The last three games have gone as poorly as possible, and I am in no mood to relive them. The Seattle Kraken playoff odds were long a week ago and got exponentially longer with each of the three losses this week. MoneyPuck gives the Kraken just a two-percent chance of qualifying for the playoffs, but I think even that is generous at this point.
I am sure there is some mathematical combination of wins and losses across the two wild card teams and three teams sitting out of the playoff bubble that gives Seattle a two-percent shot at making it through, but it is not going to happen.
Season expectations
At the beginning of the season, if you would have told me the Kraken would finish out of the playoff picture with around 85 points in the standings, I would have thought that sounded about right. Last year’s unsustainable shooting percentage was unlikely to carry over at the same rate this season, especially with limited additions and the notable departures from last season. But truth be told, this is not how we expected this campaign to unfold. The team started ice cold with just three wins in their first 10 games of the season, and except for a brief period in November, the group was clawing to get into the playoff picture all season.
Injuries seemed to plague this team from the start. Brandon Tanev was hurt in Game 1 of the season against Vegas. Andre Burakovsky went down in the sixth game of the season and missed 20 of the next 21 games. Sprinkle in injuries to Jordan Eberle, Jaden Schwartz, Vince Dunn, Justin Schultz, and even Philipp Grubauer, plus the illness that seemed to destroy the team for a stretch in January, and you start to feel this was not your typical hardship for a team.
Now, injuries are part of the game, and plenty of other teams overcome a similar quantity of injuries. But as much as we say this team’s strength is its depth, that depth only goes as far as about 20 players. Once you dip below those 20, things thin out quickly.
Where can we get some goal scoring?
It has been a theme all season, but the team has struggled to score. The Kraken are 28th in the league in scoring, averaging just 2.68 goals per game. I’ve heard a lot of people and pundits say the Kraken need a high-end goal scorer. Well, no kidding, but you don’t just go out and get a high-end goal scorer. They do not become available, and if they do, you are going to have to overpay and commit too many years to a contract.
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. Spending on the high-end scorers that reach free agency is risky business. Sam Reinhart will score more than 50 goals this season and could hit free agency this offseason. Do you think Ron Francis should pursue a 28-year-old Reinhart for $10-plus million dollars a year for the next seven years when the forward’s previous high-water mark was 33 goals a season? I don’t.
The best chance at getting that goal scorer is to draft and develop or somehow convince another team to do something idiotic at the trade deadline. This is probably why I am most excited about what Carson Rehkopf could bring in the future. I have talked about him all season and generally think he could have the most potential in the franchise right now to become that high-end goal scorer. There is a long way to go to prove that out, but I am certain he will be given an opportunity to make the team next season.
Rehkopf will be 19 years old at the beginning of 2023-24, and based on the CHL development agreement, if he does not make the NHL roster, he will need to return to the OHL next season.
One bright spot for the Kraken this season has been their defense. I don’t necessarily mean the defenders themselves, but the team defensively as a whole has performed well. A good chunk of the defensive performance attribution needs to go the goalie tandem of Joey Daccord and Grubauer. At .925, the Kraken have the second-highest save percentage of any team since Dec. 1, behind only the tandem of Connor Hellebuyck and Laurent Brossoit in Winnipeg.
I knew the goalies had been solid but did not expect them to be second in the league over that time span. It sure would be nice to see this trend continue next season.
Other Musings
It is probably stating the obvious, but one player to keep an eye on down this stretch is Ryker Evans. He has been in the lineup since the Vince Dunn injury and will probably get more opportunity even after Dunn comes back. Evans is ahead of schedule in his development. He is one of eight defensemen in the NHL from the 2021 NHL Entry Draft but still needs time to grow and get used to the speed of the top league in the world.
I do expect a few prospects from the Coachella Valley Firebirds to come up before this season is finished. Shane Wright and Ryan Winterton are the obvious players in question (though Wright is close to burning a year of his entry-level contract, so we don’t expect him until the last few games). I also wonder if Logan Morrison or Ville Ottavainen might get an opportunity down the stretch.
The Firebirds are currently second in points across the AHL and are 8-0-1-1 over their last 10 games.
Despite his struggles this season, I still think Andre Burakovsky could be the best pure goal scorer the Kraken have on the roster right now. But he obviously needs to stay healthy. Can he do that through next season?
The Kraken overtime game against Vegas was Seattle’s 18th overtime game of the season, a franchise record. They had 17 overtime games last season and 12 in 2021-22.
