Last week I posted a deep dive on the Seattle Kraken’s goal scoring over the 2024–25 season. Several of you asked to see the other side of the equation, so this week I’m doing another deep dive, this time into goals against. The publicly available data and tools are limited, so this breakdown will be a bit basic and theoretically incomplete, bur it gives us an idea of how the Kraken have trended.
Establishing a baseline
If there’s a broad area you can point to as the reason for the disappointing 2024–25 season, it’s the goals against. Without any high-end talent, the Kraken have had to lean heavily on team defense to be competitive. But this past season saw the Kraken allow the most goals per game since their inaugural year.
They finished 22nd in the league, giving up 3.20 goals per game. Compared to last year’s 2.83, that’s an increase of +0.37 goals per game.
Goals against by situation
Just like we approached Kraken goals for last week, let’s break down how teams scored against the Kraken.
Maybe a little surprising: the Kraken’s goals against while shorthanded were relatively low, just 0.54 per game. Here’s how the goals against by scenario compares across the league in 2024–25.
Clearly, the Kraken need to improve their defense on their 5-on-5 play which is a large percentage of their even-strength time on ice.
Penalty kill performance
From a goals-against-on-the-penalty-kill perspective, the Kraken look… alright. They allowed the 10th-fewest total power-play goals against, despite ranking 27th in the league on penalty kill percentage. It turns out that encouraging total is propped up by the fact Seattle was one of the most disciplined teams in the league.
Seattle was fifth in the NHL for fewest times shorthanded. So while the raw total looks fine, the percentage was below average, and we’ve already talked about how offseason additions should help improve that. Here’s how the Kraken’s PK volume and efficiency stack up league-wide.
Shots against volume
Now let’s look at the Kraken’s shots against per game.
Seattle ranked 17th in the league in shots against, which is again a little surprising, given their 27th-place finish in the standings. But as we all know, not all shots are created equal. So let’s dig into the quality of shots against: high, medium, and low danger.
Like the overall shot volume, the Kraken were right around the league average in high- and medium-danger shots allowed. That’s not bad at all, especially considering several 2025 playoff teams allowed more dangerous chances per game. The Kraken did allow more low-danger shots than most, but that’s not terribly concerning.
Team goaltending
Of course, the other critical element of team defense is goaltending. So let’s check in on team save percentage, broken out by strength.
As you might expect, Seattle’s team save percentage was on the low side, but still (somehow) above two playoff teams: Montreal and Carolina. Still, there’s a lot of room for improvement.
Here’s a look at the Kraken’s save percentages by shot danger level, per NaturalStatTrick.com:
Interestingly, the Kraken’s save percentage got worse relative to the rest of the league as the shots got easier. Spot-checking other teams reveals a lack of consistency. For example, Anaheim was 22nd in high-danger save percentage, fourth in medium-danger, and first in low-danger save percentage.
We can theorize that there’s something systemic at play here, maybe Anaheim’s defensive structure prevents cross-ice passes in medium- and low-danger areas but leaves low-danger shooters more open for cross-seam chances. The inverse might be true for the Kraken’s 2024-25 system implemented by Dan Bylsma.
Individual goalie save percentage
We all know Philipp Grubauer struggled this past season, and the numbers back that up. But let’s put it in context by looking at save percentages for all goalies who played 25+ games.
Yeah… no sugarcoating that one.
Just for good measure, let’s look at Grubauer’s save percentage by shot quality.
It’s a pretty poor performance across the board.
Outlook for 2025-26
Aside from the obvious need for improvement from Grubauer, the Kraken are actually middle of the pack in a lot of defensive categories. As mentioned before, the additions of Ryan Lindgren and Fredrick Gaudreau should help the penalty kill.
There’s also hope that Lane Lambert can implement systems that reduce both the volume and quality of shots the Kraken face, which, in theory, should cut down on goals against.
