What started as an excellent week with a 2–1 signature win over the Carolina Hurricanes ended with an absolute thud in a humiliating 7–4 loss to the Ottawa Senators in front of a packed house on Saturday night. Sandwiched between those two games was another disappointing regulation loss to the St. Louis Blues.
The Kraken began the week in the second wild‑card spot and, somehow, finished it in the same place despite collecting just two of six possible points. On the surface, it’s nice that the brutal week didn’t kill them in the standings, but it was still a squandered chance to create a little breathing room over the Sharks, Kings, and Predators.
Here’s how the Pacific fared this week:
I might have been able to stomach the St. Louis game, since the Blues suddenly look like world‑beaters with four straight wins over the Wild, Kraken, Sharks, and Ducks, but the Kraken looked completely uninspired against Ottawa. Every team has the occasional stinker, and maybe there really was something to the illness going around the room that day, but this one felt especially flat.
Quick thoughts on the Trade Deadline and Bobby McMann
For those who missed it, the NHL Trade Deadline came and went on Friday, and the Kraken added speedy depth winger Bobby McMann, who can finish and bring some flat-out speed. The cost, a second‑ and fourth‑round pick, was reasonable for a player who’s only signed through the end of the season. It’s not exactly what I expected, but it’s pretty darn close. They’re on the bubble with a legitimate shot at the playoffs, so a sell‑off didn’t make sense, and neither did pushing all the chips in for something splashy.
McMann also gives them one more winger to consider re‑signing before free agency. As of now, the Kraken have three forwards on expiring contracts, and they likely need to extend at least one of them before July 1, or they’ll be staring at some significant holes next season.
Where McMann fits in the lineup
Darren already gave his two cents on where McMann might slot in. He started the year on Toronto’s fourth line but worked his way up to playing alongside Auston Matthews. He can fit anywhere. With Lane Lambert’s familiarity with him from Toronto, he probably already has a strong sense of how he wants to use him, but deciding who comes out will be difficult.
Depending on Jaden Schwartz’s status, two of the following four players will need to sit when McMann enters the lineup: Ben Meyers, Ryan Winterton, Jacob Melanson, and Berkly Catton.
Meyers kills penalties, drives play, and has been excellent since returning from injury. Before Saturday, I would have said Melanson was the odd man out, but he was one of the few Kraken players who actually showed up and even scored the opening goal. It’s hard to pull him now.
That leaves Catton and Winterton.
If Schwartz can’t go Tuesday (and/or Thursday), I think you have to keep the Meyers–Winterton–Melanson fourth line intact and scratch Catton. It sucks to say it, but he’s not helping this team win right now. He missed at least two assignments that directly led to goals on Saturday night, and he continues to make careless passes that hurt the team. I love his offensive flashes, but defensively he’s been a liability.
Other musings
Of all the players moved at the deadline, I’m not sure there was a single one that made me wish the Kraken had jumped in. The only player I was genuinely intrigued by was Robert Thomas, and he didn’t end up getting moved.
The Kraken scored first in all three games this week. Normally that’s a good omen since they’ve earned a .703 points percentage when scoring first this season, but they managed just two of six points (.333) this week.
It would be nice if the Kraken could mix in an overtime game or two. They haven’t played one since Jan. 14. Meanwhile, the Kings, Ducks, and Sharks have each played at least four overtime games in that span.
The Kraken are 17‑10‑3 since trading Mason Marchment on Dec. 19, the best record in the Pacific Division over that span.
I was surprised to hear some fans were disappointed in the deadline, expecting either a bigger splash or a significant sell‑off. As I said last week, this team is in a playoff spot but not a Cup contender, so a measured move made sense.
The Kraken are tracking at the exact same pace as the 2023–24 team. Fortunately for them, the Western Conference is significantly weaker this season.
For the heck of it, I refreshed an old visual comparing Kraken draft‑pick performance to the rest of the league. It’s far too early to make any sweeping declarations, but the Kraken are punching well above the league average so far.
Season‑ticket holders received renewal notices last week, and most ticket prices are going down next season.
Goal of the week
Sometimes you really need a greasy one and situationally, that can be pretty.
B-B-B-BEN MMMMEYERS! 🚨
It starts with a physical, hard-nosed play in the defensive zone by Melanson. Gaudreau feeds Meyers, who sticks with it and gets a good bounce.
Congrats to Ben Meyers for signing a two-year extension last week. He has been a pleasant surprise contributor to the lineup this season.
