In the third installment of this “becoming a playoff contender” series, we evaluate the Seattle Kraken offseason moves and determine what are the chances they make the playoffs. If you need a refresher, in Part 1, we determined that an NHL team will need a non-empty-net goal differential of minus five to have a 50 percent chance of making the playoffs. In Part 2 of the series, we dug into the goal forecast of the current players on the roster to determine the Kraken would need to add 45.6 more goals this offseason.
Roster changes prior to free agency
The forecast from Part 2 was based on all rostered and restricted free agent players on the team at the time. A lot has changed since then so let’s evaluate the changes.
The first order of business was the NHL Entry Draft. As most of you know by now, Shane Wright fell to the Seattle Kraken in the fourth overall spot in the draft. Wright was one of the few players taken in the draft expected to play in the NHL this season. There is a chance Wright does not make the Kraken roster immediately, but we feel that is unlikely and therefore will be punching him into the scoring forecast.
The prior goal forecast was also done before the qualifying offer deadline for all pending restricted free agents. The Kraken ended up not qualifying Ryan Donato*, Daniel Sprong, Haydn Fleury, and Dennis Cholowski. We will come back to Donato in a second, but this impacted the forecasted numbers since Donato and Sprong were forecasting over 15 goals for next season.
The expected goals for Fleury and Cholowski also impacted the forecast, but we only projected three goals combined for both of them, so they did not have a material impact on the overall forecasted number. When we removed Donato, Sprong, Fleury, and Cholowski, the gap in goals to become a playoff contender became much bigger.
Uh oh. They were heading in the wrong direction.
Roster additions
In addition to Shane Wright, the Kraken would go on to add forwards André Burakovsky, Andrew Poturalski, and John Hayden plus defenseman Justin Schultz during the first week of free agency. For a while, it looked as if the Kraken were done with only a few goal-scoring players left available. Nine days after the free agency period opened, the Kraken landed Oliver Bjorkstrand in a steal of a trade for the Kraken. With Bjorkstrand and Burakovsky on the roster, things began to look better for the scoring capabilities of the Kraken for the 2022-23 season.
The team also eventually re-signed Donato two weeks after free agency opened and added another depth defenseman in Michal Kempny.
New forecast projections
With these roster additions, now is time to punch them into the forecast. First up, how do we forecast Shane Wright’s numbers this upcoming season? For an estimate on Wright, we isolated the forwards selected in the top five picks since 2015 that would go on to play more than 15 games in the NHL in the season immediately after their draft season.
The average goals scored for that cohort of players was 16.8 in their first season. To be slightly more conservative, we are going to lower Wright’s forecasted goal totals to 14.8 for 2022-23. We recognize this is a very simple methodology but feel it is a reasonable number of goals to expect of Wright.
Plugging in the other player additions is relatively easy since it is based on their 2021-22 adjusted goals per game times the number of games we forecast those players to play in the 2022-23 season.
We also recognize there are some tweaks we could make to individual players’ expected performances next season. We are intentionally not making any individual adjustments because we think some players will exceed the forecast while others will be below the forecast. At the end of the season, they will even themselves out. When we put it all together, here is the current forecast for adjusted goal differential.
Playoff chances?
After all the changes and modifications to the goal scoring forecast, we are estimating the Kraken will have a -7.7 adjusted goal differential. If that forecast is realized, the Kraken should stick around the playoff hunt and would have a decent shot at making it to the postseason.
Based on the chart above, should the Kraken have a goal differential of minus seven, this gives them a 33 percent chance of making the playoffs.
What could go right and what could go wrong?
Again, we recognize this is an over-simplified forecast model, but there were significantly more complicated models that were way off last season.
Here are a few things that could go wrong for the Kraken:
The goalie tandem of Philipp Grubauer and Martin Jones does not improve and ends up last in team goaltending again.
Injuries. Brandon Tanev and Jaden Schwartz had significant reductions in games played last season due to injuries. The injury bug will come back in 2022-23, but who will it hit and how hard? Let’s just hope it doesn’t come for one of the goal scorers.