Final thoughts
All in all, the Kraken’s goals against story in 2024–25 is a mixed bag. Some areas, like overall shot volume and penalty kill goals allowed, aren’t as dire as the standings might suggest, while other areas, like 5-on-5 goals allowed and backup goaltending, clearly have room for improvement. With some key roster tweaks already in place and a new coaching staff behind the bench, there’s at least some reason for cautious optimism heading into 2025–26 that things will get better. The defense doesn’t need to become elite overnight, but if the Kraken can bring the goals against down even a little, they’ll give themselves a much better shot at turning things around.
I’ve been eager to dive into the Seattle Kraken scoring this season, and the 4 Nations Face-Off break provided the perfect opportunity to analyze some key metrics without the data changing every few days. In this exploration, I’ll examine a couple areas: how the Kraken rank across the NHL in scoring metrics and the factors that contribute to scoring (e.g., shots). Additionally, I’ll compare the 2024-25 Seattle Kraken to prior seasons.
Average goals scored
It’s no secret that the Kraken struggled to find the back of the net last season, ranking 29th in the league in goals for per game with just 2.61. This year, they’ve shown significant improvement, ranking 15th in the league and averaging .34 more goals per game.
There’s an important caveat: over the final month of last season, after Vince Dunn got hurt, Alex Wennberg got traded, and the Kraken dropped out of the playoff race, their scoring declined significantly, bringing their 2023-24 goals for average down for the full campaign. So, the increase in scoring this season is a little inflated. Even so, they’re currently averaging more goals per game than five teams that hold playoff spots.
Goal scoring scenarios
To further analyze the Kraken’s goal scoring, let’s examine the goal scoring scenarios over the last four seasons.
We can see improvements in even-strength scoring, particularly in 5-on-5 goals, but the numbers still fall short of the 2022-23 season, when the Kraken qualified for the playoffs as a wild-card team. One area where the team could make significant strides is in contributions from the power play.
Power-play scoring
A prime opportunity for improvement lies in the power play. The Kraken currently rank 25th in power-play conversion, with a 18.1 percent success rate. Historically, the Kraken have struggled on the power play, but this season’s 18.1 percent conversion rate is the lowest since the inaugural season’s 14.5 percent.
We’ll discuss him further shortly, but the loss of Jordan Eberle just 17 games into the season undoubtedly hindered the power play. At the time of his injury, Eberle was playing 54 percent of the Kraken’s power-play minutes.
Shot volume and quality
Another key aspect to consider when evaluating the Kraken’s goals scored per game is shot volume and quality. The team ranks 27th in shots per game, averaging 26.84 shots per contest.
To better understand the team’s shot quality, let’s break down 5-on-5 shots by high, medium, and low danger for each season.
The struggles with scoring last season were largely attributed to a lack of shots in high-danger areas, and unfortunately, that trend appears to have continued this season, with high-danger shots per game actually decreasing from last year’s numbers. Furthermore, the Kraken’s 5-on-5 medium-danger shots per game have also declined compared to last season.
Players’ scoring output
While a more in-depth analysis of individual goal scoring is needed, a preliminary look reveals which players are scoring more or less frequently over the last three seasons, as well as how their current output compares to their three-year averages.
At first glance, it’s clear that Vince Dunn, Jaden Schwartz, and Eeli Tolvanen are experiencing above-average goal production. Eberle was on pace for his best goal-scoring season ever before suffering an injury just a month into the season. Conversely, Andre Burakovsky and Jared McCann are below their three-year averages. It’s important to note that Shane Wright’s decline is likely attributed to his small sample size of just eight games in the 2023-24 season.
Further analysis is necessary, as factors like ice time and power-play time can significantly impact these numbers.
Assessment
Overall, the Kraken have increased their goal production from last season, but there’s still room for improvement. The two most significant areas for growth are power-play production and generating more high-danger shots. While these improvements are easier said than done, the loss of Eberle since mid-November and Dunn’s injury that kept him out of the lineup for 20 games has undoubtedly hurt, particularly given their contributions on the power play. Adding another goal scorer during the offseason would be ideal, but it’s not a necessity, considering several playoff-bound teams are scoring fewer goals than the Kraken this season.
