For the second time this season, the Seattle Kraken have lost four games in a row and are falling farther out of the playoff picture. Let’s hope this is the darkest of days for the 2023-24 Seattle Kraken. The week of games started out poorly when the Kraken lost in regulation to the lowly Chicago Blackhawks, and it somehow got worse with a shutout loss to Anton Forsberg and the Ottawa Senators on Saturday night. This was supposed to be the week where the Kraken make up points in the standings against some weaker opponents, but it was not to be.
Sandwiched between those two brutal losses was a decent effort against the Toronto Maple Leafs where the Kraken scored two goals in the third period to force overtime in a game they eventually lost in a shootout. The team showed resilience by battling back, and it felt like they could use that to carry momentum into Saturday against Ottawa. They did not.
All is not lost… yet
There is still plenty of time left in the season for the boys to claw back into a playoff position with a string of victories, but this team has shown no momentum whatsoever. The longest win streak by the Kraken this season is just two games. The 2022-23 Kraken had win streaks of five and seven games at this point in the season.
There are only so many times that you can blame a loss on facing a strong goalie or getting a couple unlucky bounces before you realize there might be some bigger problems at play. The penalty kill has been very inconsistent, the team’s shooting percentage is one of the worst in the league, and the goaltending has struggled throughout the season.
The “third line”
I always hate referring to the Yanni Gourde/Oliver Bjorkstrand/Eeli Tolvanen line as the third line for the Kraken. It’s partially driven by the special teams play of all of them, but it is not uncommon to see that line with the most collective minutes played. That third line is consistently playing well, but the Kraken need Gourde and Bjorkstrand to score some goals.
Both are playing great hockey but can’t seem to find the back of the net. Collectively, they’ve had 30 shots on goal over the last four games but no goals to show for it. Neither of them needs to change the way they are playing; I just think they are getting a bit of bad luck right now that will turn around in due course. How about a Bjorkstrand hat trick next week? I say he does it.
The Kraken fourth line
Due to the injuries to Jaden Schwartz, Brandon Tanev, and Andre Burakovsky this season, coach Dave Hakstol is minimizing the usage of the fourth line. Last season it was common for the fourth line to get 12-14 minutes a night, but as of late, the fourth-line wingers are getting between six and nine minutes of ice time. Pierre-Edouard Bellemare is averaging right around 10 minutes a night, largely because of his time on the penalty kill.
Part of this is situational. The Kraken are behind more frequently this season and need to get some of their goal scorers more ice time by taking it away from the fourth line.
Last year’s strength was Seattle’s depth with Ryan Donato, Daniel Sprong, and Morgan Geekie often contributing with goals from the fourth line. It is not a perfect analysis, but the three of them averaged .65 goals per game. Tanev, Kailer Yamamoto, and Bellemare together are averaging .43 goals per game, but that’s not an accurate picture. Tanev has been hurt a good chunk of the season, and injuries farther up the lineup have Yamamoto slotting in on other lines. That has left the fourth line to be made up by a hodgepodge of fill-ins like Devin Shore, Andrew Poturalski, Marián Studenič, and now Max McCormick.
Other musings:
Several of the World Junior Championship teams should start announcing their pre-tournament camp rosters this week. I expect Seattle Kraken prospects Jagger Firkus and Carson Rehkopf to be on the initial camp roster for Team Canada. Defenseman Ty Nelson could be another candidate, but he might be a bit of a long shot to make the final squad. Though Shane Wright is still eligible, he is not expected to play in the WJC this year.
It is unlikely that the Chicago Blackhawks would loan former Seattle Thunderbird Kevin Korchinski to Team Canada. The last time the Blackhawks let one of their prospects play in the World Junior Championship, Kirby Dach broke his wrist and missed a majority of his 2020-21 season.
Chris Driedger had a shutout for the Firebirds on Friday night against the Ontario Reign. In 13 games, he has a .916 save percentage in the AHL.
Wright has at least one point in 11 of his 15 AHL games this season for the Coachella Valley Firebirds. My prediction at the beginning of the season was that Shane would get 20 to 30 games in the AHL and would eventually be called up by the Kraken to spend of the rest of the season in the NHL.
Alex Wennberg’s assist on the game-tying goal Thursday night against the Toronto Maple Leafs is a perfect encapsulation of why he is such a good player and flies under the radar. He literally entered the offensive zone with the puck while the rest of the Kraken players were changing behind the play. There were four Maple Leafs in the zone with Wennberg but he managed to keep the puck and eventually find Jared McCann for this beauty of a goal. No highlights will show him entering the zone for a 1-on-4.
