Photo Gallery – Kraken vs Lightning – Jan 16th
All photos taken by Brian Liesse. Photos are property of Sound Of Hockey and cannot be reused.
Three Takeaways – Kraken win streak ends at eight games with 4-1 loss to Lightning
The Seattle Kraken players and their head coach were not hanging their heads after losing 4-1 to the Tampa Bay Lightning Monday afternoon. Even with a perfect seven-game road trip in the rearview, you just knew coming in that this was going to be a tough one, and although the result wasn’t what the group wanted, Seattle performed admirably.
Seattle stayed within reach of the Lightning for the entirety of the game, and if it could have gotten things going offensively just a little earlier, we could have seen a ninth consecutive victory.
Alas, the win streak was snapped at eight, as the Kraken dropped the first game of this odd set of back-to-backs with travel.
Here are our Three Takeaways from a 4-1 Kraken loss to the Lightning.
Takeaway #1: No excuses, but also there are lots of excuses
Vince Dunn, who scored Seattle’s lone goal and extended his career-best point streak to seven games, said there were no excuses for a relatively slow Kraken start Monday. “We had a whole day yesterday, we had the morning off this morning,” Dunn said. “So, we’re at home, we’re in our beds. There’s no excuse why we come out a little flat.”
BUT… It was plain to see the deck was stacked against the Kraken for this one. The first game after a long road trip is always a tough one, but that wasn’t the only thing working against the group. Add in a rare 1 p.m. start time, no morning skate, a very tough opponent, and the comedown that surely followed a record-setting perfect seven-game road trip, and the Kraken were ripe for a loss.
“That’s part of the NHL schedule, right?” Hakstol said. “It’s not one you look at on the schedule and say, ‘Well, this is going to be an easy one to be at the top of your game.’ But I felt like our group was good. They were ready to go.”
Predictably, the home side looked slow in the first period against a Tampa Bay team that was buzzing and pumped 15 shots on Philipp Grubauer. Seattle did well to keep most opportunities to the outside, and Grubauer came up big to bail them out a few times.
The Bolts broke through late in the first period, though, after what looked like an opportunity to clear the puck bounced right off Ryan Donato and onto Corey Perry’s stick. Perry fed Ian Cole at the point, who blasted away. Cole’s shot was off target, but Pierre-Edouard Bellemare got his stick on it and redirected it around Grubauer.
Keeping the deficit to just one goal after that frame was a small victory that made us think we might see a breakout in the second period. But the Kraken didn’t generate like they did on the road trip, and Nick Paul’s goal 6:44 into the third would end up being enough for the Bolts.
Dunn had an unfortunate unofficial assist on Paul’s goal after he lost control of the puck behind Seattle’s net. He joked that he made up for it with his third-period goal that got Seattle back within one. “Goals at home are always big,” Dunn said. “It gets the crowd back into it. For myself, I definitely owed the boys one by letting that second goal get through me there.”
Coach Dave Hakstol summed up the afternoon well. “In the first period, our bigger issue was coming out of the zone,” Hakstol said. “The second period, we didn’t shoot a whole lot of pucks inside. They’re a tough team to get inside on. They box you out early, so you got to find a way to get inside and win that race inside early, and then shoot pucks inside. We weren’t able to do that. We did a little bit more of it in the third.”
Onward and upward for the Kraken, who now have the pleasure of going right back out on the road to play Connor McDavid and the Oilers again on Tuesday. No excuses.
Takeaway #2: Tampa Bay is still very good
When you pay close attention to a particular team, it’s easy to nitpick its performance and hang the outcome of a game entirely on that team (in our case, the Kraken). But sometimes you need to give credit where it’s due, and the Lightning again showed why they have been so good over these last few years.
“They won two Stanley Cups, they’ve been really successful over the last couple years,” said Grubauer. “They know what they’re doing. They’re really good within their system, and then they have the skill to make plays happen outside their system.”
The Kraken, who had been scoring goals at will over the previous eight games, mustered just 12 measly shots through the first two periods.
The Bolts are just so efficient in all three zones. As soon as you get the puck, they are on you. If you’re trying to get the puck out of your own end, you better be on the money with your passing, or they will make you pay. And if you want to generate sustained offense, you simply have to outwork them. That did not happen Monday.
“They’ve got good players, and they play within good structure,” said Hakstol. “There’s big bodies that take away time and space very well.”
One of those big bodies is Victor Hedman. Every time it seemed like something was cooking for Seattle, Hedman—who we could have sworn played the entire game—would magically appear to break up the opportunity. In fact, the big Swede rejected a sure Jared McCann goal in the second period when he calmly intercepted a Donato pass in the crease. In all, Hedman led all players in the game with 26:09 of ice time and scored one of Tampa Bay’s two empty-net goals.
Hedman is just one of Tampa Bay’s many stars. The Lightning are still good.
Takeaway #3: Are both goalies going?
It seems like both goalies are going for the Kraken right now. Hakstol has again been relying heavily on Martin Jones, who was named the NHL’s No. 1 star of the week with a 3-0-0 record and two shutouts.
But, we’ve long believed getting both goalies clicking at the same time would be what gets this team to new heights. That seems to be happening right now, and the loss Monday came despite Grubauer kicking out 29 of 31 shots.
“Both guys have been good,” Hakstol said. “You look at Jonesy’s win-loss record, you look at Grubi’s performances over the past four or five [outings], he’s been solid.”
Hakstol may have forgotten about Grubauer’s start against Edmonton on Dec. 30, when he gave up three goals on five shots. But, if you take that game out, Grubauer has a .931 save percentage in his other three starts since Dec. 28. Meanwhile, it goes without saying that Jones has been stellar, earning every bit of his 21-5-3 record on the season.
Grubauer really was good Monday, and as has often been the case for him this season, deserved a better outcome. His best save came late in the second period when Mikhail Sergachev hit Corey Perry on the doorstep. Grubauer did a painful-looking full split and robbed Perry with his skate.
“No, it didn’t hurt,” Grubauer said with a laugh. “I think I got a little lucky. The stick broke too, and he shot it right into me. Obviously for [goalies], it’s a really difficult play, because you’ve got to travel so far to get back there, but got lucky, made the save, and on we go to the next one.”
If both goalies keep going, Hakstol is going to have some tough decisions to make down the stretch as to which netminder starts each night. And that would be a very good problem to have.
The Seattle Kraken are lighting up the scoreboard. Is it sustainable?
As we pass the halfway point of the season, the Seattle Kraken offense is humming. The Kraken scored six goals on their first seven shots in Chicago on Saturday night en route to eight goals in a victory.