I never thought I would say this, but can we not have any Saturday home games next season? The Kraken are now 0-6-2 at Climate Pledge Arena on Saturdays. Lucky for us, the Kraken have only one more Saturday game this season.
Face-off goals against reared its ugly head last week. It happened once against Vegas when Pavel Dorofeyev scored one second after a draw and a second time when Roman Josi scored three seconds after a face-off for the Predators’ third goal on Saturday. On both goals, the issue was not losing the face-off; it was that someone should have challenged the shots.
2-1 VGK's.
Wonky goal there, after Karlsson broke his stick on the face-off. It popped up, and Dorofeyev whacked it before it hit the ice. pic.twitter.com/0T0onlU9ht
Those face-off goals were the seventh and eighth time the Kraken have been scored on within five seconds of a face-off. That is second in the league behind the Tampa Bay Lightning who have allowed 10 face-off goals.
Another ghost from seasons past that showed up this week was the response goal the Kraken allowed to Vegas. After Oliver Bjorkstrand put the Kraken up by two goals with 8:30 left in the third period, the Golden Knights scored less than a minute later to claw within one. Vegas really came to life after that goal, and the rest is sad, season-ending history.
That was the eighth response goal the Kraken have allowed this season, which is about middle of the pack across the league. I don’t have the numbers, but I remember it being much more common in Season 1.
The Kraken are one of four teams without a hat trick scored in a game this season. I would like to see one before the season is done. The only home hat trick in franchise history came against Buffalo in Season 1 when Eberle scored three goals against Buffalo. The Kraken play Buffalo Monday.
I like seeing players’ first career goals, and I love it when they are at home. Ryker Evans has played 21 NHL games and has yet to score a goal.
Player performances
Kole Lind (CVF/SEA) – The Coachella Valley Firebirds winger has a six-game point streak with nine points. It would be nice to see him play some NHL games to close out the season.
Eduard Sale (KIT/SEA) – The Kitchener Ranger has 12 points in his last 10 games with five goals over that span. Sale has underperformed this season in relation to his draft position, so it is great to see him starting to hit his stride.
Jani Nyman (ILV/SEA) – The second-rounder from the 2022 NHL Draft had only one game this week, but he was able to net three power-play goals and 11 shots in Ilves’ regular season finale in Liiga. They are the second seed in the playoffs with their first game of the playoffs on Thursday against KalPa.
Shane Wright is somewhat quietly having quite the rookie year in Coachella Valley.
What to watch for from here on out
After the loss to the Washington Capitals on Thursday night, I came to grips with the reality that these remaining Kraken games will not mean much in the playoff picture. My mind immediately started to wonder how I would watch the remaining games of the season. I am excited to watch and enjoy seeing Seattle win when it can, but with the playoff hopes out the window, I need some additional narratives to look out for.
The first thing I am excited about is to see the Kraken play the spoiler against Western Conference playoff bubble teams. They have four games remaining against these bubble teams, all road games. They play Vegas next week and will face Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Minnesota in April. The biggest game will be this coming Thursday where the Kraken will look to disrupt the Golden Knights’ playoff expectations. It won’t ease the pain we received from Vegas’ last-second heroics at Climate Pledge on Tuesday, but it might give us something to smile about for the evening.
Additionally, I am excited to see which prospects get the call-up and how they compete on the big stage. We saw Wright and Winterton log three games in November, but I have to imagine they are even more prepared now with several more months of AHL games under their belt. Are there any others that might get the call?
Programing note. There will be no Monday Musings next week. My weekend is packed, and with a Sunday-evening home game, it is unlikely I will be able to carve out the time needed to produce anything worth reading.
If you have any questions or want me to dig into certain topics for the following week, let me know in the comments, and I will do my best get back to you or add to my backlog of research.
The 3-2 Kraken loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday unfolded largely as expected. It marked the Kraken’s first game after the All-Star break and bye week, while the Flyers were playing their third game since their break. Although the shot count might tell a different story, Seattle hung in there and battled, but to no avail. With a challenging February schedule ahead, the Kraken will need to figure out how to steal some of these games if they are going to have any chance at playing meaningful games in March.
“What’s up with Matty?”
We received a question on the Sound Of Hockey Podcast mailbag last week asking, “What’s up with Matty?” In case you haven’t been paying attention, Matty Beniers has just six goals in his first 46 games played this season versus 17 goals in his first 46 games played last season. I did not have too much to offer to the conversation other than it seems like there have been stretches where he has been afraid to shoot.