Wennberg is on his last year of his current contract and could be a trade candidate for the Kraken if they are out of the playoff picture. He doesn’t get nearly enough credit for the attributes he brings to the game because a lot of people just look at his scoring.
Player performance
Eduard Sale (BAR/SEA) – The Seattle Kraken first-round pick from the most recent NHL Entry Draft has practically flown off the radar this season but still has 21 points in 23 games for the Barrie Colts in the OHL. Expect him to represent Czechia in the World Juniors tournament.
Conor Geekie (WEN/ARI) – The Arizona Coyotes prospect playing for the Wenatchee Wild has put up 12 points in three games, including four unanswered goals against Portland on Saturday. He has points in eight straight games.
Mathew Barzal (NYI) – The former Seattle Thunderbird had seven points in two games last week, including this overtime winner against the Hurricanes.
In one of the pre-game media availabilities last week, Coach Hakstol got a question about defensive scoring that implied that is why the team has struggled to score this season. So, I looked it up.
So, yes, the defense has not contributed as much as it did at this point last season, but neither has the forward group. (Andre Burakovsky had nine goals at this point last season.)
Goal of the week
Seattle Kraken sixth-round selection in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft, Zeb Forsfjall, scored the overtime game winner for Skellefteå on Saturday.
It seems like I am saying this every week, but the Kraken face another critical week, and the opponents don’t look that intimidating, though all of them have a better record than the Kraken. Seattle starts the week with a game Monday against the Montreal Canadiens to try to salvage this road trip before returning home for six games in 10 days. The Kraken have got to figure out a way to link more than two wins together if they want any hope of making the playoffs.
It would be great if the Kraken can get Burakovsky back for this stretch of games. He was back in a regular blue jersey at morning skate Monday, per our best friend, Alison Lukan, but is not expected to play against the Habs. The success of the season may depend on how Burakovsky plays when he comes back.
A question for the readers
What happens first, a shutout by a Seattle Kraken goalie, a hat trick by a Kraken player, or Shane Wright gets called up from Coachella?
There has been chatter about potential NHL attendance issues across the league early this season. Softness in Winnipeg, Buffalo, and Ottawa has been bantered about across Canadian hockey media outlets, but is it accurate? Is attendance actually a problem in those cities?
It is a little early to start sounding the alarms of potential attendance issues, and depending on how you look at the numbers, they can also be misleading. That said, we will dig into the attendance numbers through all October games to see if there are themes we might want to keep an eye on as the season progresses.
Overall attendance
Average attendance during the month of October across the league is up 2.3 percent from last season. That is good, but it is not back to the same level for the October games played in the 2019-20 season.
There are a few things to note here:
1) Arizona now plays its games at Mullett Arena with a capacity of 4,600 per game. Back in 2019-20, they played at Desert Diamond Arena (formerly Gila River Arena), and although they were not selling out, they still averaged 12,224 per game. So naturally, the shift to the smaller arena will bring the overall league average down.
2) The NHL is a high-sellout league where several teams sell all their tickets for all their games, so seeing growth from those teams is constrained by their capacity.
3) Since 2019-20, a few arenas have downsized their capacities slightly to clear room for more luxury seating and experiences.
4) The game count per arena can vary and therefore throw off the weight of a certain team’s attendance. i.e., The Chicago Blackhawks played eight home games in October of the 2019-20 season but have only played two October home games during the 2023-24 season. This is important because the Blackhawks play in one of the biggest arenas in the league, and the volume of games is thus not weighted as heavily in 2023-24 as it was in 2019-20.
Sellouts
To avoid some of the limitations and nuances of looking at average attendance, another way to evaluate these figures is to look at the percentage of games that sell out across the league. I consider a game a sellout if attendance is 99 percent of capacity.
Like the average attendance figure, this can be misleading due to the weighting of teams but still a good indicator of league-wide attendance.
Team-by-team detail
Looking at the change season over season you start to get a better read on some teams that might be struggling.
Here are a couple notes about the attendance changes season over season by team.
New Jersey is getting a pop in attendance after the team took major steps forward last season, including a first-round win in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Chicago’s attendance increase can be attributed to Connor Bedard joining the team after he was selected first overall in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft.
Buffalo has been called out as a team with softness in attendance this season, but they have increased quite a bit off last season’s October attendance numbers.
Winnipeg’s 19 percent drop is significant considering they did make the playoffs last season. Teams tend to not see a drop in their attendance after making the playoffs in the prior season.
Arizona, Boston, Dallas, New York Rangers, Seattle, and Tampa Bay have sold out all their games in October over the last two seasons.