This brief analysis of scoring metrics provides a general direction, but there’s certainly an opportunity to delve deeper into advanced analytics for a more comprehensive understanding.
With all the downtime in the offseason, I have decided to dig into NHL play-by-play data. One question that has been bouncing around my head is how the “long change” affects scoring rates. In the NHL, the long change is in effect during the second period, when teams are defending the goal on the far side of the ice, and players have to skate farther to get to the bench from the defensive zone.
It is only a difference of about 50 feet compared to changing lines in the first and third periods, but this makes it harder for teams to swap out lines on the fly. Players can get stuck on the ice, and shifts can turn into marathons, tiring out defenders. I’ve been curious if it changes scoring rates, though, so let’s take a closer look at how teams score during the first, second, and third periods to see if the long change has an impact.
Data is from all the regular-season games from the 2023-24 NHL season. In total, 8268 goals were scored and analyzed. Let’s dive in!!
Goals scored
Breaking the goals down by period shows that the most goals are scored in the third period. Since the long change is only in effect during the second period, you would think that in the first and third periods, the scoring would be similar.
The third period has its own special circumstance, though, as this is the time for teams that are losing to make a last-ditch effort to try and get the equalizer. This causes a surge in empty-net goals, which throws the numbers off a bit. There were 446 empty-net goals in the third period, which actually means 2349 goals were scored in the third period with a goaltender in the net. Surprisingly, 2349 goals is the exact number of goals scored in the first period as well. For this exercise, empty net, overtime, and shootout goals will be excluded.
This shows there is quite a boost in scoring during the second period, to the tune of a 17.2 percent increase or 403 goals. So this answers the base question, scoring rates are increased by a pretty significant percentage when the long change is in effect.
Additional data
Let’s take a look at the data one click down and consider how the goals are scored and if there are any trends. With periods one and three both having 2349 goals scored.
Playing situation
Depending on the point of the game, teams can be at even strength, on a manpower advantage, have their goalie pulled, or be shorthanded.
The main contributor for the second-period increase in goal scoring (307) is even strength, which is where the majority of all NHL goals are scored. Power-play goals were also up by 149 in the second period, which is the biggest category percentage jump at 30.9 percent. Due to more opportunities for the goaltender to be pulled in the third period, this causes a decrease in other goals. “Other” goals includes shorthanded, penalty shot, and goaltender-pulled goals.
Overall, you see 307 additional goals at even strength, 149 additional goals on the power play, and a decrease of 53 goals in other situations. That works out to an increase of 403 goals during the long change period.
Penalties
With power-play goals seeing the biggest category jump, let’s look at the number of penalties called.
Period two saw a 21.4 percent jump in the number of penalties called. What is interesting here is that is less than the percentage jump in the number of power-play goals scored (30.9 percent). This indicates there is a higher conversion rate of power plays during the second period.
Shot data
With more goals being scored, let’s look at the type of shots that are leading to goals. The shot data has been sorted into six buckets, consisting of wrist shot, snap shot, tip-in, slap shot, backhand, and other.
The wrist shot is by far the preferred shot selection of the NHL and accounts for 47.5 percent of all NHL goals scored. The wrist shot also saw a bump of 21.8 percent in the second period compared with the first and third periods, good for 240 goals. The tip-in goal was 22.2 percent more frequent in the second period, accounting for 70 goals.
Next, looking at the number of shot attempts, I expected to see a similar trend of an increase to go along with the added goals.
This is not the case, though, and shot attempts remain pretty flat between all periods. There is a small uptick of 3.7 percent, but that is a far cry from a 17.2 percent increase in goals. Perhaps this somewhat points to the increase in goals coming in situations where the goaltender has a vested interest in holding onto the puck to stop play so his teammates can get a line change.
Assist data
When a player scores a goal, it can be unassisted, have one assist, or two assists.