That is a common media narrative that gets thrown around when players are going through slumps, though. Can we test my theory? Welcome to my Sunday project. (Coincidentally, Shayna Goldman and Dom Luszczyszyn of The Athletic also put out a “deep dive” article on Beniers Monday, but theirs focused on his defensive prowess. It’s an interesting article, so give that a read in addition to the below to get the full scope of the state of Matty’s game.)
First, I looked at Beniers’ shots per game and shot attempts per game. If my theory is accurate, the numbers would show a year-over-year decline.
Ok, it looks like there may be something to my theory. There is a decline, but the .18 decrease in shots per game is only a reduction of 10 percent compared to last season, whereas the drop of 11 goals per game from 17 at this point last season is a reduction of 65 percent. Are shots the best proxy for a player’s willingness to shoot? Probably not.
To increase the sample size, I looked at Matty’s shot attempts per game compared to last season. For those that might not know, shot attempts include shots on net, missed shots, and shots that get blocked.
Wait a second, that shows an increase in shooting season over season. This increase is a little misleading, though, because Beniers is averaging roughly 40 more seconds of ice time per game this season and therefore has more time to get shot attempts. If we account for extra time on ice, the shot attempt rate is roughly the same compared to last season. Still, my theory of Beniers being afraid to shoot at times suddenly isn’t standing up.
I went further down the rabbit hole, and over to NaturalStatTrick.com, looking into the rate of high-danger chances Matty has generated this season compared to last.
I then looked at his shot attempts on a map (minus blocked shots) to see if there was anything that stood out season over season.
There isn’t a huge difference season over season, other than a few more shots from farther out in 2022-23. Let’s see how his shot attempts look in man-advantage scenarios.
When you isolate the power-play shot attempts (minus blocked shots), you can see that Beniers has taken almost all his shots to the goalies right this season, as opposed to shooting almost exclusively from the goalie’s left last season. I don’t think this is a contributing factor in Matty’s lower production this season (it’s really just how he’s being deployed on the power play), but I did find it interesting so thought I would share.
After all that, I still did not reach a firm conclusion as to what is impacting Matty’s production this season. He is still very young at just 21 years old and has plenty of room to develop, so I am not overly concerned about his drop in production in this sophomore season.
Like many of his teammates, he started the season cold. For a while, he looked like he was returning to form before an injury took him out of the lineup for five games. He might also be feeling pressure with higher expectations being thrust upon him and knowing that he is up for a new contract this summer. It was one game, but he looked good on Saturday night, and although he did not get a point on the play, he contributed to the first goal in multiple ways.
Other Musings
The Kraken have 52 points in 51 games. There have been 25 teams since the 2005-06 season that had 52 points at the 51-game mark, and only four of those 25 made the playoffs.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’ve seen an unsuccessful offside coach’s challenge, so when Flyers coach John Tortorella contested Tomas Tatar’s goal on Saturday night, I mentally took the Kraken goal off the board. I was pleasantly surprised when Tortorella’s challenge failed. Scott Malone of ROOT Sports tweeted that it’s the first time an offside challenge has ever failed in a Kraken game.
Andre Burakovsky had five of his shot attempts blocked on Saturday night. He leads the current Kraken forwards with 41 percent of his shot attempts being blocked. I honestly don’t how to interpret that stat, but I was frustrated with his shot selection that night, so I looked it up.
When healthy, I think Burakovsky is an awesome player, but he looks nowhere close to what he showed at the beginning of last season. He has never had a season with a shooting percentage under 10 percent. His current shooting percentage this season is a paltry 3.6.
Chris Driedger posted his third shutout of the season for the Coachella Valley Firebirds on Saturday. It is unlikely, but I wonder if a team would consider trading for him as a potential second or third goalie for a playoff run.
I think Carson Rehkopf is becoming the Kraken’s top prospect and has potential to play in the NHL next season. He had three more goals this past weekend over two games and now has 40 on the season. Meanwhile, Jagger Firkus set a Moose Jaw Warriors record with points in 24 consecutive games.
David Goyette (SDB) – The Kraken prospect had three goals and six assists in his last three games for the Sudbury Wolves of the OHL. He shares the top spot for points this season in the OHL.
Andrei Loshko (ROU) – A Kraken fourth-round selection from the 2023 NHL Draft had a hat trick and two assists for the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies in a 11-0 win on Thursday night.