It’s not the easiest to read, but here is a game-by-game breakdown of all the teams’ games through October. I will be updating this throughout the season.
Seasonality and day of the week
When media people state variances in attendance, they often compare an impartial season to prior completed seasons. They are not wrong, and I am not implying they are being deceptive. I’m just saying it would be more accurate to look at the seasonality in attendance.
The disrupted three seasons of hockey between 2019-20 and 2021-22 made those unfair comps. There are no major takeaways from this graph other than attendance tends to climb a bit in December, January, and February, with a little pop in the low-volume month of April.
This might not come as a surprise to many of you, but the day of the week a game is played can also impact attendance.
The variances do not seem that significant when looking at the league as a whole, but when you look at a team with some more variability in its attendance, it can be significant.
Here are a few examples.
Attendance vs butts in seats
I specifically use the term attendance because that is what is used in NHL game reports. I am aware these numbers do not reflect actual attendance figures, but until teams and the league start sharing the actual butts in seats attendance numbers, this will have to suffice.
Teams’ on-ice success can be very cyclical, and as a fan, you should expect some low-attendance seasons; there was a time that the Coyotes had higher attendance than Boston, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. This is all natural.
I hope you find this info informative, and if you have any specific questions feel free to ask me in the comments section below on twitter.
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.
Even though Morgan Geekie and Daniel Sprong were not tendered qualifying offers, we still don’t expect any ground-breaking moves by the Seattle Kraken when free agency opens Saturday at 9 a.m. Pacific. Let’s examine the roster position by position to see where opportunities exist to add to the team.
Goalies
The Kraken are pretty set in net with Philipp Grubauer locked in and Chris Driedger and now Joey Daccord expected to battle it out for the backup goaltender spot. The Kraken have already added Czech goaltender Ales Stezka, who is likely earmarked to spend the season in Coachella Valley for the Firebirds. The Kraken also signed their 2022 NHL Entry Draft goaltender Niklas Kokko to his entry-level contract earlier this year, but there is a good possibility he plays at least one more year in Finland. The Kraken may add one more goalie for depth, but in all likelihood, anyone they add would be the type of goalie that bounces between the AHL and ECHL.
Defensemen
The only departure from the blue line this offseason appears to be defenseman Carson Soucy. If you blinked, you might have missed it, but the Kraken did trade for left defenseman Jaycob Megna back in February. He only drew into six regular-season games and did not register a point. On the right side, Cale Fleury was with the Kraken all season but only played 12 games.
Unfortunately for Fleury, the right side is relatively set with Adam Larsson, Will Borgen, and Justin Schultz still in the fold. There are certainly opportunities to improve on both sides of the defense corps, so signing someone in free agency might create a scenario where somebody else gets traded. This might be the reason we are hearing occasional Borgen trade rumors.
The biggest opportunity to improve is on the left side, but the challenge is that Seattle has Ryker Evans waiting in the wings. He probably needs one more year in the AHL before he is ready to make the jump to the NHL, though. Ideally the team signs a significant upgrade on the left side for just one year, but who is out there that would actually be an upgrade and would take that short of term?
The good news is that based on the expected large salary cap increase for the 2024-25 season, there might be a few skilled defensemen willing to sign a one-year contract with the expectations they can cash in next offseason as teams have more money to spend against the cap. Connor Clifton or Niko Mikkola could fit that profile, or the Kraken could hold out to see who needs a home later in the summer. The dream scenario is if Matt Dumba does not like what he sees long term and is willing to sign a one-year deal like John Klingberg did last free agent period.
One NHL player agent tells me today that the flat cap for 2023-24 plus the jump in space in 2024-25 (up to at least $88 million) equals a lot of one-year deals in the UFA market starting tomorrow. (1/2)
On the right side of the defense corps, the Kraken could swing a little harder with the intent that any right D they add probably means someone else is moving out. The challenge here is that the free agent pool is limited. It is not clear if you could get him on a reasonable deal, but Klingberg could fit this scenario. He could step into one of the power play units that struggled at times this season and should be available for significantly less than what he was looking for last year. Still, at 30 years old and even at a discount, is he worth the defensive risk?
Forwards
With Sprong, Geekie, and Ryan Donato hitting free agency, that opens the door for three forward spots on the squad. It is unlikely the Kraken will fill all those spots with free agents, though, considering who they have knocking on the door.
First there is Tye Kartye. Kartye took his opportunity by the horns in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and scored five points in 10 games, including a goal in his first game that had Kraken fans immediately buying jerseys with his number on them. He has proven he is ready for the NHL, but even if the Kraken do not make any moves, I don’t think he is a lock to make the club out of training camp.
