starkly in their overall track record. McMann is a notorious late bloomer. He has played 218 NHL games, posting 64 goals and 41 assists. The most “similar” player in this first comparable pool is Pius Suter, who had played 364 games, scored 82 goals, and added 80 assists. The “average” player in this group almost triples McMann’s marks (602 NHL games, 164 goals, 188 assists).
The shorter track record suggests there could be greater risk and variability in McMann’s potential outcomes than would be typical of the pool generally. If we were to look at comparables for similarly aged free-agent forwards based only on their career numbers as they entered unrestricted free agency, we end up with a wildly different result. Among forwards aged 28-32 with career marks at or below 340 games, 100 goals, and 100 assists, McMann’s comparables averaged just 1.9 years of term and 1.57 percent of the Year 1 cap.
How about a middle-ground approach that searches for players with lesser career records, but similarly strong free-agency years? I searched again using the same career thresholds but adding in a requirement of 20-plus goals in the free-agency year. Here, we narrowed our list to only three recent examples.
- Kiefer Sherwood signed with the Sharks this offseason for five years, 5.53 percent of the cap, with 66 goals and 68 assists in 337 career games.
- Ilya Mikheyev signed with the Canucks in 2022 for four years, 5.76 percent of the cap, despite a career track record of only 146 games played, 36 goals, and 36 assists.
- Michael Bunting signed with the Carolina Hurricanes in 2023 for three years and 5.39 percent of the cap, with 57 goals and 69 assists in 187 career games.
With an average of 5.56 percent of the cap and four years of term, teams got a modest AAV discount and very little term discount on these short-track-record players compared with our first sample.
How does McMann stack up? Sherwood’s contract is very similar—one year shorter, but Sherwood is a year older than McMann. Arguably, McMann had a better free-agent season (29 goals) than both Mikheyev (21) and Bunting (23), but Mikheyev and Bunting were both 28 at signing, two full years younger than McMann.
Assuming for the sake of argument these context factors more or less cancel out, McMann received a Year 1 cap percentage right in line with this micro-market of late-blooming scorers, but also received more term. This is likely where the negotiation focused and was the area where the Kraken gave ground to secure the deal.
How have Bunting and Mikheyev fared since signing their deals? Bunting has played for an eye-popping four teams during the original three years of his free-agent deal, though he continued to chip in offensively, averaging 17.3 goals per season. Mikheyev has also moved teams, spending two years in Vancouver and two in Chicago during his contract. He averaged 15.5 goals per season.
Context analysis
McMann is an auxiliary scoring forward on the far side of his 30th birthday. One could reasonably ask whether a building team should be signing this type of player. At the same time, one must ponder whether the Kraken view themselves as a building team or a borderline playoff club, for which marginal scoring is highly significant.
Assuming the goal is to deploy the strongest NHL team you can and compete for the playoffs, McMann projects to provide strong goal-scoring “value” relative to dollars spent in the short term—though the Bunting and Mikheyev case studies suggest that our expectations may overshoot the likely reality.
The term is lengthy by any metric we evaluated above. That said, the contract’s cap percentage will continue to tumble over time and should be low enough that the deal is relatively easily tolerated or moved in years 4-6, when McMann has only a 10-team no-trade list.
Grade: B
It’s hard to give this move a “good” or “bad” mark given the complexity of the situation. The Kraken operated within the general market confines, and your opinion on the deal likely turns on the “vision” question surrounding the signing.
Mackie Samoskevich
Three-year, $3.85 million AAV RFA contract, signed Jul. 1, 2026
The takeaway
The contract offers short-term value for an ascending restricted free agent. It also sets up one more negotiation for a big-money contract extension before Samoskevich hits unrestricted free agency.
Details
Market analysis
Before signing, Samoskevich was a 23-year-old restricted free agent with arbitration rights. Last season with Florida, Samoskevich had 12 goals and 20 assists. Using a sample of 22-to-25-year-old restricted free agents with between eight and 16 goals and 12 and 28 assists in their pre-contract seasons, we arrived at a pool of 24 comparable player contracts over the last four seasons. The pool averaged 3.25 years in term and 3.28 percent of the Year 1 cap. Samoskevich’s contract was three years and 3.7 percent of the Year 1 cap.
Though the value came in just slightly “above market,” it strikes me as fair given (1) the clear, ascending cap environment relevant to years 2 and 3, and (2) the fact that the player’s true production level was potentially role-suppressed on a Stanley Cup-caliber team.
Context analysis
Samoskevich is a pre-prime, ascending player on a very modest contract. He fits on any team, and, as I have argued, is a terrific fit for this year’s Kraken team whether it makes a playoff run or not. If he stays healthy, there is little doubt he will provide surplus value over the term of the deal. The question is how much.
The public second-guessing of the Samoskevich deal came with the term. Should the Kraken have tried to lock Samoskevich into a longer-term deal now? With the benefit of hindsight, one can also look at ensuing long-term contracts for barely established players like Noah Ostlund, Braden Bowman, and Fraser Minton and wonder if Seattle miscalculated.
That said, at the time Seattle signed Samoskevich, the vast majority of his comparables signed “bridge” contracts in the two-to-four-year range just like Samoskevich did. The scoring production of players in this range just leaves too much profile uncertainty for the player and team to see eye-to-eye on long-term value.
Only four of his comparables—Anton Frondell (six years), Logan Stankoven (eight years), Frank Nazar (seven years), and Matt Boldy (seven years)—had signed true long-term deals. It would be wise to hesitate in comparing Samoskevich to any of these players, aside from perhaps Nazar. At the time, though, it would have been easy enough to consider the Nazar deal an outlier.
Samoskevich will still be a restricted free agent when the contract ends, which affords the team the opportunity to negotiate a long-term deal beginning in July, 2028.