Logan Morrison (CVF) – The undrafted free agent signing by the Seattle Kraken had two goals in the Coachella Valley Firebirds’ only game this week. Morrison is having a solid first pro season with 10 goals and 21 assists in 45 games with the Firebirds.
Chart of the Week
After last year’s second-in-the-league 11.6 team shooting percentage, we expected a bit of a regression for the Kraken in 2023-24… but maybe not quite like this:
Goal of the Week
Barrett Hall was a Seattle Kraken sixth-round selection in the 2022 NHL Draft and currently plays for the St. Cloud State Huskies (Piper Shaw and Will Borgen’s alma matter).
The Kraken battled back to put themselves in a position to compete for a playoff spot, but they are headed in the opposite direction compared to some of the teams competing for the same wild card positions. Calgary, Minnesota, St. Louis, Nashville, and Los Angeles are a collective 8-0-0 since the All-Star break.
The next three games for the Kraken pose a challenge. They face the Devils Monday, Islanders Tuesday, and the Bruins on Thursday. The Devils and Islanders are fighting for the playoffs and will be coming in desperate, while the Bruins are one of the top teams in the league. Points will be hard to come by in these games, but if the Kraken take anything under three points, we can all but write off a shot at the playoffs. This might be the do-or-die week for the Kraken.
As always, thank you for reading, and if you have any thoughts or questions, please let us know in the comments section.
In a recent interview, Seattle Kraken content contributor and Emmy-winning journalist Alison Lukan asked Seattle Kraken general manager Ron Francis for his impressions about this year’s Coachella Valley Firebirds beyond what we could find on a stat sheet. Francis answered by pointing to a youth movement.
Probably the biggest thing I think is that we were one of the oldest teams in the league last year, maybe top three oldest teams in the league. This year, we’re one of the younger teams. (We have) a lot of young players. It’s a very good league and you start throwing 19-, 20-, 21-year-old kids into that league and it’s challenging.
So the fact that they’ve not only been able to tread water, but excel has been exciting for us to watch.
In October, we noted that last year’s Firebirds team was the fifth-oldest team in the AHL according to data tabulated by Elite Prospects. At the time we eagerly anticipated the beginning of a youth movement with several 2022 drafted players (plus Shane Wright and Logan Morrision) arriving in the AHL for the first time. But we noted that it would be two more years before the “prospect pipeline” was full, and the team still projected to be 10th oldest in the AHL according to Elite Prospects.
At the midway point in the season, and in light of Francis’s comments, we thought it would be a good time to check in on Seattle’s young players in Coachella Valley and how the team’s depth stacks up against the rest of the league.
First, we looked at the average age of the players on all AHL rosters. We used age and game data from Elite Prospects to calculate an average roster age weighted by games played. We found that the Firebirds are the 15th-youngest team in the AHL, almost precisely in the middle of the 32-team league. The newly “independent” Chicago Wolves were (by far) the oldest team, as might be expected since they are not drawing on a prospect pool in the same way as other teams.
So, it seems the Firebirds aren’t one of the league’s youngest teams. But average age of an AHL roster is probably less indicative of whether the team is cultivating young talent than the number of games played by true developmental-age prospects–players young enough to still be on the ascent in their expected production curves.
For the purpose of this exercise I used “under 22” as my cutoff. (If a player was 21 at any point during the 2023-24 AHL season, I counted them as “under 22.”) This is a somewhat arbitrary cutoff, but it aligns with aging curves, as well as Francis’s reference to “19-, 20-, 21-year-old kids.”
Here are the Firebirds that qualify:
The list and production seems solid, headlined by Seattle’s No. 1 prospect, Shane Wright, but let’s put it in context. First, let’s take a look at how the games played by these players stacks up around the AHL (based on data pulled mid-week last week).
Here, we start to see what Francis was getting at. While the Firebirds are in the middle of the pack (tied for 13th) in terms of total number of U22 players with at least one game played, Coachella Valley has the fifth-most total games played by U22 players. Now, let’s take a look at where the team’s U22 players rank in terms of point production in the AHL.
The Firebirds have the fourth-most points scored by U22 players in the AHL. Broken down further to show goal scoring specifically, we see that the Firebirds’ young players have been racking up points more than all but a few teams.
In an effort to account for team context, I also calculated the percentage of a team’s total scoring point production that had been scored by U22 players. I found that Coachella Valley’s U22 players accounted for the fifth-highest percentage of a team’s total scoring. Another way of looking at this is to compare scoring points by U22 players versus the scoring points by the remainder of an AHL team:
Here we see that Coachella Valley’s 22-and-older players are scoring in the bottom half of the league, whereas, again, the young players are among the league’s most productive.