Through games played on Saturday, Jan. 14, the Kraken rank first in the Western Conference and are tied for second overall—behind just Buffalo and tied with Boston—in goals per game with 3.76 per game. Seattle leads the entire NHL in five-on-five scoring with 2.76 goals per game. The next closest team, the New Jersey Devils, has scored just 2.45 per game in these regular manpower situations.
This is astounding for a team not only lacking in high-end star power but also coming off an inaugural season in which it struggled to generate consistent offense. Last season the Kraken tied for 28th in the NHL in goal scoring with just 2.60 goals per game. If I told you before the puck dropped on the 2022-23 regular season that Seattle would be second in overall scoring at the halfway mark, you would have been justified in scoffing.
So how has this happened? We know that many Kraken players are contributing. Seattle has more players with eight or more goals than any other team in the league. And, as we mentioned, we know the team has found a lot of success at even strength.
The Jarny-Burky Problem
But Seattle is not winning by raiding its opponents with shots. Per Evolving Hockey, the Kraken rank 19th overall in total shots on goal per 60 minutes (called “corsi”) and 17th in total unblocked shots on goal per 60 (called “fenwick”).
The team is not generating inordinately dangerous chances either, ranking between 15th and 24th in various “expected goals for” (or “xGF”) models, depending on the source consulted. Expected goals is a metric that ascribes an expected goal probability based on league average performance for each shot the team has taken. (If you’re still lost on the concept of “expected goals,” check out this explainer from Alison Lukan.)
Finally, the team is not dominating with a manpower advantage, converting just 21.1 percent of the time (18th in the league) and tallying just 26 power-play goals overall (tied for 22nd in the league).
This leaves only one explanation for the scoring: The team is shooting the lights out of just about every arena it plays in. And, sure enough, the team’s 12.62 percent shooting percentage is the highest in the league. The next closest team, Buffalo, has an 11.92 percent shooting percentage. The average team in the 2022-23 season is shooting 10.09 percent. Assuming 30 shots on goal in a game, Seattle’s advantage over the average team is the difference between scoring 3.8 goals per game versus 3.0 goals per game.
This is huge. It is the margin between a lot of wins and losses. Last year Seattle scored on just 8.95 percent of the shots it took, and that season ended with just 60 standings points.
Visualizations by HockeyViz.
What do we make of all of this? It turns out shooting percentage is very prone to “narrative.” “It’s just a handful of lucky bounces,” one might say; “It is not sustainable.” Another could look at the same data point and conclude the team has great shooters; this is a skill and no reason to think it will just disappear.
This is the so called “Jarny-Burky” conundrum John Barr, Darren Brown, and Andy Eide discussed on Episode 222 of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast.
Sure, the Kraken’s offensive success this season has been driven in large part by a much improved shooting percentage. But is it luck? Or is it because the Kraken upgraded their shooting talent? For example, the team replaced career 12.0 percent shooter, Calle Jarnkrok (“Jarny”), with a career 14.4 percent shooter in Andre Burakovsky (“Burky”)—hence, “Jarny-Burky.”
Calle Jarnkrok skating during a 2021-22 Seattle Kraken home game. (Photo/Brian Liesse)
Methodology
One way to look at this would be to compare Seattle players’ shooting percentage against their career norms. Through the game on Saturday, Jan. 14, Seattle has scored 158 goals. If I replaced every player’s 2022-23 shooting percentage with their career average shooting percentage, the Kraken would have just 138 goals this season.
This rudimentary approach suggests that the Kraken may be getting quite “lucky” in their results this season, but it does not account for many factors that may explain this difference. For example, scoring and shooting percentages are up across the board in recent seasons. And looking at a player’s relative shooting percentage alone does not account for the relative quality of the player’s chances this year versus the remainder of the player’s career. Is there anything else we can try?
Money Puck has tracked a statistic it calls “shooting talent above average” that is potentially illuminating, even if it too has some limitations. The statistic is compiled by comparing a player’s historical goals scored against the player’s projected “expected goals” for his shots.
If a player—like Alex Ovechkin, for example—is consistently scoring more frequently from areas of the ice than how he is “expected” to perform, one can reasonably surmise that the player is an above-average shooter. The opposite suggests a below-average shooter. Money Puck takes this player-specific historical performance, regresses it, and assigns a talent adjustment to his shots when calculating that individual’s expected goals. This produces what the site calls “shooting talent-adjusted expected goals.”
Money Puck describes these metrics this way:
Shooting Talent Above Average: A player’s ability to score more goals than an average player given the same scoring opportunities. This is based on a player’s historical track record of exceeding their expected goals. A player with a shooting talent above average of 20 percent would have a 12 percent chance of scoring a goal on a shot with expected goal value of 0.1.
Shooting Talent-Adjusted Expected Goals: Expected goals * (1 + Shooting Talent Above Average). This is the number of goals a player is expected to score given their expected goals and their shooting talent.
Per Money Puck, Alex Ovechkin has 29 goals on shots worth 24.3 unadjusted “expected goals.” Has he been lucky? Money Puck suggests the answer is no. Turns out, his “talent-adjusted expected goals” is precisely 29.0. In other words, his shooting is right in line with what we would anticipate him to deliver.
Skill or luck?
Money Puck compiles this data at the player level. But one could then aggregate the data at a team level by gathering it for all players who have taken the ice in 2022-23. Then the task is to interpret how much of the delta between a team’s actual goals scored and xGF is “luck” and how much is “skill.”
To get at the question of how much is attributable to the team’s shooting “skill,” we compare a team’s aggregate expected goals with a team’s aggregate talent-adjusted expected goals. For example, if a team has 140 aggregate expected goals, but 146 aggregate talent-adjusted expected goals, we can conclude that, based on historical performance, this is an above-average shooting team that could be expected to overperform its unadjusted expected goals.
To get at “luck,” we compare the team’s actual goals scored with its talent-adjusted expected goals. If a team has scored 130 goals, but the measure suggests the team’s shots were worth 139 talent-adjusted expected goals, one conclusion might be that the team has been a bit “unlucky.”
Skepticism is warranted
I conducted this study and it returned some very intriguing outcomes. That said, before we proceed, I want to inject a healthy degree of humility and skepticism into the discussion. This approach lends the veneer of precision to this analysis that is not warranted. If a team has 138 goals on 124 expected goals and 128 talent-adjusted expected goals, I don’t think we want to suggest that exactly four of the goals scored above expected were skill-related and 10 were luck-related. Instead, it’s fairer to say, the team is above average at shooting so it could be expected to outperform its unadjusted expected goal totals.