Grade: B+
The deal falls within the range of expectation, but as an RFA deal, it should return significant value for the team. More players and contracts like this would move the needle for the Kraken.
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What do you think about these deals? Any other questions for your Kraken contracts corner correspondent? Let us know in the comments below or on X/Twitter or BlueSky at Sound_Hockey or Deepseahockey.
Curtis Isacke
Curtis is a Sound Of Hockey contributor and member of the Kraken press corps. Curtis is an attorney by day, and he has read the NHL collective bargaining agreement and bylaws so you don’t have to. He can be found analyzing the Kraken, NHL Draft, and other hockey topics on Twitter and Bluesky @deepseahockey.
I think one shortcoming of a lot of these analyses is not adjusting to the cap world that is going to exist. I don’t necessarily disagree with the grades, but in short order 5.5 mil is going to be bottom 6 vet money that no one is going to bat an eye out. The buyout costs also become a lot less concerning as the cup grows.
The McMann deal also provided a very public vote of confidence in this team. Given that he would have been a big name in this year’s admittedly-weak FA class, the fact that he chose to stay in town on a long-term deal before even hitting free agency makes this an impressive retention on the Kraken’s part. Definitely some risk involved with the term, but as Koist notes above the AAV (and potential buyout if necessary) will be chump change in a few years.
I am all in on Mackie Samoskevich and I think he will be a big boost to an offense that desperately needs one.
I don’t understand the value of the analysis. Would you rather have Sherwood, Mikheyev or Bunting than Bobby McMann? I wouldn’t, and if you wouldn’t the comparisons are moot, especially given Seattle’s current cap position. The REAL question to me is what is this team’s timeline, and who are the pieces that make this team the future Carolina Hurricanes? If it’s Matty and Mackie at 28, it’s Bobby McCann at 34, Berkly Catton at 24, Jake O’Brien at 23, Chase Reid at 22 and whatever top 5 pick we get in the 2027 draft, who will be 21-22. Are teams winning Cups with so many players under 25? Unfortunately no. That means you are pushing things out to a 30-32 year old Matty Beniers. 27-28 year old Berkly Catton. McMann will likely be gone.
Bobby McCann = Bobby McMann. It doesn’t even matter. He’s here because we need 23 players on the roster.
In last year’s SCF, there was a grand total of three players 24 or under, and they were all on the Canes. Jarvis, Stankoven and Blake. That’s probably an historically high number. There were twenty players over 30. Eight players were 33+. That’s context.
I’m really curious about Samoskevich, he was bottom of the lineup on a bad team last season. It is interesting that there is so much hype surrounding him in Seattle. I’m curious if he for some reason just wasn’t given the chance or if that’s just what he is. We definitely don’t need another bottom six player our prospect pool is full of them, if he finds the next level we look good. Could be a great signing or just whatever what’s next….
McMann is on the wrong side of 30 and not really the type of player we should be signing long term, that being said he most likely will be a tradable asset if we decide to move on from him at the cap hit he has. I’m not confident that he can keep up the scoring we saw from him last season as his shooting percentage was way above his career average….. sometimes those seasons happen for players and the puck just goes in. If he can come close then it’s a good signing, he should be a third line player on a mid level team.
The question of whether these are good contracts or not hinges almost entirely on how the two players perform while under them, but it is fair to question now whether or not they are good bets. I would say that to make that determination we need to consider potential upside, potential downside, and risk.
Now, risk would appear to be negligible since the Jason Robertson deal fell through. The Kraken are so far under the cap that any risk posed by over-sized contracts in the near future are negligible. The Chandler Stephenson contract, for example, does not hurt in the slightest when the team is fifteen million under the cap. The team could wildly overpay to get McCann, Dunn, and Grubauer back in the short-term and not feel one iota of pain over it. The only risk appears at the back end of the McMann contract, and that is not insignificant.
What are the respective upsides of Bobby McMann and Mackie Samoskevich? For McMann, the upside is the phenominal performance he put on at the end of last season played out over several years, so the best scoring forward on the team for the forseeable future at a little under six-mil AAV. That is what the team got with the current Jared McCann contract, and it has made a world of difference. The Kraken would have been absolutely godawful the past few years without that deal and that player. For Samoskevich, the upside is beating out The Captain for the spot on Matty Beniers’ right side and then being this year’s beneficiary of what I am calling “The Beniers Effect” wherein an underperforming or underutilized forward gets moved onto Matty’s line and then proceeds to light lamps like a man possessed. It happened to McCann, McMann, Jaden Schwartz, Andre Burakovsky, and twice now to Jordan Eberle. Of course, even this upside is tempered by the fact that, as Curtis pointed out, Samoskevich would then be in line for an enormous payday in only a few years.
The potential downside for McMann is the afore-mentioned Burakovsky who balled out for half a season but then got hurt and was never the same player again. It doesn’t get any worse than that for all parties, and for a player north of thirty it is a threat far greater than negligible. At that term, such an event would be agongizing for the team. The downside for Samoskevich is very, very small. The worst that can happen is that he does not pan out, Eberle never relinquishes the top-line job, and someone like Ryan Winterton leap-frogs Samoskevich on the depth chart. That is not much of a loss from the Kraken perspective given the cap situation and the fact that it would mean that another youngster with promise has taken the position. The Samoskevich contract is a can’t-lose unless he turns out to be awesome and had just been underutilized all along like Vince Dunn was in St. Louis. Then Botterill will be kicking himself for not getting a couple more years added to the deal.
TL;DR: the McMann contract is a Jay Buhner swing for the fences, and the Samoskevich contract is an Edgar Martinez line drive up the third-base line with the bases loaded.