I was curious if the Firebirds’ young players skewed toward the older end of the U22 age range but found that the opposite was true. Among U22 players, the Firebirds group was the sixth-youngest on average.
Finally, I wanted to know how these young players were performing beyond just their scoring points. Unfortunately, the AHL does not make game event data available to the public, so play-related analytics are very hard to come by. One crude measure, on-ice plus-minus, is calculable though. It has many flaws as a statistic, but it does tell us something (at least directionally) about how these players are faring when they’re on the ice. The results are certainly interesting.
Here, we see that the Firebirds U22 players are right there at the top of the league in cumulative plus-minus. In other words, the Firebirds aren’t struggling while these young players are on the ice; to the contrary. In fact, if we compare U22 cumulative plus-minus against the cumulative plus-minus of the remainder of the team, we find that the young players are on the ice for much of the Firebirds’ positive play.
There are certainly confounding factors, such as quality of competition and quality of teammates that I’d like to analyze but can’t, given the available data. In any event, these results are at least consistent with the conclusion that Seattle’s U22 players are not only scoring, they are delivering a two-way game at the AHL level.
While the results are encouraging, we would caution against interpreting these results as a type of “ranking” of team U22 prospect pools, though. Of course, this doesn’t capture players playing in junior or foreign leagues. And, most importantly, it doesn’t capture the best U22 players who have already established themselves at the NHL level. For example, if Shane Wright had proven he was ready for the NHL last year, he likely wouldn’t be in the AHL and accumulating statistics as a U22 player for the Firebirds.
(As an aside, we tested what the production of each AHL roster would be if we assumed the highest-producing U22 AHL player on each team were on an NHL roster instead, and the Firebirds still measured up favorably. The Firebirds would have the third-most U22 points in the league in this counterfactual scenario.)
Nevertheless, as Francis said, there is certainly a youth movement afoot in Palm Desert. And there is reason to be excited about what those players might do in a Kraken uniform in the years to come.
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.
The Seattle Kraken AHL affiliate, the Coachella Valley Firebirds, won the Western Conference and made it within one game of winning the Calder Cup in their inaugural season.
“We probably don’t talk enough about the American Hockey League team,” Seattle Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke told the assembled media during the May 31, 2023, press conference announcing the team’s agreement to extend the contract of general manager Ron Francis. Leiweke was not boasting, though. To the contrary, he mentioned the Firebirds in order to credit Francis for building a contender in the desert. “Others certainly helped [build the Firebirds], but Ron had the vision,” Leiweke remarked.
No doubt the Kraken front office deserves credit, but Leiweke and his co-owners are among the “others” that should be mentioned. The Kraken ownership group—which also owns and operates the Coachella Valley Firebirds—has invested significant resources in assembling a deep and talented group at the AHL level. Looking at the available contract data for the 2023-24 season, few teams project to spend more on their AHL players.
The Kraken aren’t spending this money for appearances; they don’t talk about it, and nobody is covering it. Instead, it seems Seattle has quietly spent more than most of their competitors for one reason only—to win.
To be certain, a competitive AHL roster is crucial to developing the fanbase in Coachella Valley. But the team has shown a willingness to spend beyond what is necessary just to compete and get fans in the door. The commitment to building a contender in Seattle and Palm Desert runs deep.
There are few limits on roster spending at the AHL level
AHL teams are made up of players on NHL contracts (paid by the NHL team) and AHL contracts (paid by the AHL team)—though, in the case of the Firebirds, the money is coming from the same place. Players signing NHL contracts are entitled to a minimum salary in the NHL based on their draft year, ranging from $62,500 if drafted in 2005 to $82,500 if drafted in 2023. Terms of AHL contracts are not made publicly available, but there is a flat minimum salary of $52,725 for the 2023-24 season.
Beyond that, there is no salary cap applicable to the AHL level, and there are no maximum salaries limiting AHL contracts (or the NHL contracts assigned there). There are not even roster size limits on AHL rosters until the playoffs. In fact, the only real AHL roster construction limitation is the so-called “veteran rule,” which requires that each AHL team dress a minimum of 12 players with fewer than 260 games of NHL experience.
NHL-level teams are limited by an upper restriction on the total number of active player contracts they can maintain at any given time (50) and an upper limit on spending ($83.5 million in 2023-24). NHL contracts can be either (a) “one-way” contracts, meaning the contract provides for a fixed, guaranteed salary regardless of whether the player is in the NHL or AHL, or (b) “two-way” contracts, meaning the contract has one salary for time spent at the NHL level and another salary for time spent at the AHL level.
