On this week’s Sound of Hockey, the guys welcome another great guest from the Seattle Kraken in Andrew Allen.
Andrew is the pro scout that’s focusing on goaltending for the new
franchise, and he has tons of fascinating insight to share on the position. He also played in the AHL and ECHL as a netminder, and has served as the head goalie coach for the Buffalo Sabres and the Japanese National Team. Andrew has some fantastic stories to share. Oh, and Darren manages to get him to participate in Goalie Gear Corner.
Good chatter amongst John, Andy, and Darren this week as well, particularly in the segments, which include You Don’t See That Every Day, Weekly One-Timers, and Tweets of the Week.
We’ve already talked about the impending cap crunch that most of the teams in the league will be facing. The impact has been very evident during the first 18 days of NHL Free Agency where the teams aren’t spending as much as they have in the past couple of years.
Here is the breakdown of the current dollars committed through day #18 of the free agent period and how it stacks up to the prior 3 years.
Of course, the total committed dollars is not the whole story. It’s also important to view the average annual value (Cap Hit) and average term of the contracts. Both are down double digits from last year at this point in time. Here is an interactive dashboard to let you explore the numbers by team.
So teams are signing roughly the same amount of players in the same timeframe, but signing them for less money and for shorter term deals.
And for the heck of it, here is a comparable to how each team is spending and the number of players they have signed this free agent period.
The shorter deals and cap crunch are all good news for the Kraken as they get ready for the Expansion Draft next summer. This won’t be a one-year trend as the cap is projected to stay flat next year as well due to lost revenue of partial season with optimistically, limited fans in the buildings.
Big-time guests on Sound of Hockey this week, as not one but two brilliant minds from the Seattle Kraken’s analytics department join the show for a fun and informative chat. Namita Nandakumar and Dani Chu bring tons of deep data-driven knowledge to the team and to the episode. You won’t want to miss this!
Also in this episode, the guys share some thoughts on the retirement of Doc Emrick, and John shares his story of meeting the broadcasting legend. Plus, some discussion of the latest free agent signings and trades in the NHL, and updates on various leagues returning to play.
A week after coaching the Washington Capitals to the 2018 Stanley Cup championship, Barry Trotz was spotted getting off a plane at Sea-Tac Airport. The news spread quickly and Seattle hockey fans took to social media, breathlessly speculating he was in Seattle to interview for the head coach job with the yet to be named NHL Seattle franchise.
The excitement was and is understandable.
He was on the market as his contract with the Capitals had expired and is considered one of the best in the business. It didn’t matter to fans that Seattle had not officially been awarded an NHL franchise, nor that it had no general manger to interview Trotz. He had a Stanley Cup ring and that made him attractive.
As it turned out, Trotz was grabbing a connecting flight to Canada and ended up signing with the New York Islanders shortly after.
It happened again this past season when the Toronto Maple Leafs fired Mike Babcock. Another Stanley Cup winner was available and despite his prickly nature, and questionable tactics with players, there were calls for him to be the first head coach in Seattle.
We are a season away from the Seattle Kraken first season and they have yet to hire a bench boss. Finding that first coach could happen at any time and will be the next big hire for the franchise. General Manager Ron Francis said earlier this summer that the team was going to wait until the 2019-2020 season concluded before exploring a coach hire.
Once the Tampa Bay Lightning raised the Cup in October, Seattle went on the clock.
The goal is to win a championship so why not hire a guy with a ring? Babcock is still available but the fall out from his time in Toronto makes him an unlikely candidate. Will his track record of success sway Francis?
While its enticing to get an experienced Cup winner behind the bench, history tells us that the chances another championship is on the way are slim.
In fact, since 1968 only one coach has won the Stanley Cup with more than one team. Scotty Bowman won the Cup with the Montreal Canadiens, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Detroit Red Wings and nobody else comes close.
Unfortunately, Bowman has retired from coaching and is not available. As investment bankers will warn, past performance does not predict future earnings so at some point a coach will match Bowman and win the Cup with multiple teams. The odds are long however and perhaps Seattle should cast a wider net for its coach.
It’s expected that Francis will look to an experienced coach who has been behind the bench of an NHL team in the past. Due to the nature of being an expansion team, that makes sense. The team Francis pulls together at the expansion draft will have to learn how to play with each other so having a leader who doesn’t have to also learn how to be an NHL coach is a plus.
But does an experienced coach promise better success than a guy coaching in the league for the first time?
Of the 31 current coaches in the NHL, 20 had been head coaches in the league prior to holding their current position. That includes Lindy Ruff in New Jersey and Peter Laviolette in Washington, both of whom were hired in the offseason .
Only two of those coaches have won the Stanley Cup with their current teams (St. Louis’ Craig Berube and Pittsburgh’s Mike Sullivan) while 13 have made the playoffs. Both Trotz with the Islanders and Peter DeBoer with Vegas have coached their current team to the conference finals – both of which occurred this past postseason.
DeBoer is one of three of the experienced coaches who have reached the Final with two different franchises, getting there with the Devils in 2012 and San Jose in 2016. Philadelphia had a good season with the experienced Alain Vigneault behind the bench and he made previous Final runs with Vancouver in 2011 and with the New York Rangers in 2014. Laviolette has yet to coach a game for the Capitals but he won the Cup with the Carolina Hurricanes in 2006 while losing the Final with the Philadelphia Flyers in 2010 and Nashville in 2017.
Having an experienced coach can lead to success in terms of making the playoffs and reaching the Final. During the last ten Stanley Cup Finals, only one team was coached on either the winning or losing side by a guy in his first stint as a head coach.