Unassisted goals are a singular effort to get the goal.
One-assist goals require one pass before the goal. Situations like 2-on-1’s, one-timers, and rebound goals result in one-assist goals.
Two-assist goals require two passes before the goal. This is the most common scoring scenario and accounts for 77.8 percent of all NHL goals. A team controlling the puck in the offensive zone can result in two-assist goals.
With the long change, defensive teams can get stuck out on the ice, if the offensive team is controlling the puck in its zone. The assist data supports this, as the number of two-assist goals increased by 332 goals and 18.2 percent. One-assist goals increased by 16.6 percent and unassisted goals by 4.4 percent. This indicates teams are getting setup in the zone and connecting on more passes leading to an increase in two-assist goals.
Kraken data
Unfortunately, the Seattle Kraken were not good at scoring second-period goals. They are one of only two teams that does not realize this boost in offense. The other team is the Edmonton Oilers, but since they were fourth in the league in scoring overall, this fault gets swept under the rug. All 30 other teams score more goals in the second period than they do in the first period.
Team
Period 1 Goals
Period 2 Goals
Period 3 Goals
Seattle Kraken
72
65
74 (65 wo/ empty net goals)
The Seattle Kraken were the fourth-worst team in the NHL in goals scored with 214 goals on the season. Most teams have figured out how to capitalize on the long change and trap defending teams in their zone. As goal scoring was the Kraken’s main issue, improving on the long-change scoring could be a target for improvement in the upcoming season.
Looking back to the 2022-23 season, the Kraken had success scording during the second period, improving their offensive production by 24.4 percent in that period, to 107 goals.
Team 2022-23
Period 1 Goals
Period 2 Goals
Period 3 Goals
Seattle Kraken
86
107
87 (72 wo/ empty net goals)
Wrap up
I had alway heard the long change was difficult on defending teams, but had yet to see any numbers to back it up. There is definitely a surge in scoring during the second period. First-year Kraken coach Dan Bylsma has some work cut out to maximize on the scoring opportunities on the long change.
One note, this data was looking at regulation data, but note that overtime follows the same pattern. For first overtime in the playoffs, the teams have to deal with the long change in addition to already playing three periods of hockey.
If you made it through this article, thank you for reading; you might just like numbers as much as I do. If you have any thoughts, suggestions, or other takes, feel free to make a comment below. You can follow me on the X at @blaizg.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a good old-fashioned Data Dump, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been actively scouring the publicly available data for insights. I spent the better part of my weekend rebuilding my data pipelines so that I could condense things into a few charts to share what I found. This will be all about the Stanley Cup Playoffs to date.
Stanley Cup Playoff series length
This year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs seemed to start out really slowly, with several teams winning their first two games of the series, and we all started to worry that we would see a lot of sweeps. As luck would have it, several teams turned it around to give us some competitive series and a couple of Game 7’s. That said, only three of the eight series went longer than five games, thus bringing down the average games per series.
By the looks of the chart, maybe we were just spoiled the two prior years, which had longer series than usual in Round 1.
I do have some bad news, though. The second round of the last three Stanley Cup Playoffs saw lower average series lengths than the first round.
I would not put too much stock in this since 2019 and 2020 had an average series length of six or more games in the second round.
Stanley Cup Playoff scoring
After a few low-scoring games over the weekend, I wanted to examine how goal scoring in Round 1 compared to the regular season and previous season’s playoffs.
After a string of regular seasons in which the average goal scoring exceeded six goals per game, these playoffs have dipped to under six goals per game for the first time since the 2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs. It’s important to note that playoff averages only include goals scored by the top 16 teams in the league, as half the teams don’t qualify.
Playoff teams have been scoring less in the postseason so far than they did in the regular season.
Another aspect of playoff goal scoring I like to examine is the percentage of goals scored on the power play. I’ve heard a lot about the Edmonton Oilers’ power play, so I was a little surprised to see the Rangers at the top of the list for the highest percentage of goals scored via power play.