Players assigned to the AHL do not count against the limit unless the contracts call for an AHL salary above a specified threshold ($1,150,000 in 2023-24). This is what it means to “bury” an NHL contract in the minor leagues. (For more on “buried” contracts, check out CapFriendly‘s explainer here.)
Taking these rules together, there is very little in the AHL or NHL collective bargaining agreements limiting teams from acquiring as much talent as they can afford—particularly when those contracts carry AHL salaries below the threshold to be “buried” in the AHL without consequence on the NHL salary cap.
The Kraken have built NHL depth through the AHL roster
When it comes to investing in the roster, few teams outpace the Seattle Kraken. In the inaugural season, Seattle’s ownership group declared its willingness to spend to the cap on the NHL team. In year two, Seattle’s owners spent every dime of the $82.5 million NHL roster upper limit. In fact, the Kraken effectively spent beyond the cap and will carry a bonus overage on Matty Beniers’s contract onto their 2023-24 books.
But nowhere is Seattle’s commitment to spending more evident than in its efforts to build depth at the AHL level. In the short term, while the team is still building its pipeline of drafted prospects, the Kraken have invested heavily in veteran AHL talent with the ability to play top-of-the-lineup roles. This has been critical to Coachella Valley’s on-ice success and developing the fanbase there. Even more importantly, it is smart insurance for the NHL team.
For example, defenseman Gustav Olofsson not only played top-four minutes for the Firebirds last season, he was first in line for a call up on the left side of the NHL blue line, until his injury prompted Seattle to trade for Jaycob Megna. Even with Megna on board, and prospect Ryker Evans developing, Seattle valued Olofsson’s role in the organization enough to re-sign him to a two-year, two-way contract this offseason that guarantees him at least $800,000 over those two years, even if he spends all of that time in Palm Desert. That is a hefty commitment to protect the NHL team. It’s not the type of move every team would make.
Gustav Oloffsson looks to pass the puck. (Photo/Brian Liesse)
The Joey Daccord signing is perhaps the clearest example of Seattle’s willingness to spend money on depth. With Philipp Grubauer ensconced as the starter in net, either Daccord, and his $1.2 million average annual value (AAV) contract, or Chris Driedger, and his $3.5 million AAV contract, project to be blocking AHL pucks this season. But that extra goaltender is just one injury away from being a critical piece for the NHL club.
The Kraken are near the top of the league in spending on projected AHL players
Quantifying where Seattle ranks among its NHL competitors in AHL spending for the 2023-24 season is complicated by the fact that AHL contract terms are not disclosed. It’s also difficult to project exact payrolls because AHL free agency—and, to a lesser extent, NHL free agency—remains ongoing. The Firebirds announced their first AHL contract signing for the 2023-24 season just yesterday.
To get a decent picture of where Seattle stacks up, I started by projecting NHL contracts likely to be assigned to the AHL level. I compiled all active NHL contracts in CapFriendly’s contract database and then backed out the contracts of all players contained in that site’s projected NHL depth charts. I then made minor adjustments to these depth charts to reflect likely roster composition (i.e, one or two “extra” forwards, one “extra” defenseman, and only two total goalies). I moved Daccord to the AHL level for the Kraken because CapFriendly had three goalies listed at the NHL level, which is highly unlikely assuming all three are healthy, and replaced him with Kole Lind.
This procedure left a list of players on NHL contracts projected to play outside the NHL. I used this list to look at which team had the most contracts with above-minimum salary guarantees for players playing the AHL. This includes players on “one-way” contracts—on which players earn at least the NHL minimum salary even if they are in the AHL—and those on “two-way” contracts whose contracts call for an AHL salary above the applicable minimum.
As anticipated, Seattle ranks highly. The Kraken are one of only eight NHL clubs with 10 or more players projected to play in the AHL on NHL contracts calling for greater than minimum AHL salaries. For Seattle, this includes three players on “one-way” contracts—Daccord, Cale Fleury, and Andrew Poturalski. The Pittsburgh Penguins lead the way with 13 players projected to play in the AHL on NHL contracts calling for salaries above the AHL minimum salary, including a staggering six one-way contracts for players currently projected to be in the AHL.