If you recall, Kartye drew into the lineup because Jared McCann was injured on the Cale Makar hit. I expect McCann to take his appropriate spot back in the lineup when the season starts, so that would shuffle Kartye to the fourth line. Keep in mind the Kraken fourth line acts more like a third line, and Kartye could fit in nicely as a Sprong replacement.
With all respect to Kartye, there is another player that had a very good season in Coachella Valley that might be competing for a spot: Kole Lind. Lind had 30 goals and 32 assists, compared with Kartye’s 28 goals and 29 assists. The difference is Lind is a right winger and Kartye is a left winger, but Brandon Tanev can play either side. If either Kartye or Lind claims a spot on the fourth line, Tanev can flip to the other side.
And then there is Shane Wright. Wright’s eligibility for the AHL next season is still in doubt, and there is still a decent possibility that he makes the Kraken out of camp. If he does make the team, that takes another spot. If Shane is ruled eligible for the AHL next season, that is good news for the Kraken, as they can move him up and down to the AHL without requiring waivers. The same goes for Kartye. If both Kartye and Wright spend most of the season in the AHL, that opens one spot for free agency.
That all adds up to complexity in the Kraken’s approach to forwards in free agency Saturday and beyond. It sure feels like they need to add a center, and of the available free agents, Evan Rodrigues might be the perfect upgrade the Kraken are looking for.
Additionally, I am sure they would love to add a bit more goal scoring, but so does everyone else, which could translate to an overpay. Maybe the Kraken end up adding a Vladimir Tarasenko, Jason Zucker, or Tomas Tatar in the hopes they can fill the gap for the departure of Sprong. For any of those three players, the Kraken might need to sign a longer-term contract than they are comfortable signing, but there are several forward contracts rolling off the books the next few years. So, perhaps that could make it more palatable?
Change is necessary to get better
If we expect the Kraken to improve next season, they must make changes to the roster. We have already seen two fan favorites likely leave after the team chose to not qualify Sprong and Geekie, and trades could still come to add skill to the club. These next few days will be very telling of how the Kraken will shape up next season.
On Dec. 15, Philipp Grubauer faced 39 shots against the Carolina Hurricanes and put the Kraken in a position to steal a game they had had no interest being in. It was an ugly game with the Kraken having just 33 percent of the shot attempts, and despite the Kraken being down 3-0 halfway though the game, they were very close to tying it in the third before eventually losing 3-2.
That was the moment I felt Grubauer turned the corner and started to be the goalie we expected he could be when the Kraken signed him in the summer of 2021, before the Kraken’s inaugural season. Ever since that game, I have felt that Grubauer should have earned more starts. Without further ado, I present my case for handing the net over to Philipp Grubauer.
Goal support
If you just look at the win-loss results for the two goaltenders this season, Martin Jones appears to be the better goalie, posting a record of 23-9-3 versus Grubauer’s 6-9-2. However, we know that wins and losses have a lot to do with how the team plays in front of the goaltender. For that, let us look at goal scoring by the Kraken for each starting goaltender.
In addition to the roughly 1.7 goals the Kraken average for Jones over Grubauer, 20 times or 59 percent of Jones’s starts, the Kraken score four goals or more. Sunday’s game against the Flyers was only the fourth time the Kraken have scored four or more goals for Grubauer. In fact, the Kraken have not scored more than four goals for any Grubauer start all season.
Save percentage
In a somewhat dated way of evaluating goalies, we can simply look at save percentage to evaluate the two goaltenders this year.
When we look at the chart, we can see that Grubauer has been steadily outperforming Jones in the save percentage category, but as I mentioned before, this is a slightly antiquated approach. Save percentage treats all shots as equal and does not consider the quality of the shots the goaltenders face when evaluating their performance.
Shot quality
I will not spend a lot of time talking about shot quality metrics, but the premise is that shots closer to the net and with a good angle are considered high-danger shots. Conversely, shots farther away and/or at a harsh angle to the net, are considered medium- or low-danger quality. For more information on shot quality, here is a nice breakdown from Alison Lukan.
Here is how save percentage breaks down at even strength by quality of shot. It is split into high-danger save percentage, medium-danger save percentage, and low-danger save percentage.
As the chart shows, Grubauer has a higher save percentage in all three categories over the season. The numbers are even more slanted in Grubi’s favor if you look at the numbers since Dec. 1.
Expected goals against versus actual goals against
The analytics community also has a statistic for evaluating a goalie’s performance called expected goals against. Keeping it simple, imagine expected goals against is what the most average goalie in the league would expect to give up if they were in net for the same exact shots that a goalie took in that game. You then take the difference of the expected goals against versus the actual goals against, and that will determine how well or poorly the goalie played compared to an average goalie in the same scenario.