Burakovsky’s goal scoring rate decreases when playing for the less-talented Seattle Kraken compared to last year’s Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche.
There are also things that could go right for the Kraken in 2022-23.
Goaltending is at or above league average. This could swing an additional 30 goals in the goal differential category.
Joonas Donskoi returns to form. 2021-22 was a brutal season for Donskoi, where his shooting percentage was a dismal 2.2 percent. If he gets back to his career average over 10 percent, he could be looking at a 15-to-20 goal season.
Shane Wright exceeds expectations with a 25-plus-goal season. Right now, we are conservatively estimating just under 15 goals for Wright. It is a possibility that he exceeds that number in his rookie campaign.
Lowering playoff expectations
It is rare for a team to bounce back from a 60-point season and vault themselves into a playoff spot. Since the 2000-01 season, only five teams qualified for the Stanley Cup Playoffs the season after posting 70 points or fewer. So maybe we should temper the expectations a bit as this team has several young pieces with new players that might not be totally comfortable playing with each other yet. With that said, playing meaningful games in March, even with an outside chance of making the playoffs, should be considered a success for 2022-23.
The final four teams are set to begin the third round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs this week, so we thought it would be fun to look at the remaining rosters for the Conference Finals to evaluate how they were built.
Player acquisition type
NHL Entry Draft, free agency, trades, and waiver wire acquisitions are all the various ways a team can build a roster. To build a contender, you need to use every tool at your disposal. Let’s look at how these teams built their rosters.
The two-time Stanley Cup Champion Tampa Bay Lightning have the highest percentage of players that were acquired via the NHL Entry Draft. It’s fascinating that Colorado’s percentage of drafted players is so small, especially considering that their cornerstone players – Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, Mikko Rantanen, and Gabriel Landeskog – were all acquired through the draft. The variance among the teams that have a high draft percentage is a little surprising as well, being that the conventional wisdom is that successful teams are built through the draft.
To add some context around the roster composition, we should look at which players are scoring each team’s goals by acquisition type.
The second chart shows that players who are still playing for the teams that drafted them contribute a higher percentage of goals scored in the playoffs compared to the quantity of drafted players still on the roster (shown in the first chart).
This is easily explained as the higher-skilled players tend to score more, and teams are more willing to hold on to their drafted, high-scoring, skilled players (i.e., pay more money to assure they don’t reach free agency).
Note that goal scoring is a rather simple and narrow way of evaluating contributions to a team’s success, but directionally, we think this is a fair indictor on how to evaluate contributions by acquisition type.
Draft rounds
Regardless of the acquisition type, it is also fun to look at how many players each team has from each draft round.
As one would expect, players that were selected in the first round account for the highest percentage of players on the rosters. The surprising piece here was that 25 percent of the Rangers roster consists of undrafted players (Alexandar Georgiev, Barclay Goodrow, Dryden Hunt, Artemi Panarin, Kevin Rooney, and Frank Vatrano).
Roster ages
The average age of a team is also an appealing data point to evaluate.
Tampa is the oldest team in the Conference Finals, which makes sense as they have continued to trade away young prospects and draft picks at the trade deadline over the last three seasons. These moves have left their prospect cupboard rather light.
Edmonton is the second oldest team remaining, though this is being inflated by Mike Smith (40) and Duncan Keith (39).
Looking at average age of the rosters is interesting but can be a little misleading because it lacks things like ice time. Plus, having a few players on the extremes of the age range can influence a team’s average age.
Height and weight of NHL playoff rosters
Finally, we are going to take a quick peek at the height and weight of the four teams in the conference finals.
The heights are very similar with all teams having an average height within less than an inch of each other, but the weight of the players is quite different between the Western Conference teams (COL and EDM) and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Here is a look at the player detail behind the weight of the players:
In Tampa, Victor Hedman and Patrick Maroon are right around 240 pounds and are undoubtedly influencing the average weight of the team. On the other side of the spectrum, Kailer Yamamoto is listed at 153 pounds and is the lightest player across the four remaining teams.