Furthermore, it is fairly presumptuous to call currently unexplained outcomes “luck.” There could be a variety of explanations for why a team outperforms or underperforms its talent-adjusted expected goals, and we’ll return to a few of those at the end of this post.
The findings
With those caveats out of the way, let’s get to it. Looking at “skill” first, through games on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023, the Kraken generated the fourth largest positive differential between their team expected goals and team talent-adjusted expected goals. The team had generated 129.9 expected goals, but 139.3 talent-adjusted expected goals, a 9.4-goal differential. This shooting talent value added is behind just Tampa Bay (13.1), Washington (11.7), and Pittsburgh (10). In other words, when comparing the shots actually taken by all players in the NHL, Seattle’s players generated the fourth most shooting value over average.
Looking at skill-driven results outside Seattle, St. Louis (8.4) rounds out the top five. The bottom five are San Jose (-3.7), Los Angeles (-2.8), Philadelphia (-2.5), Buffalo (-1.9), and Arizona (-1.6).
(Left to right) Vince Dunn, Daniel Sprong, and Yanni Gourde celebrate a goal. (Photo/Brian Liesse)
Looking now beyond skill, the Kraken had the third largest positive differential between their team talent-adjusted expected goals and their actual team goals. The team has 139.3 talent-adjusted expected goals, but 151 actual goals (as of the Jan. 12 games), an 11.8 goal differential. This differential is third in the league behind just Buffalo and Vancouver. This suggests that even when adjusting the value of every team’s shots for the shooting talent of the players on those teams, the Kraken have still over-performed expectations by the third most in the league. This large delta suggests the team has been quite lucky. (Following the Chicago game, I’d expect this gap grew.)
League-wide, Buffalo and Vancouver are at the top, with 17.2 and 16.8 surplus goals above their aggregate talent-adjusted expected goals. Then comes Seattle (11.8) and Los Angeles (11.6) close together. Detroit then rounds out the top five (7.2). At the other end, two teams appear extremely snakebitten in the luck department, Nashville (-31.9) and Ottawa (-29.9). Florida (-23.9), Tampa Bay (-20.3), and Pittsburgh (-20.2) round out the bottom five.
Are the Kraken both lucky and good?
Before concluding, I want to reiterate that there are limitations to the approach described in this article. The Money Puck talent adjustment method will not capture the shooting talent of rookie players since there is no historical track record for comparison. And even if there is a track record, a player’s historical over-performance of his expected goals may not be indicative that the strong scoring is going to continue. It certainly does a better job of accounting for context than our original shooting percentage method, but it’s still imperfect.
That said, I think we can say confidently that the Kraken have been both exceptionally lucky and exceptionally good with their shooting this year. These results confirm our suspicion that at least some of Seattle’s goal scoring success has been the product of good fortune and cannot be expected to continue at this breakneck pace. On the other hand, there is no reason to expect that Seattle will regress to an average shooting team. The skill is there to perform at or near the top of the league in shooting percentage moving forward. (Particularly with the recent addition of Eeli Tolvanen.)
When accounting for shooting talent, Seattle’s xGF ranks 16th in the league according to Money Puck—roughly average. Middle of the league may be a reasonable expectation moving forward. (That said, Money Puck’s unadjusted expected goal model is more pessimistic on the Kraken than most. I’d probably put the Kraken somewhere in the 12-to-16 range in overall scoring moving forward.) If the Kraken want to stay at the top of the league in scoring, they’re likely going to need to do more in other areas, such as improving shot quality or invigorating the power play.
* * *
What do you think? Is Seattle’s offense sustainable over the second half of the season, or should we expect some significant regression?
Kraken set NHL record by sweeping seven-game road trip after 8-5 win over Chicago
The Kraken took any drama out of their attempt at NHL history Saturday in the first period. Trying to win a record seventh straight game on a road trip, as well as a franchise-best eighth straight overall, Seattle scored six times in the first period on their way to an 8-5 win against the Chicago Blackhawks at the United Center.
The Kraken became the first team in NHL history to win all seven games on a seven-game road trip. They head home after banking all 14 standings points available on the road and have not lost since the calendar turned to 2023.
“The two points are what matters,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “It’s a great accomplishment for the players to do that. It shows the consistency and work they’ve put in to start this road trip. For me it’s more about the players and accomplishment and consistency in play throughout the road trip.”
Opening the game by scoring six times on their first seven shots, the Kraken built a lead that was insurmountable and got all their players involved. All 12 forwards recorded a point in the first period. Defenseman Adam Larsson ended with a plus-seven mark and his partner had a plus-six rating.
“It was a crazy first period,” Hakstol said. “We had a couple of nice offensive plays, we had a couple that had eyes and found the back of the net, so obviously it’s a positive way to start a hockey game. There’s a long way to go from there. Our second period was pretty sloppy, our third was pretty good until the last couple of minutes. We don’t like giving up a couple of late goals.”
By the game’s end, 15 of Seattle’s 18 skaters had recorded at least one point.
Jared McCann recorded his first NHL hat trick, Matty Beniers and Oliver Bjorkstrand each had a goal and assist, and Yanni Gourde, Ryan Donato, and Alex Wennberg chipped in a pair of assists each. Martin Jones made 22 saves for the Kraken (26-12-4), who look to make it nine straight wins Monday afternoon at home against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“[The first period] was a tough period (mentally),” McCann said. “You can’t sit back, and we did in the second and third period. It showed in our play but mentally for players, it’s tough to go through something like that, when you have to just stick with it.”
Taylor Raddysh had a goal and two assists, and Jonathan Toews and Max Domi each had a goal and assist for Chicago (11-26-4), who had won three in a row. Defenseman Isaak Phillips scored his first NHL goal and Seth Jones had three assists. Petr Mrazek started for the Blackhawks but was replaced by Alex Stalock after allowing four goals on five shots. Stalock played 47:50 of game time and made 21 saves in relief.
It started early for Seattle who went up 1-0 at 2:50 of the first when Morgan Geekie sent Sprong in alone, and he slid in his 14th of the season.
Chicago tied the game 1-1 at 4:40 when a Toews shot went off Jamie Oleksiak’s stick and past Jones. But the game wasn’t close after that when the Kraken scored five unanswered goals.
Seattle scored five times over the next 3:59 on goals from Beniers, McCann, Andre Burakovsky, Eeli Tolvanen, and a second by McCann.