For example, based on the location and scenarios around all the shots against in a game, if the expected goals against was 3.54 and the actual goals against was 3.00, then the difference would be -.54. Meaning, the goaltender saved .54 goals more than we would have expected from the average goaltender. For more on the expected goals statistic, checkout another great article by Alison.
This visual is a little more challenging to interpret, but you are looking for more dots below the zero line.
I added a reference line to show the direction each goaltender has trended lately, and it clearly shows Grubauer headed the right way and Jones heading the opposite way. One other insight I see on the chart is that Grubi’s last five starts have been better than average, and he has had only four starts that were below average this entire season.
It’s Grubauer’s time
I know that there are several flaws with strictly evaluating data to determine who should start in net for the Kraken, but all signs are pointing to Grubauer playing the best he has played in a Kraken uniform. He deserves a shot at getting a more regular cadence of games.
We made it through the long and dull summer in Seattle, a period otherwise known as the NHL offseason. The kick-off of rookie camp is a special time for us hockey sickos, and we are here for it. On Sunday, the Seattle Kraken announced their training camp rosters with Monday and Tuesday dedicated to the rookies on the squad and the main camp starting Thursday. We are seven days away from the first preseason game against Edmonton at Climate Pledge Arena, so we thought now would be a good time to look at some storylines to monitor for Training Camp. Here’s what to keep an eye on in week one.
Centers
With the selection of centerman Shane Wright in the 2022 NHL Entry Draft, the Kraken have a positional challenge to consider. Add Wright to the quiver of Matty Beniers, Alex Wennberg, Yanni Gourde, and Morgan Geekie, and now the club has five centers for only four spots. One of them will center the fourth line and another will need to move to wing. Lines can and will change a lot during the season, but it will be interesting to see who is getting the reps at center in the first few days of camp.
Who advances from rookie camp?
It is safe to say that Matty Beniers and Shane Wright are locks to move on from rookie camp to the main camp, but the bigger question is who else will stick around for a bit longer? Safe money is on Ryker Evans, the Kraken’s second-round pick from the 2021 NHL Entry Draft, who had an excellent season with Regina in the WHL. After Evans, it is a bit of a toss-up. Undrafted forward Ty Kartye signed an entry-level deal with the Kraken in March and could be one of the players to move on to the big camp at the end of the week. Another candidate could be 2021 fifth-round draft pick Jacob Melanson. He tends to fly under radar but put up 35 goals in 54 games in the QMJHL last season. Advancing from rookie camp to the main training camp does not mean the player is destined for the big club any time soon, but it might signal the potential these prospects have for reaching the NHL.
Eyes on Wright
Seattle’s coveted first-round pick from the 2022 NHL Entry Draft, Shane Wright will undoubtedly get a lot of attention. We think he will be given every opportunity to make this team, but it is far from guaranteed. Wright will need to prove he belongs in order to stay with the team all season. The coaching staff expects all the players to buy into their two-way game, and there is no doubt that Wright plays that style. But can he play that style in the NHL at 18 years old? Interesting to note, Cole Sillinger of Columbus was the only player taken in the 2021 draft to play the full 2021-22 season in the NHL.
The Killer B’s
If you are lucky enough to attend training camp in person, you will get to see reps and reps of the same drill. This enables you to focus in on individual players and compare them to each other doing the same drill. Keying in on Beniers for individual drills will be something special to watch, as his creativity and skill should be on full display. This will also be the first time we get to see offseason acquisitions Oliver Bjorkstrand and Andre Burakovsky up close and personal in Kraken jerseys. Bjorkstrand and Burakovsky have amazing shooting capabilities, and seeing them fire pucks in volume at practice should be a treat. A Bjorkstrand, Burakovsky, and Beniers line does sound cool, but it is premature to think it will happen or stick for the long term.
Tanev and Schwartz
Brandon Tanev and Jaden Schwartz were having productive seasons in 2021-22 before being sidelined by injuries. In Tanev’s case, he had season-ending knee surgery after a freak play against the Edmonton Oilers in mid-December. Schwartz’s diagnosis was never disclosed, but he was in and out of the lineup throughout the second half of the season. In both cases, the fanbase should be hopeful they return to pre-injury form. Both have been skating at Kraken Community Iceplex, and early reports are that they look good. Training camp should be a little more telling of where both those players stand in the recovery process.
Those are just a few of the storylines to watch throughout training camp this week. Keep any eye on SoundOfHockey.com and our twitter account all week for various reports from training camp as we ramp up to the start of the season.