This was a very simple view at evaluating the Conference Finals rosters, but we hope it gives you a different perspective when watching over the next two weeks. If you found this interesting, you might enjoy looking at this story, breaking down all NHL rosters from last year. If you have questions about the data or some additional angles you would like me to consider, let me know in the comments section.
The weekend capped off an epic first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs with five series going to seven games. Storylines and narratives through Round 1 were plentiful, with early complaints being thrown around about there being too many penalties and blowouts. Let’s dig into the numbers to see if those complaints were valid and to gain some insights and appreciation of what we just witnessed.
Goal scoring
We already knew the regular season saw an increase in scoring, but we were not sure if that would expand to the playoffs. Spoiler, it did!
The first-round matchups saw the highest scoring in recent playoff history with an average of 6.4 goals per game this year compared to 5.7 last year. One possible theory for explaining this uptick is the increase in empty-net goals.
On average, empty-net goals are up, but this only accounts for .13 of the .7 goals-per-game increase we are seeing this year.
Margin of victory
Early in this playoff season it seemed like there were quite a few blowouts with opening night bringing three games decided by four goals or more. Did this trend continue throughout the first round? Were games across the league less competitive than in previous postseasons?
That is quite the spike in goal differential this year compared to the last two years. Again, empty-net goals were a contributor, but that again does not explain the entire increase.
As uninteresting as some of the games were in the beginning of the round, the series remained close, and toward the end of the first round the games got much tighter. Here is a look at the goal differential by game number of the first round.
Yep, that graph checks out. The games felt like they got better as the round progressed, and the numbers confirm that sentiment.
Penalties per game in the Stanley Cup Playoffs
Now on to the other hot topic, penalties. There was certainly a lot of chatter about the rate of penalties called in the early part of the first round, and this chart proves it out.
Certainly, the number of penalties called per game is up from the regular season, but more importantly, it is up from the last few postseasons. One thing to note on the comparison of regular season to playoffs is the fact that there are more offsetting scenarios in the playoffs compared to the regular season.
Similar to the margin of victory trends, let’s look to see if the number of penalties called changed over the first round.
This chart shows a steady decline in penalties the deeper we got into Round 1. Most people will claim the referees stopped calling “soft penalties” as the round progressed, but it is entirely possible that the players adjusted to how the games were called early in the round. The root cause is probably a combination of both.
For comparison, here is how last year’s chart looked for the opening round.
Last year showed a decline from the beginning of the round to the end as well, but the number of penalties called was more consistent.
Game 7’s and overtime
This last weekend the hockey gods gave us one of the best weekends we could hope for with five Game 7’s, two of which ended in overtime and four of which were one-goal games. Assuming no rooting interest, we could not have asked for much more. Let’s add some context.
Five Game 7’s is rare and was the most in an opening round since 1994. The hockey world seems to agree that the number of Game 7’s was great, but did we have as many overtime games this round?
Eight overtime games compared to 16 last year was quite the drop, but that was in line with the average from 2018 to 2020.
Do you have any thoughts on the playoffs so far? Anything from a data side you want us to look at? Drop a line in the comments or on twitter and we will see what we can do.
Over the years we have created a Northwest-centric rooting guide for the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs. In prior seasons we would breakdown all the teams with players that had ties to the area, like if they were born or raised in the Northwest or even if they played part of their junior career in the region. This year is different though. We have a team and a legitimate rooting interest for other NHL teams to do… well… poorly.
With the Seattle Kraken fan bias, I offer you up the official Kraken fans’ rooting guide for the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs. The rankings are listed from teams we are rooting against (No. 16) to the teams we are rooting to win the Stanley Cup (No. 1).
16. Nashville Predators
Reasons to root against them: As much as it pains me to say, the Predators are a team we Kraken fans will want to lose in the first round. The Kraken traded away Jeremy Lauzon to Nashville for their second-round draft pick for the upcoming 2022 NHL Entry Draft. If they go out in the first round, that draft pick will become the 49th overall draft pick. But if the Preds go on and win the Stanley Cup, it becomes the 64th pick overall. Shea Weber, Mike Cammalleri, and Roope Hintz were all selected 49th overall.