The Blackhawks scored the only goal in the second period, by Phillips, to cut the lead to 6-2 after two periods. Domi made it 6-3 with a power-play goal 51 seconds into the third period to get everyone’s attention, but McCann answered with his hat trick goal at 1:54 and Bjorkstrand followed with his seventh of the year at 2:37.
Raddysh and Patrick Kane scored cosmetic goals in the game’s final four minutes for the 8-5 final.
“Whatever we are doing out there, it seems to work,” Larsson, who did not know Seattle had set a record, said. “Obviously we’ve been having a lot of fun lately and moving forward, now we’ve got a lot of games in a short span, so 24 hours rest now and we’re back at it.”
McCann scoring
With the hat trick, McCann upped his goal total to 22 on the season which is only five off his career best of 27 that he scored last season.
“My linemates created a lot of ice space for me,” McCann said. “Ryan [Donato] was huge, he’s a big boy out there, he was able to find me in the slot there and I was able to put it in. I’m very fortunate to play with two very skilled players.”
McCann has reached the second-best total in his career, and Saturday’s hat trick was the first of his career. He came into the game with a scorching 25.7 shooting percentage, and he’s doing it all by averaging 1.9 shots per game. With a deeper Kraken roster, that’s a little below last season when he averaged above two shots per game.
“His shot, I mean it’s world class,” Larsson said. “I don’t know how many he has but he’s having a career year already. We’ve had scoring from everybody in the lineup this year. It’s been nice but now and after the All-Star break, that’s when we really have to elevate our game.”
Tentacle Tales
- McCann’s hat trick was the first for Seattle this season and the second in franchise history.
- Jordan Eberle has the other Kraken hat trick and Saturday played in his 900th career NHL game.
- Jaden Schwartz was a scratch Saturday. Hakstol said the winger was day to day but would not go into detail as to what the injury was.
- The Kraken scored eight goals for the fourth time this year which is the most in the NHL. The last team to do that was the 2011-12 Pittsburgh Penguins.
- Seattle outscored its opponents on the road trip by a combined 37-15 for an NHL record +22 goal differential for a road trip of seven games or more.
- After two straight shutouts, Jones’ shutout streak ended at 139:20, which is the fourth-longest streak in the NHL this season.
Kraken Contracts: Why haven’t Kraken filled 23-man roster? Deadline adds?
I’ve been thinking about two questions making the rounds this week; will the Kraken fill the open spot on the active roster? And will the Kraken add a piece at the deadline? These are multi-faceted questions, but they relate in part to the specialty of this Kraken Contracts series: the collective bargaining agreement and, specifically, the calculation of a team’s cap space.
Before getting back to these two top-line questions later in the post, though, we have to start at the beginning. How much salary cap space does the team have, and how is it calculated? Let’s start there.
Remember, if you have any questions you would like to see addressed in future posts, feel free to reach out on twitter (@deepseahockey or @sound_hockey) or in the comments below.
How much salary cap space does Seattle have? (And why will the answer be different tomorrow?)
For the 2022-23 season, the salary cap (or “team payroll range upper limit” as it’s called in the CBA) is $82,500,000.
A team’s contracts count against the salary cap based on the average annual value (“AAV”) of the contract.
Example. Presume a player signs a two-year standard player contract with Seattle that actually pays him a total salary of $2 million in year one and $3 million in year two. The contract would nonetheless carry a cap hit of $2.5 million each season because the contract has a $2.5 million AAV.
From here it should be straight forward to calculate a team’s available cap space (or “payroll room” in the CBA), right? Unfortunately, no. There are a few steps involved.
The first inflection point is what day is it on the calendar? The rules for calculating cap space are different at various times. Today, I will focus on how cap space is determined during the regular season.
During the season, there are two key considerations: First, which obligations count toward the salary cap? And, second, how do we account for a player whose contract counts towards a team’s salary cap for less than the entire season? I will address each.
All player contracts count against the cap if the player is on the active roster or on injured reserve. (As we discussed last time, a long-term injury may allow a team to exceed the salary cap, but the injured player’s contract AAV still counts.) Other sums like retained salary, buy outs, or earned bonuses (as we also discussed last time) will count against the cap too.
Additionally, a portion of the contracts for players who have been loaned to another professional league (almost always the AHL) also counts against the cap. What portion? The amount by which the player’s AAV exceeds $375,000 plus the NHL minimum salary, which is $750,000 for the 2022-23 season.
Example No. 1. Assume Seattle waives Cale Fleury and his $750,000 AAV contract, Fleury clears waivers, and is assigned to the AHL. In that circumstance Fleury’s contract would no longer count against the cap because it is below the $1,125,000 threshold and can be fully “buried” in the AHL.
Example No. 2. Now presume Seattle waives Morgan Geekie and his $1,400,000 AAV cap hit, Geekie clears waivers, and goes to Coachella Valley. Geekie’s contract would continue to count $275,000 toward to the cap, which is the excess above $1,125,000.
Example No. 3. Finally, assume Seattle waives Geekie to try to get him to the AHL, but another NHL team claims him. In that scenario, Geekie’s AAV would come off Seattle’s books and go onto the books of the claiming team.
On the first day of the regular season, when counting each contract and other obligations required to be counted against the salary cap as described above, the team must be compliant with the salary cap.
Moving forward from there, how is a team’s available cap space calculated? And how do we account for the fact that a player may only play a partial season with a team, spend some time in the AHL at a reduced cap hit, or variety of other circumstances?
Assume there is a team that plays the first two months of the season with a 22-man active roster totaling $80,000,000 AAV in contracts. And then on Dec. 15, the team signs a free agent to a one-year, $2,500,000 AAV contract. The team had unused cap space for a couple months, but, as of Dec. 15, it now has $82,500,000 AAV in contracts on the books. Does the unused cap space from the first two months just disappear? The answer is no.
The NHL accounts for this inevitable roster shuffling by tabulating a team’s available cap space daily during the season. Huh? Let me explain how this works.
A regular season is 186 days long. The 2022-23 season spans Oct. 11, 2022, to April 14, 2023. Each day, at 5:00 pm ET, 1/186th of each team contract (or other obligation) that counts against the cap is totaled. On day one of the season, this total must be equal or less than 1/186th of the $82,500,000 salary cap (except for LTIR scenarios). To the extent the team is under the cap on day one, the difference accumulates as available “cap space.” That total is then available to be used on day two, along with another 1/186th of the salary cap. If not all used that day, it continues to accumulate. The team remains cap compliant if it does not exceed its available cap space on any given day.
This is all a bit confusing, so let’s take a look at how this works with a few examples.