Blocked shots
We often hear about the commitment of players to blocking shots in the playoffs. The eye test suggests that shot blocking goes up in the postseason, but is this common narrative true?
So yes, blocked shots do historically go up in the playoffs, but only marginally. I would have expected a higher increase in the playoffs.
Here is a look at a team-by-team breakdown of blocked shots in the playoffs compared to the regular season.
Hitting in the Stanley Cup Playoffs
Another aspect of the game that changes is the number of hits in playoff games. This change can be most noticeable in Game 1 of a series, when teams come out with a lot of adrenaline and look to “set the tone” physically. Here’s a look at the average hits per game per team.
Let’s not forget that out-hitting does not necessarily translate to winning. We examined this during the regular season in the last Monday Musings chart of the week. Here are the winning percentages when you are out-hit (negative differential) versus out-hitting (positive differential) your opponent.
In my definition, a negative differential occurs when the opponent has four or more hits than your team, whereas a positive differential means your team has four or more hits than the opponent.
More playoff Data Dumps to come
I plan to do a couple more Data Dumps throughout the playoffs. The next area I am going to investigate is the roster construction, but if there is anything else you want me to look into, let me know in the comments, and I will see what I can do. In the meantime, enjoy the playoffs.
It is no secret that an area where the Seattle Kraken have an opportunity to improve this season is their power play. That’s not to say it was horrible all last season – Seattle ranked 21st in the league – but isolating just playoff teams, they ranked 14th out of the 16 teams that qualified for the postseason. We recently posted a breakdown on how the team looks to improve the power play by starting off with a different look this season.
To get a better understanding of how the power play performed last season, I spent some time digging into the numbers and wanted to share my findings.
Pre-Burakovsky/Post-Burakovsky
There is a commonly cited theory that the Seattle Kraken power play took a huge hit when Andre Burakovsky went down with a season-ending groin injury in 2022-23. Let’s look at the numbers.
With a 0.9 percent drop in production after the injury, that theory might have merit. The fact of the matter, though, is that power play percentages drop later in the season.
At the time of the injury, Burakovsky led the team in power-play points with 14 and was second among forwards with 126:37 of power-play ice-time. Losing a weapon like Burakovsky was significant, but I do not think the team will improve drastically this season just because Burakovsky is back. The Kraken do need to make other tweaks, as Darren laid out in his article last week.
Power-play possession
There were times last season where it felt the power play was spending a disproportionate amount of time on the power play outside of the offensive zone. Some of this sentiment was driven by low face-off percentages with the manpower advantage. A common scenario was that the Kraken would start a power play with an offensive-zone face-off. They would lose the draw and possession, and the opposing team would clear the puck out of the zone, killing 10 to 15 seconds of the Kraken power play.
Although not a perfect proxy for possession, the Kraken were second to last in power-play face-off percentage last season.
The other area where the Kraken appeared to struggle without Burakovsky was offensive-zone entries. I am unaware of publicly available (a.k.a. “free”) data on zone entries, but one thing we can evaluate is the rate of shot attempts on a power play. Again, it’s not perfect for analyzing offensive-zone possession time, but it is a very good proxy, since the more often you have the puck in the offensive zone, the more likely you will have a shot attempt.
To show my work, I counted all the shot attempts (shots, blocked shots, missed shots) on a power play then divided by a team’s total power play to get shot attempts per power-play second. To make the number more relatable, I multiplied the shot attempts per power play second by 120 seconds. That gets us a shot attempt rate per two minutes, the usual length of a power play.
Using the shot attempts rate by power play time, we can see that the Kraken did have an issue with possession on the power play last season. The Kraken ranked 25th and last amongst playoff teams in generating shots per two minutes of power play time. We do not know the root cause of this issue, but it is probably a combination of face-off percentage on the power play, zone entries, and maintaining possession in the offensive zone. This shot attempt rate is something we will keep an eye on in the coming season.