Player performances
Ollie Josephson (ND/SEA) – The 19‑year‑old center, drafted by the Kraken in the fourth round of the 2024 NHL Draft, had one goal and four assists in North Dakota’s two games over the weekend. He now has 20 points in his first NCAA season. Logan Morrison (CV/SEA) – “LoMo” posted two goals and two assists in Coachella Valley’s two‑game series in Calgary. He leads the Firebirds in points and is on pace for 34 goals this season — not bad for an undrafted player. Kim Saarinen (HPK/SEA) – A third‑round pick by the Kraken in 2024, the Finnish goaltender stopped 57 of 62 shots in back‑to‑back wins for HPK in the Finnish Liiga.
The week ahead
Every week from here on out is critical, and this one is no exception. Tuesday brings a big game against Nashville, who is still in the hunt but starting to fade. On Thursday, the league‑leading Colorado Avalanche come to town. As of Monday morning, they’ve won five straight and are 8‑2‑0 in their last 10.
Saturday looks significantly easier with a trip to Vancouver to face the Canucks, but do we really expect any game to be easy down the stretch? I sure don’t.
The standings remain tight, and eventually the Kraken need a week where they take more than 50 percent of the available points. This is a good week to do it. They can survive with less, but four of six points, including a regulation win on Tuesday could all but eliminate Nashville. That would go a long way.
Sure, the Seattle Kraken are in the midst of a playoff race, but you wouldn’t know it from watching their 7-4 beatdown at the hands of the Ottawa Senators on Saturday. Seattle came out flat and—with the exception of a few brief glimmers during the game—remained low on energy throughout the contest.
“We didn’t play very well,” coach Lane Lambert said. “I could try and pinpoint something we did really well, and it’d be very very difficult to do. So I think as a group, coaching staff right on down, we’ve got to be better. It starts with me, moves right on down the line. So there wasn’t any positives tonight.”
NO POSITIVES?! Well, that’s not good.
Here are Three Takeaways from a positive-free 7-4 Kraken loss to the Senators.
Takeaway 1: No relief for Daccord
Growing up as a goalie, I never liked getting pulled out of a game, but I also didn’t like getting lit up. It was embarrassing to get pulled, but in seasons when I was the only goalie on the team, it was even worse to have to stay in a game where I didn’t have my best and was getting torched.
After two great performances in his last two starts against Vancouver and Carolina, this was a tough night for Joey Daccord, no question. In the end, he posted 28 saves on 36 shots for a .806 save percentage—not the ugliest numbers ever, but not great. The seven goals against were the most he’s allowed all season because Lambert has never let him get above five in a game.
The circumstances of this one were strange, though. While Daccord surely would have wanted back the Dylan Cozens goal that made it 2-1 at 13:35 of the first (an unscreened shot that hit his arm and went in), Joey also made plenty of sharp-looking saves in the first two periods.
Meanwhile, Seattle did start to show some life after 40 minutes and had cut the deficit from 4-1 to 4-2 after ratcheting up the physicality. So it didn’t make much sense to pull Daccord after the second, and once things started snowballing in the third, it became an awkward time to turn to Philipp Grubauer.
I asked Lambert if he thought about making a change to protect Daccord’s confidence.
“That’s a good question,” Lambert said. “I think there’s some that he would want back. Certainly, we left him hanging out to dry on a number of occasions. There were mistakes and breakdowns and stuff that we really haven’t seen for a while.
“And in terms of taking him out, I really thought after we went in after the second period, I wanted to give us a good chance to win the hockey game. I felt like some of the saves that he was making, even though we maybe question a couple of goals, I thought he made some good saves to keep it at four. So there was no thought for me of taking him out, and then after it got too late, it’s not fair to Grubauer to put him in there. And certainly, we don’t want to risk injury to him, bringing him off the bench when he’s been sitting there. So it’s just one of those things, one of those nights.”
Takeaway 2: Not enough energy
While Lambert found “no positives,” I did like the game of Jacob Melanson, as I often tend to do. Not only did he score off a 3-on-2 rush to give Seattle a fleeting 1-0 lead that was erased 34 seconds later, he also recognized things starting to get more physical in the second and went to work trying to ignite the team when the Kraken fell behind 4-1.
MELLY CELLY (but then a response goal)! 🚨
Off a 3-on-2, Meyers drove to the net and got a tip on Winterton's shot, then Melanson cleaned up the rebound and celebrated beautifully.
But… Tyler Kleven scored off a great saucer pass by Pinto 34 seconds later.
Indeed, several heavy hits started flying on both sides of the puck, and once that began, the first chance Melanson saw to go after somebody bigger than him, he took it. Melanson slammed into Tyler Kleven behind the Ottawa net, then did everything he could to goad the 6-foot-5, 225-pound defenseman into dropping the gloves.