Example No. 1. Presume on day one of the 2022-23 season, a team has a 22-man active roster with $80,000,000 AAV in cap obligations. The team is cap compliant because the 2022-23 salary cap is $82,500,000. 1/186th of the team’s $80,000,000 aggregate AAV—$430,107.53—is totaled at the end of the day. The difference between that amount and 1/186th of the full salary cap—$443,548.39—accumulates as of the end of the day. The team has accumulated $13,440.86 in excess cap space. On day two the team will be cap compliant if their salary obligations total less than $456,989.25. That is the sum of another 1/186th of the full salary cap—$443,548.39—plus the accumulated carryover cap space from the previous day—$13,440.86. That cap space will continue to accrue day-over-day until it is used later in the season, if at all. What would that look like?
Example No. 2. Same setup as Example No.1. On day two of the regular season the team adds a 23rd player to the roster with a $3,000,000 AAV. The team’s cap commitments for day two now equal 1/186th of $83,000,000. This is $446,236.60. Subtract from the team’s total day two cap space—$456,989.25—the team’s cap charge for day two and the team comes out of day two with $10,752.65 in excess cap space. The team has less accrued unused cap space left over than day one, but that makes sense because the team is now carrying players on its active roster worth $83,000,000 AAV. This is over the full season salary cap of $82,500,000. The team won’t be able to keep the new player on the roster for long, or it will need to make another move. How does this look at the trade deadline?
Example No. 3. Same setup as Example No. 1, except the team maintains the same 22-man roster every single day until the March 3, 2023, trade deadline—a total of 143 days. The team accrues $13,440.86 in excess cap space daily for a total of $1,922,042.56 in accrued cap space. At the trade deadline, just 43 days remain in the season. At that point, the team could, in theory, acquire a 23rd player with more than a $10,500,000 AAV contract. How so?
The team has accumulated cap space so far because it is in aggregate AAV $2,500,000 under the cap. If the team added a $2,500,000 million AAV contract at the deadline, it would stop accumulating additional cap space every day moving forward, but it would still have the extra $1,922,042.56 in cap space sitting there, unused. Divide that unused cap space by the number of regular season days remaining after the trade deadline (43) and you get $44,698.66. This is the amount the team could eat into that accrued, unused cap space every day and still be cap complaint on day 186. $44,698.66 per day equates to a contract with a full season AAV of $8,313,951. Add to that $2,500,000, and you get $10,813,951. This number is the AAV of the contract(s) this hypothetical team could add at the trade deadline.
Applying this (admittedly unintuitive) accounting method, the Kraken have an aggregate AAV of $81,064,166 currently. This is below the $82,500,000 cap, so the team is accumulating excess unused cap space each day.
But the team’s aggregate AAV has not been static throughout the season. The team has made myriad roster moves, each impacting the daily salary cap calculations and how much excess cap has accumulated on this day or that day. My best estimate is, as of Jan. 12, 2023, before the 5:00 pm ET deadline, the Kraken have approximately $467,838 in accrued, unused cap space.
Matty Beniers skating to retreive the puck. (Photo/Brian Liesse)
What does this mean for the roster? And what does it mean for what the team can do at the trade deadline? Let’s get into that now.
Why haven’t the Kraken added a 23rd player to the active roster?
NHL teams are allowed to have 23 players on the active roster at any given time. Before the World Junior Championship, the Kraken loaned Shane Wright to the Canadian U20 Team. This moved Wright off the team’s active roster and created an opening. Ever since, the team has maintained just 22 players on the active roster. For a time, one might have assumed the team was just holding Wright’s spot for him, but with Seattle returning Wright to the OHL after the WJC, that spot has remained conspicuously vacant. Why?
The short answer is that circumstances have not forced Seattle to add any players. The Kraken are not dealing with any short-term injuries at the moment, nor are there any players that need to be benched for performance reasons. As it stands, the Kraken still have an extra forward and an extra defenseman, and they haven’t needed any additional flexibility.
The longer answer gets us back into daily salary cap accrual, and the contracts of Matty Beniers and Eeli Tolvanen. As we discussed last week, the team likely wants to keep $925,000 in cap space open at the end of the season in order to pay Matty Beniers’s contract bonuses without carrying the overage as a deduction from next year’s cap.
If the Kraken made no moves at all and maintained the current 22-man active roster from now through the end of the season, Seattle would end with a season-end cap charge of approximately $81,347,544. Applying Beniers’s (likely) earned bonuses, the Kraken would be at $82,272,544. This leaves the Kraken just $227,456 below the cap. In other words, the Kraken project to have $227,456 that they could allocate to the daily salary cap charges of a 23rd player.
The NHL minimum salary for the 2022-23 season is $750,000 AAV. For example, John Hayden is signed to a contract worth $750,000 AAV at the NHL level. Since he has been loaned to the Coachella Valley Firebirds all season, his contract has not counted against Seattle’s salary cap at all. But it would begin to count if Hayden were recalled. (John Hayden is actually on a so-called “two-way” contract that pays him less at the AHL level. We can get into the details on two-way contracts another time, but for today’s purpose suffice it to say Hayden has not counted against Seattle’s cap.)
For each day a contract worth $750,000 AAV is on the NHL roster it would count $4,031.26 against the salary cap—i.e. 1/186th of $750,000. Without going above $227,456, the Kraken could have a minimum-salary player in the 23rd spot on the roster for up to 56 days. Yet, as of Jan. 12, 2023, 93 days remain in the regular season.
This starts to shed light on why the Kraken have not filled the 23rd roster spot right now. They might “need” a 23rd player later if injuries arise. Once fewer than 56 days remain in the season (after Feb. 17, 2023), the team will be less hesitant to fill the final roster spot. But, over the next 37 days, the Kraken are likely to play “wait-and-see” and hope to avoid filling it unless necessary.
You might protest, as the Kraken had a full 23-man roster until recently; what changed? First, as the season has unfolded, it has become increasingly clear the hypothetical possibility of Beniers receiving $925,000 in bonuses will be a reality. And, second, the team jumped at the opportunity to add Eeli Tolvanen off waivers. That was a good move on the ice. But the unexpected upgrade pushed the Kraken ever closer to the salary cap. Replacing Karson Kuhlman’s contract ($825,000 AAV) with Eeli Tolvanen’s contract ($1,450,000 AAV) put an additional $625,000 AAV on the cap. With the minimum salary being $750,000, this delta essentially eliminated the opening for an extra minimum-salary 23rd player for a while.
Eeli Tolvanen waits for a face-off. (Photo/Brian Liesse)
What can the Kraken add at the trade deadline?