Reasons to root for them: Nashville is a fun city to follow in the playoffs. Their run in 2017 was one of the most exciting playoff runs in recent memory. Smashing cars, a packed Broadway, and Catfish Jake could all make a cameo in a Nashville playoff run.
15. Toronto Maple Leafs
Reasons to root against them: Like the reason we are rooting against Nashville, the Kraken acquired three draft picks from the Leafs at the trade deadline when they sent the first Seattle Kraken captain, Mark Giordano, and Colin Blackwell to Toronto. The Kraken own the Leafs’ second-round draft pick in the upcoming 2022 NHL Entry Draft. A first-round exit could mean that pick becomes as low as 53rd versus 64th in the case they win the Stanley Cup. The other two picks are for 2023 (second round) and 2024 (third round).
Reasons to root for them: Giordano was a great player for the Kraken, and he is your classic “old guy without a Cup.” To see former Kraken players make a deep playoff run sounds kind of fun.
14. Florida Panthers
Reasons to root against them: Calgary traded a second-round pick that they acquired from Florida to Seattle in the Calle Jarnkrok trade. Even if Florida were to lose in the first round, the lowest that pick would be is 56 overall.
Reasons to root for them: If the Panthers go on a run, maybe we can see it rain rats in South Florida.
13. Calgary Flames
Reasons to root against them: In the same Jarnkrok trade, the Flames also traded their fourth-round draft pick to Seattle. Fourth-round picks are a little more hit and miss compared to a second-round pick, but still the earlier Calgary loses the better the pick.
Reasons to root for them: While an earlier exit means a better pick, the opposite is also true. The better the Flames do, the deeper they will select, including for their first-round draft pick. So it might be worth it to see them succeed, knowing that their draft position will be worse off for it. Plus, we really liked Jarnkrok and would love to see him succeed.
12. Washington Capitals
Reasons to root against them: Closing out the 2022 NHL Trade Deadline deals, the Kraken traded Marcus Johansson for a fourth-round draft pick to the Capitals. An early exit for the Caps will mean that pick gets better for the Kraken.
Reasons to root for them: It is very easy to root for Mt. Vernon-born and Seattle Junior alum TJ Oshie in the playoffs. Heck, if the Caps win the Cup, hopefully he considers bringing it to the Puget Sound instead of Warroad this time.
11. Carolina Hurricanes
Reasons to root against them: It really comes down to how they treated John Forslund. Is this a good reason to actively root against a franchise? We don’t know, but we don’t care… Down with the Canes.
Reasons to root for them: Well, the team is darn fun for a bunch of jerks. Sebastian Aho, Andrei Svechnikov, and friend of the pod, Seth Jarvis are exciting players to watch, and the thought of a potential Freddie Andersen facing off against the Toronto Maple Leafs sounds compelling to us.
10. St. Louis Blues
Reasons to root against them: There’s no real reason to root against the Blues other than they have won a Stanley Cup recently, and they were not very nice to us Kraken fans when they visited Climate Pledge Arena in January.
Reasons to root for them: Vladimir Tarasenko seems like a very likable guy, and he is having a terrific season for the Blues. We would also like to see what Ryan O’Reilly could come up with if he wins another cup.
9. Pittsburgh Penguins
Reasons to root against them: I am sure there are a few Sidney Crosby haters still out there, but unless you are from the DC Metro or the western Pennsylvania area, there is not a whole lot to hate in Pittsburgh these days.
Reasons to root for them: It would be fun to see future Seattle Kraken player Bryan Rust win a Cup*. Just think what that will do for Seattle’s locker room next year.
* speculative
8. New York Rangers
Reasons to root against them: I really hate when the narrative is that the NHL wants the big market teams to make the Stanley Cup Final. I simply do not want to hear that blabber so an early exit would put that commentary to bed in a heartbeat.