Digging a bit deeper, I then built an approximated AHL payroll associated with each NHL team. Of course, many players on NHL entry-level contracts will be loaned back to CHL clubs or clubs in other professional leagues. But those entry-level contracts carry minimum minor-league salaries, and if those players are not in the AHL, they will likely be replaced on the AHL team with roughly comparable minimum-NHL-contract or AHL-contract salaries.
To the extent the team did not have enough associated contracts to fill an AHL roster of approximately 23 players, I used a standard contract value ($80,000) between the minimum salary on AHL contracts ($52,725) and the minimum salary of the most recent draftees on NHL deals ($82,500) as “stand-in” values for the estimated cost of further additions. To the extent the team had more than 23 non-NHL contracts, I subtracted out the value of the most recent entry-level contracts associated with the team, projecting that those players would end up back in the CHL or elsewhere.
Acknowledging that this procedure yields nothing better than a rough estimate, this projection puts Seattle’s overall AHL payroll as the third-highest in the league. Individual players can skew these results. If, for example, Chris Driedger were sent through waivers instead of Joey Daccord in the upcoming season, the Firebirds’ total roster cost would be higher. On the other hand, if Daccord or Driedger were claimed off waivers, the roster cost would be lower. There is a lot of uncertainty in projecting an AHL payroll in July.
One thing is certain, though; Seattle has committed to spending on talent that will play mostly in Coachella Valley. The Seattle front office deserves credit for identifying a group of players that can compete with the very best in the AHL. But ownership deserves credit, too, for spending beyond what many other teams are willing to do. We probably don’t talk about that enough.
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.
With the offseason lull seemingly in full swing, we thought it would be a good time to break down the 2023-24 Seattle Kraken schedule to get a flavor for what lies ahead. Here we will dig into travel, back-to-back games, and give some interesting factoids to understand what is on the docket for the Kraken this coming season.
Travel distance
One bit of housekeeping before we get into the breakdown. For simplicity, I did not incorporate the travel involved for the NHL Global Series for teams traveling to Sweden in mid-November. This means that Detroit, Minnesota, Ottawa, and Toronto will have understated miles on any charts and references to their travel distance.
Based on the location of Seattle in North America, the Kraken will always have one of the heavier travel schedules across the league. This year is no different in that regard.
The Kraken have the ninth-most travel miles over the regular season with 45,434 miles expected. That is up 600 miles from last season. As you might be able to tell by looking at the teams in the top 10, the Pacific Division teams generally have more travel than other NHL teams.
Here is how it breaks down by division:
The Pacific Division teams are clustered with similar amounts of travel, and Seattle falls just below the average for its divisional rivals.
Number of road trips
One side benefit of the increased travel is that the Kraken have fewer road trips than most other teams. This is because when they hit the road, they tend to also visit more cities and games on a single trip to limit the number of longer-haul flights. Seattle is tied for the fewest road trips in the league.
Here is a look at how homestands and road trips break down by month for this coming season:
November looks a bit crazy, but there are two one-game road trips in there to Edmonton and Vancouver, so that skews things a bit.
Back-to-back games
Statistically speaking, teams playing the second game of a back-to-back scenario have a disadvantage, winning just 181 out of 410 games in 2022-23. The good news for the Kraken is they have the fewest back-to-backs in the league in 2023-24 with just seven of these occasions on their schedule.
The bad news is that the Kraken were 5-3-0 in the second game of back-to-back scenarios last season, so maybe they would have liked to play more of them? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I am declaring Nov. 13-20 as hockey week in the Puget Sound. There are three Kraken home games and two home games each for the Silvertips and Thunderbirds, including a home-and-home against each other. That’s seven games across those eight days. How many games can you (and we) attend?
If a full week of hockey is just too many days for you, there is also a packed hockey weekend in December. There are five games from Dec. 8-10 across the Kraken and local junior teams. If you wanted to, you could see the Tri-City Americans versus the Seattle Thunderbirds Friday night, the Tampa Bay Lightning against the Kraken on Saturday night, and the Portland Winterhawks against the Everett Silvertips on Sunday. That sounds like a heck of a weekend.
There are also seven days where the Everett Silvertips, Seattle Thunderbirds, and Seattle Kraken all play on the same day.
If you are looking to catch glimpses of any Seattle Kraken prospects as they roll through town, you should get ample opportunity to see Lukas Dragicevic (TC), Caden Price (KEL), and Kaden Hammell (EVT), but the two games I am circling on my calendar are when Jagger Firkus and the Moose Jaw Warriors come to town. The Firkus Circus visits the Silvertips on March 1 and the Thunderbirds on March 2.