How much contract money the Kraken can add at the trade deadline (March 3, 2023) will depend on a number of variables, including whether the Kraken fill the 23rd roster spot in the interim.
Assuming that the Kraken make no roster moves of any cap consequence between now and the trade deadline, the Kraken could acquire a contract with a $1,140,000 AAV while protecting the necessary cap space for Beniers’s bonuses.
That is… not a lot.
However, the Kraken can create additional space in a variety ways. For example, presume Joonas Donskoi is healthy enough to return from injured reserve by the time of the trade deadline, and the Kraken waive him that day for the purpose of assigning him to the AHL. If he clears waivers, $1,125,000 AAV of his contract would come off the books, as explained above. Totaled with the team’s other cap space, Seattle could then add a player with a $2,265,000 AAV contract.
Another way to create space could be to trade a roster player. When a player is traded (or claimed off waivers), the player’s contract comes off Seattle’s books moving forward. For example, if the team traded a player at the deadline with a $2,000,000 AAV, it could acquire back a player with a $3,140,000 AAV when adding in the team’s accrued cap space.
Also, it should be noted that a trading team can “retain” up to 50 percent of a player’s salary (and cap hit) in a trade transaction. This expands the scope of potential trade targets available to Seattle. For example, without making any other moves, Seattle could acquire a $2,000,000 AAV player at the deadline if the trading team agreed to retain 50 percent of the player’s salary. That said, these types of trades are typically more costly from an assets perspective.
Finally, I should mention that the type of contract Seattle could acquire changes drastically if the team decided not to protect cap space for Beniers’s bonuses. In that case, without any roster moves in the interim, Seattle could acquire a $5,141,000 AAV contract at the deadline. I doubt that Seattle would go this way, but this approach would open a wider range of upgrades for the team.
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Have contract or rules-related questions? Reach out on twitter (@deepseahockey or @sound_hockey) or in the comments below. I’d like to do a mailbag-style post soon. Thanks for reading.
Kraken win seventh straight with signature 3-0 shutout over Boston Bruins
A statement game? Playoff intensity? The biggest win in Kraken franchise history? All and any of the superlatives thrown at Seattle are appropriate after the Kraken won for the seventh straight time while handing the Boston Bruins their first home regulation loss of the season in a 3-0 shutout at TD Garden Thursday night.
“We played a really good road game tonight,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said. “It’s a tough place to win, obviously, nobody’s been able to do that here this year. Our guys should be proud of that. We did all the little things that you have to do to win. We scored a couple of timely goals and had really good goaltending. For long stretches of the game, we managed the puck extremely well.”
The Kraken stifled the Bruins offense, which leads the NHL in scoring, by sticking to them like glue with a tremendous defensive effort. Seattle was stout in their own end, caused trouble with the forecheck, and managed the neutral zone.
Holding on to a two-goal lead late, the Bruins pulled goalie Linus Ullmark for the extra skater with over 4:30 on the clock. Boston controlled the puck and pinned the Kraken in their own zone but couldn’t get pucks past the defenders and especially past goalie Martin Jones.
Jaden Schwartz finally flipped the puck down the ice at 18:10 of the third period, and it trickled its way into the empty net to make it 3-0. At that point, the breath came back, the nerves settled, and the Kraken had it in hand.
“Obviously we got an early lead,” forward Brandon Tanev said. “We weathered some great chances, and our goaltender played incredible. Jonesy was incredible and we had some great blocks by our group down the stretch and everyone was committed to playing the right way.”
Jones ended with 27 saves for his second straight road shutout after he made 21 saves against the Montreal Canadiens on Monday. Tanev and Eeli Tolvanen each had a goal for Seattle (25-12-4), who have won the first six games of a seven-game road trip.
Ullmark stopped 28 of the 30 shots he faced for Boston (32-5-4), who had won four straight.
After causing a turnover via the forecheck, Tanev threw the puck around and behind the Boston net to Daniel Sprong. Tanev raced in front of the net and Sprong took a shot that Tanev deflected from a tight angle past Ullmark to put the Kraken up 1-0 at 7:14 of the first period.
That ended up being all the goals Jones would need, but Seattle got a big, momentum-swinging goal near the end of the second period.
Tolvanen got a pass between the circles at 19:21. He waited a beat, spun, and fired a shot that hit the post and went in to give the Kraken a big 2-0 lead.
Was it a statement win?
“I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it,” Hakstol said. “It’s a good win. I love it and I’m proud of the guys and the effort the guys had tonight, and they should feel good about it. You don’t come in here with any passengers and win a hockey game. For me, that’s what you hope to do in any road game.”
Jones in the zone
Given a 2-0 lead, Jones did the rest.
He kept his calm demeanor and kicked away every Boston attempt. The highlight save came in the second period when Bruins forward David Pastrnak got loose behind the defense. Jones calmly knocked the breakaway attempt into the corner.
“He’s obviously got a great shot,” Jones said. “I just tried to have a good gap on him and stay patient and I was able to get the blocker on it.”
After Tolvanen’s goal, Jones stood tall again as the Bruins attacked the net. Also on that play, all five Kraken skaters packed in the goal, including Jordan Eberle who was in the net, to help keep the puck out.
Jones has started six of the seven games that the Kraken have won since Jan. 1 and only allowed eight goals.
“We checked well,” Jones said. “In front of the net I thought we did a really good job with blocked shots, we picked up sticks, we cleared pucks out, that was probably the biggest thing.”
Tentacle Tales
- Jones last had consecutive shutouts during the 2015-16 season with the San Jose Sharks. He is the first Kraken goalie to do so.
- The shutout was the 27th of his career.
- Seattle has yet to lose in the calendar year of 2023 and is the seventh team in the past decade to start a calendar year with seven consecutive wins.
- The Kraken have two seven-game win streaks this year and are the second expansion team to do so in their first two seasons, equaling the Vegas Golden Knights.
- Tanev’s goal opened the scoring and was the 14th time this season the Kraken have done so, second most in the NHL behind the Dallas Stars.
- The last NHL team to open a road trip by winning the first six game were the 2015-16 San Jose Sharks. The goaltender on that team? Martin Jones.
Episode 222 – The Kraken Are Rolling Again
The Seattle Kraken have been rolling once again, with a six-game win streak and five straight victories on their current very long road trip. The Sound Of Hockey Podcast is here to break down their latest games and call out some of the most impressive individual performances from this stretch.
Aside from discussing the games, John, Andy, and Darren talk about other Kraken news like Matty Beniers being selected for the All-Star Game and also losing a bet with Jordan Eberle.