Reasons to root for them: “The NHL would love to see the Rangers in the Stanley Cup Final.”
7. Minnesota Wild
Reasons to root against them: Just think how much Minn-utiae we would hear on the Sound Of Hockey Podcast from @DarrenFunBrown.
Reasons to root for them: They are fun, exciting, and I am pretty sure there is not a more likeable player in the league than Marc-Andre Fleury. Would be fun to see him hoist the Cup one more time, regardless of how much he ends up playing.
6. Edmonton Oilers
Reasons to root against them: For the chaos. An early exit will produce so many bad takes on what is “wrong with the Edmonton Oilers” (Exhibit A, B, and C) that it will provide hours of comedy, and who knows, maybe Connor McDavid will demand a trade. Plus, we aren’t huge Evander Kane fans.
Reasons to root for them: McDavid is still one of the most exciting players in the game, and it seems like we could get an Oilers-Flames conference semi-final matchup that would be entertaining to say the least.
5. Los Angeles Kings
Reasons to root against them: They are a Kraken division rival and are primed to be a powerhouse in the next couple years.
Reasons to root for them: They are a Kraken division rival and are primed to be a powerhouse in the next couple years. Any success in the playoffs this year will push their 2022 draft picks down the selection order.
4. Boston Bruins
Reasons to root against them: I think the city of Boston has won enough over the last 20 years don’t you think?
Reasons to root for them: The Bruins’ first-round draft pick this year belongs to the Anaheim Ducks, so much like the Kraken second-round picks, the better the Bruins do, the later the pick. If the Bruins do win the Cup, their first-round draft pick that now belongs to the Ducks will be the last selection in the first round.
3. Dallas Stars
Reasons to root against them: Is the fact that they play a lot of metal in the arena a good enough reason to root against them? OK, we gotta come clean here, we could not come up with a decent reason to root against them.
Reasons to root for them: They are playing Calgary in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and they have an “old man without a Cup” in Joe Pavelski.
2. Colorado Avalanche
Reasons to root against them: Can we just assume that Nazem Kadri will do some predatorial hit on somebody in the playoffs that will make him a heel to hockey fans outside of Colorado (Exhibits A, B, and C)?
Reasons to root for them: Seeing a fully operational lineup with healthy Gabriel Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen sounds like must-watch hockey.
1. Tampa Bay Lightning
Reasons to root against them: They have won the last two Stanley Cups.
Reasons to root for them: They play the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round.
We hope this helps guide your rooting interests throughout the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and if you have a different take on why or why not root for a team, please leave a note in the comments section of this post.
We have been seeing some eye-popping goal totals in games across the NHL, so we thought it would be a good time to dig into the numbers to investigate if there has been a significant increase in goal scoring across the NHL.
Average goals scored by game
As you can see above, scoring is up to 6.30 goals per game compared to 5.9 last year. There could be several reasons for this increase.
Seattle: Adding a 32nd franchise to the league does dilute the talent across the league, which creates more mistakes and more scoring. It is pretty challenging to show the impact, but we need to acknowledge this could be a factor.
COVID: Last season and a good part of this season were disrupted by COVID. It impacted team schedules, practice days, and personnel decisions, and although players and coaches won’t typically admit it, this had to have taken a toll on teams on the ice.
Youth Movement: There are several pundits covering the league that have suggested that the next generation of goal scorers is leaving its mark on the league. Debunked.
Based on the chart above, there is not a strong connection of youth scoring and the increase on scoring across the league. Players that are 24 or younger only account for 21 percent of the goals scored across the league this year compared to 26 percent of goals last year.
Empty-Net Goals: Over the last 10 seasons, the trend is for coaches to pull goalies earlier and earlier to give themselves a chance to win. This is creating more opportunity for empty-net goals.
…And while we are here, we might as well show this chart of the number of empty-net goals against by team.
Ouch. This should be no surprise to Kraken fans who saw enough empty-net goals against to last a lifetime.