Dry spells
During training camp last week, coach Dave Hakstol called out droughts and a lack of consistency that hurt the power play last season.
I certainly remember the Kraken going through dry spells, but I have always thought that is part of the cyclical nature of a hockey season. This is another area to focus on this season. Are the dry spells shorter and less frequent? Let’s hope so.
Who is getting the PP time?
Finally, I wanted to look at who was getting the power-play ice time and identify any potential changes for the upcoming season. To do that, I wanted to look at how the power-play time changed over the season, particularly before and after the Burakovsky injury.
The table shows that Eeli Tolvanen and Yanni Gourde picked up the extra time when Burakovsky went down in early February. With Burakovsky starting this season healthy, you can anticipate his power-play time to come back, but Tolvanen should remain on the power play with the departure of Daniel Sprong in the offseason. Sprong was on the ice for 40 percent of the Kraken’s power play when he was in the lineup.
Power play outlook
Without any substantial personnel changes to the Seattle Kraken roster this offseason, the changes will need to come from within. Getting Burakovsky back to start the season will certainly help, but the team will need to create different looks and options if it expects improvement in production. The Kraken’s new approach has showed promise in preseason. Will it carry over to the regular season?
Two months into the 2022-23 NHL season there was a national media narrative going around that the Kraken’s early season success was driven by an unsustainable shooting percentage and that it was just a matter of time before they would drop toward the bottom of the Pacific Division. That scenario never played out, and the Kraken finished the season with 100 points in the standings. Seattle ultimately turned out the second-highest shooting percentage in the league at 11.6 percent, behind only the Edmonton Oilers.
One would think the 82 regular-season games and 14 games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs would have been enough of a sample size to recognize the Kraken were not lucky, they were good. However, this offseason, the concept of a shooting percentage regression is starting to bleed into the conversation again. We could just dismiss this criticism as somebody viewing the team from afar, but I thought the best thing to do was dig into the numbers myself.
Power play contributions
The first thing I thought about is if the Kraken’s high shooting percentage is being propped up by a disproportionate number of power-play goals. The theory here is that because teams have a higher shooting percentage on the power play, a disproportionate number of goals on the power play could have inflated the Kraken’s shooting percentage to the rest of the league.
That was not the case last season…
Seattle had the fourth-lowest percentage of its goals scored on the power play. This was driven by a lower-than-average number of power-play opportunities and poor power-play conversion by the Kraken. They were ranked 21st in the league in both opportunities and conversion. The Kraken’s shooting percentage on the power play was close to league average, thus not inflating their overall shooting percentage. Conversely, Edmonton had the highest shooting percentage on the power play across the league.
The below visual also illustrates that the Kraken had the highest shooting percentage at even strength.
The Kraken’s high shooting percentage is not being propped up by the power play.
Their strength was their depth
The story of the 2022-23 Seattle Kraken was that their strength was their depth. I have often described the Kraken as a team with three second lines and one third line.
With that context, my theory is that the Kraken’s high shooting percentage is attributed to the fact their third and fourth lines are better than most team’s third and fourth lines. Therefore, we did not see a drop-off in shooting percentages that most other teams in the league had deeper in their lineups.
To investigate that theory, I would need to classify all players into where they fit in their respective lineup. Since depth charts are subjective and can often change throughout the year, that is next to impossible to come up with a clear rule around defining lines for all 32 teams. Instead, I am ranking the players with the most minutes played for the team and then bucketing them into groups of three for the forwards and groups of two for the defensemen.
As such, these are not “lines” in the traditional sense, but more tiers of contributions by minutes. For example, the first group for the Kraken is Alex Wennberg, Jordan Eberle, and Yanni Gourde because those three forwards logged the most minutes for the Kraken, even though Wennberg played most with Jaden Schwartz and Oliver Bjorkstrand throughout the season. It is not perfect, but it is a fair proxy for overall contribution when comparing across teams.