The guys then shift to Down on the Farm to discuss Shane Wright going back to the OHL, plus lots of crazy trades for the local WHL teams.
Next, the show moves into segments, which this week include:
- You Don’t See That Every Day
- Weekly One-Timers
- Three Stars
- Tweets of the Week
SUBSCRIBE! ENJOY! REVIEW!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Kraken prospects: Shane Wright lands with Memorial Cup hopeful Windsor
We finally know where Shane Wright will finish his junior season, as the Kraken top prospect was traded from the Kingston Frontenacs to the Windsor Spitfires in exchange for a slew of draft picks and two roster players.
Wright was assigned back to Kingston by the Seattle Kraken after captaining Team Canada to a gold medal at the World Junior Championship, and rumors immediately circulated he would be traded.
Windsor was ultimately the winner of the Wright sweepstakes and added one of the best players in the Canadian Hockey League (CHL) to a roster that already features four other NHL prospects.
There was some initial buzz that the London Knights were close to acquiring Wright. However, it appears London defenseman Oliver Bonk, a ‘B’ rated prospect by NHL Central Scouting, was the sticking point in the deal, at least that’s what London general manager Mark Hunter said.
From a Seattle fan perspective, Windsor is a bit of an underwhelming landing spot for Wright, even though the Spitfires were in a great position — and are now in an even greater position — to win the CHL’s top prize, the Memorial Cup.
London would have been a desirable option to pair Wright up with Kraken prospect Ryan Winterton, who the Knights also traded for recently. North Bay seemingly made a late push, at least per reports, which would have formed a fun trio with Seattle defense prospect Ty Nelson and forward prospect Kyle Jackson.
As far as what this means for Wright, he’s virtually guaranteed top-line minutes and should embark on a long playoff run. Being back in an environment where he has already dominated — the No. 4 overall pick in the 2022 NHL Draft posted 94 points in 63 games last season — should imbue Wright with plenty of confidence.
And above anything else, the move provides stability for Wright, who has played for three different teams — Seattle, Coachella Valley, and Team Canada — over the last three months.
Coachella Valley continues streaking
The Firebirds’ winning streak ended at seven games with a 3-2 shootout loss to the Ontario Reign Sunday, but Coachella Valley is still riding a nine-game point streak after a 3-2 shootout win over the San Jose Barracuda Tuesday.
Kole Lind tallied a goal in the latest victory. The 24-year-old forward has 11 points in his last 10 games.
Andrew Poturalski, Ryker Evans named AHL All-Stars
The Firebirds will send two representatives to the American Hockey League’s All-Star Classic in their first season.
Poturalski, a 28-year-old forward, has tallied 35 points in 33 games this season and is currently on a two-year deal with the Kraken. Evans, a second-round draft pick in 2022, has 21 points in 33 games in his first AHL season.
Poturalski and Evans will play for the Pacific Division and will be coached by Calgary head coach Mitch Love, a cult legend with the Everett Silvertips. Former Everett goaltender Dustin Wolf, who plays for Love in Calgary, will be between the pipes for the Pacific.
Jacob Melanson settling in just fine with Sherbrooke
In just his third game with the QMJHL’s Sherbrooke Phoenix since being traded by Acadie-Bathurst, the Kraken forward prospect netted a hat trick, his third of the season, in a 5-2 win over Shawinigan.
In his three games with Sherbrooke, Melanson has five goals and seven points.
Barrett Hall enjoying nice stretch in USHL
The Kraken’s sixth-round pick in 2022 is in a nice groove for the Green Bay Gamblers with seven points in his last five games, including a four-point effort on Dec. 28.
Hall is currently tied for third on the Gamblers with 20 points.
Thunderbirds make splash, Silvertips receive big haul for Zellweger at WHL deadline
The local Western Hockey League teams were uber active at the trade deadline, with the two teams heading in opposite directions.
Seattle acquired Chicago Blackhawks prospect Colton Dach from the Kelowna Rockets, had the Winnipeg Jets reassign Brad Lambert to the T-Birds — who they acquired the rights to in a trade with Saskatoon earlier this year — and obtained the rights to Dylan Guenther, who is currently in the NHL with the Arizona Coyotes, from the Edmonton Oil Kings for a load of conditional draft picks.
After the dust settled, Seattle was left with nine NHL prospects, three players on NHL Central Scouting’s preliminary players to watch list, and the starting goalie for the WJC’s gold-medal-winning Canada, Thomas Milic.
Not bad.
However, the draft pick cupboard is now bare in Seattle. If Guenther ends up reporting to Seattle by the Feb. 10 deadline for NHL teams to send players back to juniors and be eligible for the playoffs (which seems unlikely at this point), the Thunderbirds will have no picks in the first three rounds and just three in the first five rounds of the next four WHL bantam drafts.
Everett is trending in the opposite direction but completed some tidy business of their own by trading Ducks prospect Olen Zellweger and Capitals prospect Ryan Hofer for 10 draft picks, including two first-rounders, and four players.
According to Alan Caldwell, who has tracked WHL draft picks since 2015, the Silvertips have not had multiple first-round draft picks since at least 2015 — as far back as his tracker goes.
High draft picks aren’t the only way to build a successful WHL team — Everett and Seattle are prime examples of that — but it certainly helps.
Make it six straight for Kraken after 4-3 win over the Buffalo Sabres
They had to grind it out, but the Kraken found a way to their sixth straight win thanks to a two-goal third period and a strong Philipp Grubauer performance in a 4-3 victory against the Buffalo Sabres at Key Bank Center Tuesday.
Grubauer kept the Kraken within striking distance by making 32 saves in his first start since Dec. 30.
“I wouldn’t say it was our best,” forward Jordan Eberle said. “Give them credit, they played well and created a lot. Grubi was excellent tonight, he made some big saves and kept us ahead.”
Seattle twice erased a one-goal deficit and started the third period tied at 2-2. That’s when Matty Beniers made his presence known. He gave the Kraken their first lead, 3-2 when he crashed the net and scored on a rebound at 1:06 of the third period.
“The goal he scored at the start of the third period is indicative of how he plays,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said of Beniers. “He finds a way inside, he’s moved to a different spot on the power play, and he’s been able to find a few inside there.”
Four minutes later, at 5:17, he spotted defenseman Justin Schultz pinching in from the point and put the puck right on his stick from behind the net. Schultz scored, and Seattle took a 4-2 lead.
“Those are timely goals,” Eberle said. “Those are goals that when you get into playoff times and you get those momentum swings if you can score like that at key times, those are huge.”