That one coach is Jon Cooper who has lost and won with Tampa Bay. Cooper is one of 11 coaches who are currently working their first NHL bench and of those, eight have reached the postseason. Outside of Cooper, Carolina’s Rod Brind’Amour has guided his club the furthest, reaching the Eastern Conference championship in 2019.
It’s difficult to judge the new coaches as they haven’t coached long enough to make conclusions but it is clear that an inexperienced coach doesn’t necessarily mean your team won’t or can’t be successful.
Colorado’s Jared Bednar and Vancouver’s Travis Green are first time coaches who have young teams overflowing with talent and could be in for successful runs in the near future.
Coaching matters in the NHL. The head coach does more than dump a bucket of pucks on the ice at practice. He has to establish the roster, line combinations, goalie rotations, defensive pairings, power-play strategy, break outs, neutral zone systems, faceoff set plays, the penalty kill, forechecks, and find chemistry among his players. Finding the right match is vital.
Francis will bear a lot of the responsibility here.
Not only will it be his decision as to who steps behind the Kraken bench for game one, but he will pick the players on the roster. A good coach can squeeze wins out of talent but if there is none, that coach will have a hard time winning. Did Joel Quenneville suddenly become a good coach when he got to Chicago and won three Cups after limited success in St. Louis and Colorado? Or was the difference that he had Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews?
Experienced or not, Francis will need to give the Kraken first coach something to work with.
Seattle needs a coach who can work with a mix of players who have not played together before. Former Vegas head man, Gerrard Gallant, is the only head coach who has experienced the modern expansion process. He had success and is available after being fired mid-season this past year.
Could he be a Seattle candidate? Does he want to go through expansion again? Gallant feels like a match, but one has to wonder why Seattle hasn’t talked to him already. Nothing has stopped the Kraken from reaching out and there haven’t been any reports of those talks happening.
Francis has time to make a choice, but the clock is ticking. Will he choose a coach who has been through the NHL grind before? Or will he look to a younger, hungrier, greener coach who’s been a successful as an assistant or head coach in a lower level to lead the Kraken?
With the NHL Draft and the opening of free agency, the Sound Of Hockey guys have a lot to cover in a short time this week, so they follow-up last week’s introduction to “Interesting or Carry On?” with an extended version of the fledgling segment this week.
Together, John, Andy, and Darren give a quick run-down of all 31 teams and their recent moves, deciding along the way which clubs deserve a little more attention.
Other segments this week include Weekly One-Timers and Tweets of the Week.
Free agency is upon us and, even though the Seattle Kraken will not be participating, there are still things to keep an eye on this year that could impact the Kraken down the road.
Here are my top 5 things to keep an eye on during free agency.
The NMC
Look for any players signing deals that have a Full No-Move Clause (NMC). NMC’s are generally reserved for the cream of the crop of free agent players. A NMC means that the team must protect the player in next summer’s Expansion Draft. It is highly likely that these players would be protected without the NMC, but the NMC will limit teams’ options. Anything that restricts other teams’ options and flexibility should be considered a good thing for Seattle.
Cap Crunch teams
All teams will be impacted by the flat salary cap related to COVID-19 lost revenues, but the more teams spend to the cap, then the more vulnerable these teams will be during the Expansion Draft. This could benefit Seattle during the Expansion Draft in 2 ways:
Teams could expose some high-value, high-cap-hit players with the hopes that Seattle selects these players to shed some salary cap. Of course, this doesn’t mean Seattle will select this player, so let’s go to #2.
Similar to what happen in the Vegas Expansion Draft, teams could negotiate side deals with Seattle to shed some high salary players in an effort to create more salary cap space to sign pending RFAs or other UFAs in 2021. Anaheim traded Shea Theodore to Vegas for taking Clayton Stoner and Winnipeg traded a 1st round pick and a 3rd round pick for in exchange for Vegas selecting Chris Thorburn Bottom line we want teams to spend to their limit.
Shea Theodore was traded to Vegas from Anaheim as compensation for Vegas selecting Clayton Stoner in the 2017 Expansion Draft. (Photo by Jeff Speer/Icon Sportswire)
Goalies Carousel
This is certainly the trendy topic leading into the free agency period and for good reason. This year will probably see the most goalies change teams that the league has ever seen in any prior offseason. There are some high-profile goalies that will change teams this year. Corey Crawford (CHI), Jacob Markstrom (VAN), and Braden Holtby (WAS) are likely to change homes. For the 30 teams participating in the 2021 Expansion Draft (Vegas is exempt), each team will only be able to protect one goalie, so goalie signings this free agent period should give us a better sense of which goalies get exposed in the upcoming expansion draft next summer.
Short Term Deals
Keep an eye out for short term deals, as in really short. The scenario here is that a big time free agent signs a one-year deal with the hopes of either winning a championship with a well-positioned team or the player might take a one-year deal with the hope that they can sign a more lucrative deal with a team that has a lot of cap space…as in Seattle. This would be the Taylor Hall to Colorado on a 1-year deal.
Crowded Blue Lines
Alex Pietrangelo (STL), Torey Krug (BOS), Tyson Barrie (TOR), Kevin Shattenkirk (TBL), TJ Brodie (CGY), and Sami Vatanen (CAR) are all likely to find new homes in free agency. Wherever they sign, odds are decent that they will be protected, which means that some other defender will be exposed. There are several teams that already have some interesting decisions to make regarding who to protect on the blue line in the upcoming Expansion Draft. Having more teams with crowded blue lines will expose more talent and will be better for Seattle.
Several of these scenarios might not play out and we still expect some more roster movement leading up to the 2021 Expansion Draft, but we are starting to put the cake in the oven. We should have a better idea how it will turn out very shortly during this free agency period.