Forwards shooting percentage
This might be stating the obvious, but forwards generally have a higher shooting percentage and log more shots compared to defensemen, so it is important that we evaluate them separately. When we look at each group based on their total minutes played for their team, Seattle’s first forward group ranked as one of the lowest in the league for shooting percentage. But, as you can see below, the Kraken ranked in the top seven for shooting percentage for all other forward groups.
This would support the claim that the depth of this team is its strength, and therefore contributed to its relatively high shooting percentage.
For more context, this is how the groupings played out using the logic explained above.
Note that Eeli Tolvanen, who was acquired on waivers halfway through the season, did not have enough time on ice for the Kraken to make it into Seattle’s top 12 for time played. Tolvanen ranked second in shooting percentage behind Jared McCann for players with over 10 games for the Kraken.
Defensemen shooting percentages
On the defensive side, the Kraken’s top two pairs rank in the top four in shooting percentage.
The defensive contribution pairs align to the actual depth chart pairs for most of the season.
Individual skater shooting percentages
Another area we should evaluate is which Seattle Kraken players had a shooting percentage in 2022-23 that was above their three-year-average shooting percentage. Was this a case where most of the players were shooting above their average? Or was the team constructed of a collection of better shooters compared to other teams?
Here is how the individual shooting percentages break down against players’ three-year averages, with the blue bars representing shooting percentages above a player’s three-year average and the orange bars representing shooting percentages below.
Of the forward group, six players had higher than their three-year average, while six players had below their average. On defense, four out of the six defensemen had above-average shooting percentages. Attempting to be objective, it is conceivable and probably likely Jared McCann, Schwartz, and Tolvanen will see a regression in their shooting percentages, but conversely, it would be equally likely that Bjorkstrand, Andre Burakovsky, and Gourde see improvements in that category. In Bjorkstrand’s case, he seems positioned to improve his shooting percentage. Remember, he took some time getting used to his new team and was ice cold early in the season, only to hit his stride in the second half of the year.
On the blue line, it is likely that Jamie Oleksiak and Justin Schultz see regressions as well, but keep in mind they only accounted for 3.7 percent and 6.6 percent of the Kraken shots respectively. So, a drop in their shooting percentages won’t impact the team’s overall shooting percentage compared to a drop in Eberle’s, for example, who accounted for 11.7 percent of the Kraken’s shots on his own.
Kraken departures
Most Kraken fans might have noticed that the fourth group of forwards in the table above is made up exclusively of players that are no longer with the Kraken. Ryan Donato (CHI), Morgan Geekie (BOS), and Daniel Sprong (DET) have all signed with other teams this offseason. On the surface, that is a significant number of goals to replace in the lineup.
Let us put aside the shooting percentages for a moment. Collectively, the three departing forwards had 44 goals, and the Kraken will need to replace a good portion of those goals to replicate last season’s success. A full season from Burakovsky should add 10 goals, and the new addition of Kailer Yamamoto should add at least 10 goals as well. The remaining 20-goal gap will need to be filled by a mix of Shane Wright, John Hayden, Kole Lind, Tye Kartye, and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare. Who of those five players draw into the lineup is probably the biggest question heading into the season, with Lind and Kartye being the most natural goal scorers of the group. It is also still a question if AHL success for players like Lind and Kartye can translate to the NHL for a full season.
Yamamoto’s 10.3 percent shooting percentage last season is lower than all three of the Kraken departures, but his career shooting percentage is 13.9 percent, so we should anticipate a rebound. The other players looking to crack the lineup are less predictable, since most of them have limited NHL experience.
Wrapping it up
When you hear people talking about a shooting regression from the Kraken, take it with a grain of salt. If it does happen, it will most likely be driven by the departure of the Kraken’s fourth line of Donato, Geekie, and Sprong. All three of them are good shooters, and it was reflected in the numbers. Yamamoto should be able to replace one of them, and the Kraken hope to get a full season of Burakovsky and Tolvanen, both of whom have above-average shots that will offset some of the loss of the other two fourth-line players.