Scoring for and against by NHL team
Here is how scoring breaks down by team and how it has changed from last season.
Florida had the biggest increase in scoring year over year and is currently leading the league in average goals scored per game. If the Dallas Stars make the playoffs, they will have the lowest-scoring team in the postseason, though they are just .01 goals per game behind the Los Angeles Kings in this metric.
Conversely, this is how the scoring sizes up for goals against.
Of the NHL Stanley Cup playoff teams, the Toronto Maple Leafs are allowing the most goals per game in the league, and it will certainly be something to keep an eye on when the playoffs start next week.
Goal differential
Goal scoring is great, but are the games still competitive? No one wants to see blowouts. To get a better idea of the competitiveness of games, we can look at the average margin of victory.
On the surface, the games appear to be getting less competitive. However, when you account for the .06 increase in empty-net goals scored per game year over year, the average margin of victory would be 2.23.
Scoring outlook
Will this trend continue?
Here is one last chart that shows you the distribution of players’ goal scoring by age.
Scoring is up across the league, but it would be a stretch to say that we are entering a new boom of scoring in the league, especially considering the top 10 goal scorers are very familiar faces. Additionally, it would be hard to identify the next generation of players that will backfill guys like Auston Matthews, Leon Draisaitl, and Connor McDavid.
With the NHL trade deadline just four weeks away, we thought it would be a good time to look at previous trade deadlines to help prepare on what to expect over the coming month. This will be focused on the league as a whole and not necessarily on how the Kraken might approach the deadline, but don’t worry, we will write about what to expect from the Kraken in the coming weeks as well.
Ramping up to the trade deadline
So far, the ramp has been slow compared to past years, even with the two trades made in the last week. There typically aren’t that many done at this stage in the season anyway, but it’s worth noting that we’re lagging a little.
In the past five seasons, roughly 80 percent of the trades during this four-week window have occurred in the final week before the deadline. The lesson here is to try to exhibit patience if Seattle has still not traded anyone headed into the final week.
Here is how the totals look by season.
It is interesting to look at the drop last season from the prior season. This could be driven my salary cap constraints adding to the difficulty of getting deals done and also the challenges of getting players into and out of Canada. We will have to monitor the volume of trades this year to see if that drop in 2020-21 is the start of a trend or just a blip on the radar.
Let’s make a deal
Every team has a different set of needs and assets around the trade deadline that varies from season to season, so using historical data to predict a team’s future behavior is somewhat futile. Even so, we thought it was still worth looking at the quantity of trades each team has done around the trade deadline over the last five years.
One thing that was interesting is that there were four teams that did not make a trade prior to the deadline last year: Arizona, Dallas, Minnesota, and St. Louis. In 2019-20, all teams made at least one trade. Again, the flat cap situation facing all teams could be a contributor here.
Trade deadline asset mix
At a high level, there are only two assets a team can trade: draft picks and players. Here is how that has broken down over the last five seasons.
There is a bit of nuance to the player assets, as some could be NHLers or prospects (AHL/CHL), and some deals could just be for signing rights. Signing rights deals are done for players that might have been drafted in years prior but for various reasons might not have signed their standard NHL entry deal. These would include drafted players that are still playing in college, for example.
Here is how the player assets breakdown.
Breakdown of traded draft picks
For Seattle Kraken fans, something to keep an eye on is the draft picks that will be trading hands, specifically what draft pick assets could be traded to Seattle. Here is a look at all the draft picks that changed hands over the last five seasons.
The important piece of information here is that it is rare to trade a first-round draft pick during the trade deadline. If you were hoping Mark Giordano would snag a first-round pick, it is certainly possible but could be a challenge as teams seem less willing to part with their top picks.
As a team that clearly will not be making the playoffs this year, the Seattle Kraken have several player assets that could be moved in the next four weeks. Our hope is sharing these historical trade deadline numbers gives you context and a different perspective on evaluating trades as we march toward the trade deadline.
If you have an questions, takes, or predictions, leave them in the comments section.