Epic Seattle Kraken hockey fan road trip
When I saw the Kraken schedule get released, I already blocked off my calendar for March 21 and 22 to see the Kraken take on Vegas and Arizona respectively on the road. But then the AHL schedule came out…
I do not know if I will make all four games of that sequence, but I know I have to get down to Coachella Valley this season for a Firebirds game. That atmosphere looked awesome all year, and it looked extra rowdy in the playoffs.
If you have any questions or games that you are looking forward to, let us know in the comments below. Only 85 days until opening night.
When the Coachella Valley Firebirds lost to the Hershey Bears in Game 7 of the AHL Calder Cup Finals last week, it also marked the end of Shane Wright’s long, winding season.
Wright’s first season with the Kraken organization started off rocky. He made the NHL roster out of training camp but then played just 13 total hockey games over a 70-day stretch. Eight of those were in the NHL, where he averaged just 8:29 of ice time. Many armchair experts were calling for his return to his junior team, and after being loaned to Team Canada for the World Junior Championship, Wright would eventually be sent back to the Kingston Frontenacs of the OHL on Jan. 6. From the outside, it was looking in the early stages like the Kraken had botched Wright’s development out of the gate.
As 2022-23 went on, though, Wright ended up playing a lot more hockey across various levels, making up for the early season lapses. How did his season stack up against other players in his position over the past decade? We dug into the numbers to find out.
Looking at the breadth of the season
The season might have started off slowly for Wright, but he finished with 70 total games across the NHL, AHL, OHL, and World Juniors, thanks in large part to 23 AHL playoff games with the Firebirds. Is 70 games a lot for a player of Wright’s caliber and age? How does that compare to another player’s first season after being drafted?
Since 2013, 51 players have been drafted in the top 10 out of the CHL. When we isolate those 51 players, we can look at the number of games played across all leagues for those players.
Wright ended up just five games off the median number of games played (75) for this cohort, which is fine, especially considering how this season started for him.
Points per game
Games played is one thing, but how did Wright play in those games? Unfortunately, the data across non-NHL leagues is fairly limiting with just high-level stats for individual player performances, so the best we can do across all leagues is points per game. Wright scored .91 points per game.
Again, how does that stack up across his peer group? To compare Wright to his contemporaries on a points-per-game rate, we will need to filter the original 51 players to just forwards. That gives us 38 players to look at for a comparison.
On the surface, Wright’s output looks below average, ranking 23rd out of the 38 forwards in his peer group, but we should dig deeper on that. Remember that over half of Wright’s games played were in either the AHL (31 games) or NHL (8 games). Being that the NHL and AHL have stiffer competition compared with World Juniors and the OHL, Wright’s production was unsurprisingly lower when playing at pro levels. If we exclude the AHL and NHL games from the data, we get a bit of a different picture.
Wright ranks 13th out of the 32 remaining players when excluding AHL and NHL games. This still doesn’t give us the whole picture, though, because players skewed in different directions depending on their development paths. Connor McDavid, for example, didn’t play any games in the CHL in his first season after being drafted, yet he shows up with 0.9 points per game in games played outside the NHL and AHL. McDavid’s only non-NHL games after being selected No. 1 overall in 2015 came from the IIHF World Championship, where he was competing with NHL players.
Players in the AHL under 19 years old
It is very rare for a prospect under 19 years old to spend any significant time in the AHL. This is partly due to the NHL-CHL development agreement and partly because it’s rare that these players are physically ready for the AHL. The pandemic-impacted season of 2020-21 gave us an unusual influx of under-19-year-old players in the AHL. If we isolate these players that were under 19 to start the season, we get a small sample to help evaluate Shane’s performance.
On a points-per-game basis, Wright landed right in the middle at .469 during the 2022-23 season, which includes the playoffs. Of course, even this has some nuance. 75 percent of his games came in the playoffs where scoring is more difficult. Shane Wright averaged .750 points per game during the regular season but only .375 during the playoffs.
Next year will be huge
Simply evaluating games played and points per game is far from a complete analysis of Wright’s body of work this season, but despite how the season started, there are some encouraging signs. The No. 4 overall pick in the 2022 NHL Entry Draft was still able to play close to the average number of games this season with 32 of those coming in the AHL. This should be considered a bonus to his development year, being that he technically wasn’t even eligible to play at that level. It is still unclear if the AHL is an option for Wright next season, but he has proven that he can compete at that level, which might be the best place for him if he is allowed to go there in 2023-24.