Alex Tuch notched a six-on-five goal at 19:38 to cut the lead to 4-3, but the Kraken survived the final 20 seconds to pick up win No. 5 to open their seven-game road trip and a win on the second night of a back-to-back.
“We just keep working, that’s all,” Hakstol said. “We’re not quite halfway through the year, these guys work hard together, they care about having success together. Games like this when it’s a back-to-back where it doesn’t look that pretty, it doesn’t look that good but that’s a great win.”
Beniers, Eberle, and Schultz each had a goal and assist for the Kraken (24-12-4), while Andre Burakovsky had two assists. Seattle goes for seven straight in a big game Thursday when they travel to the Boston Bruins.
Tuch scored twice for the Sabres (20-17-2), who had won six of eight. Former Tri-City American Eric Comrie made 18 saves.
The Sabres went up 1-0 at 9:56 of the first when Tuch converted on a pass from Tage Thompson.
Seattle would respond and tie the game 1-1 on a power-play goal from Eberle at 18:52. Parked in the slot, Eberle would deflect a shot from Burakovsky past Comrie.
“That goal gave us some life to get us back to even. That’s one of the key moments to the game,” Hakstol said.
In the second period, it would be Buffalo who struck first again on a goal from Rasmus Dahlin at 5:12 of the second period. He found a shooting lane while on the power play and let a wrist shot go to make it 2-1 Sabres.
Schultz would then send a perfect pass to the goal mouth where Yanni Gourde tipped it in at 8:59 to get the game square at 2-2.
“The other key turning point in the game is Gourdie’s goal,” Hakstol said. “That’s a heck of a play by Schultzie and he finds a way to get one that turns out to be the game-winner as well.”
Rebound game for Grubauer
Grubauer had been off for five games but showed no rust Tuesday while making several key saves.
“It’s been almost two weeks, but it felt pretty good,” Grubauer said. “The first period was a little rusty, but after that I found my game. From then on it was good.”
His best work came in the third period with the Kraken holding on to the lead. Trying desperately to score and tie the game, the Sabres threw everything at the net and pushed. Grubauer made 17 saves in the third period and only allowed the six-on-five goal.
It would be enough to steer Seattle to a win down the stretch and a good sign if both Grubauer and Martin Jones start turning in good performances each night.
Tentacle Tales
- The Sabres are 0-4-0 all-time against the Kraken.
- Beniers’ five-game goal streak is the longest in Seattle franchise history.
- Vince Dunn had an assist to extend his point streak to four straight games.
- With two assists, Burakovsky has a four-game point streak.
The rich get richer – Winnipeg Jets send first-round pick Brad Lambert to Seattle Thunderbirds
While the Kraken sent their top prospect to the OHL for more development, the Winnipeg Jets sent a top prospect to Seattle. The Seattle Thunderbirds announced Monday that Jets first-round pick in the 2022 NHL Draft, Brad Lambert, had been assigned to play in Seattle for the remainder of the Western Hockey League season.
“We’re just excited to have a guy like Brad join our group,” Thunderbirds general manager Bil La Forge said. “We think he’s gonna fit in really well and adds more depth to our lineup.”
Drafted with the 30th pick overall, Lambert, 19, had just completed his third stint at the World Junior Championship with his native Finland. He scored one goal in five games at this year’s tournament. After an impressive training camp, the Jets sent him to the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League where he’s played in 14 games and has two goals and an assist.
“He’s an elite skater, he’s an offensive player,” La Forge said. “He’s been playing with men for a long time. So, we want him to come, join a strong group, enjoy some success, and have some fun.”
Unable to get consistent playing time as a rookie in pro hockey, the Jets have decided that more time in juniors is the best route for the 6-foot-1, 175-pound forward.
The Thunderbirds acquired the rights to Lambert in late June in a trade with the Saskatoon Blades who had selected Lambert in the CHL Import Draft. The Blades received four WHL Draft picks including a conditional 2023 first-round and 2024 second-round pick.
“We talked to Saskatoon really quickly. It was the morning before the day of the draft and found that it was a possibility,” La Forge said. “Brad’s a guy that we’ve watched for years, before the import draft, and had discussions with and felt like we could be a good fit for him if Winnipeg did decide to send him back. But in all honesty, I was hoping for the best for him and that he would end up where they wanted him to, and I think that coming to a good team in a great place to play is what was exciting for them.”
Those conditional picks are now real picks, but the Thunderbirds are more than willing to pay.
Lambert joins a Thunderbirds team looking to make a second consecutive playoff run to the league championship. Seattle reached the league finals last season, losing in six games to the Edmonton Oil Kings. This season they are ranked No. 1 in the entire Canadian Hockey League and have started 28-5-1-1. They are in first place of the U.S. Division.
Seattle leads the entire league in goals scored and is now adding another offensive weapon. Where he’ll play in the lineup is still to be determined.
“That’s up to the coaches, and I’m sure it’ll take probably a couple of weeks to find the right chemistry and the right mix with our forward group,” La Forge said. “We’re fortunate that we’re so deep right now… definitely we see him as a top-line player, but we feel that we have three top lines too so it’ll be wherever he has chemistry and feels comfortable and can help the team the most.”
This move will give the Thunderbirds four NHL first-round picks on the roster, and Lambert will join defensemen Kevin Korchinski and Nolan Allan, as well as forward Reid Schaefer.
Lambert comes to Seattle days after it pulled off a separate deal to land Chicago Blackhawks second-round pick in 2021 Colton Dach from the Kelowna Rockets. With the WHL Trade Deadline coming on Tuesday, the arms race has been heating up.
The Kamloops Blazers and Everett Silvertips swung a massive deal that included four first-round picks going to Everett for a package that included Anaheim Ducks prospect Olen Zellweger. Along with Lambert, the Jets also reassigned forward Chaz Lucius to the Portland Winterhawks. Portland and Seattle are locked in a battle for the top spot in the U.S. Division and appear destined for a second straight playoff battle after the two bitter rivals played to seven games in the second round last spring.
Seattle plays at the Brandon Wheat Kings Tuesday and ironically will be in Winnipeg to play the ICE on Wednesday. La Forge thinks it is likely Lambert will debut with the Thunderbirds on Saturday when the team plays at the Prince Albert Raiders. Lambert’s first home game will be at the accesso ShoWare Center in Kent on Jan. 20 against the Lethbridge Hurricanes.
With all the moves that Seattle has made, the pressure to win has never been higher.
“I think that our group has high expectations,” La Forge said. “Prior to the moves, it’s just me trying to give them the tools to make sure they have everything they need… there’s a lot of good teams and there’s only one banner so we’re gonna fight to be the last one standing.”