Kleven wouldn’t engage, so Melanson kept after him in front of the net, creating chaos in front of Linus Ullmark. Meanwhile, Cale Fleury pinched in and dropped Nick Cousins, and Ben Meyers hit Shane Pinto, who coughed up the puck to Eeli Tolvanen. Tolvanen blasted a slap shot through Melanson’s screen and scored to bring Seattle back within two goals.
EELI GOALVANEN! 🚨
Watch Melanson on this sequence. After several big hits in a row, Melanson is actively trying to start a fight with Tyler Kleven, who isn't interested.
“I think that’s how we have to play,” Tolvanen said. “It’s playoff time. We have to start playing like [Melanson] does, go to the net, be physical. That’s why we got the turnover, that’s why I got the puck because he’s playing physical.”
Added Lambert: “I think we had energy in the second period when we started to get a little bit physical. That was really the moment, I guess, there was a little pocket in there where we had what I consider to be energy that’s necessary and required. And other than that, there wasn’t a whole lot of energy.”
Brandon Montour also called the fourth line Seattle’s best line and heaped praise on Melanson for the way he plays. That’s both a great compliment for the fourth line and a bit of a stray for the other three lines, which plainly have not been good enough since the Olympic break.
Indeed, outside of that brief burst of nastiness in the second period, there simply wasn’t enough juice in this one.
While the team and its coach didn’t use it as an excuse, there is an illness going around the room right now that kept Freddy Gaudreau and Ryan Lindgren out of the lineup Saturday. Adam Larsson also skipped morning skate but still played. You have to wonder if that slowed a few guys down, because they definitely looked like something was dragging them.
Seattle needs to start finding its best 60-minute effort on a regular basis, or it will drop out of the playoff bubble within a game or two.
Takeaway 3: Scary moment for Jaden Schwartz
While the Kraken struggled to find energy, things got even tougher when they lost a veteran forward after Jaden Schwartz suffered a scary facial injury. During that stretch of physical play, Tolvanen blasted Nick Cousins into the boards right in front of the Kraken bench. As Cousins was going down, his skate came up and caught Schwartz in the face.
Wow. Scary one there.
Eeli Tolvanen laid a huge hit on Nick Cousins, and Cousins' skate came up and clipped Jaden Schwartz in the face.
Schwartz lay on the ice bleeding for a moment, though replay appeared to show that the blade of Cousins’ skate didn’t actually make contact with Schwartz’s face. It looked like the damage came from the heel of the skate striking him around the nose. Regardless, Schwartz left the game and did not return.
Lambert said Schwartz was being evaluated but didn’t have much of an update after the game. “It could have been worse, I guess, but he’s not— he’s again, like I say, he’s getting evaluated. I think it sapped the energy out of the building a little bit. It got pretty quiet.”
At the other end of the ice, Montour also knocked star defenseman Jake Sanderson out of the game with an apparent shoulder injury. Montour crushed Sanderson into the corner boards and then fell on top of him in the second period. That could be a massive loss for the Sens, who are also pushing for a playoff spot.
Darren Brown
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at soundofhockey.com and the host of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is a member of the PHWA and is also usually SOH’s Twitter intern (but please pretend you don’t know that). Follow him @DarrenFunBrown and @sound_hockey or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
Welcome to “Down on the Farm,” your weekly Seattle Kraken prospects update. Sorry we’re a day late this week. As you probably noticed, yesterday was the NHL trade deadline and the Seattle Kraken made two notable moves. The team re-signed Captain Jordan Eberle and traded for winger Bobby McMann. Sound Of Hockey‘s Darren Brown broke down the news here.
Today, we’ll follow up on what the trade means for Seattle’s asset pool and ongoing attempts to secure a premier scorer. We’ll also highlight what the Kraken added to the system in signing undrafted WHL center Ryden Evers earlier this week.
Then we’ll have Kraken prospect news, video, and data updates, the Sound Of Hockey Prospect of the Week, and a preview of the week ahead, as always. (The data in this week’s post was gathered the morning of Friday, Mar. 6.)
If you have a Seattle Kraken prospect–related question you’d like to see featured in a future column or answered in our next mailbag, drop us a note below or on X or BlueSky at @deepseahockey or @sound_hockey.
Kraken trade draft assets for Bobby McMann
Following the McMann trade yesterday, Darren Brown analyzed the context and immediate implications for the Seattle Kraken roster. We plan to return with a deep dive on what Seattle is getting in McMann the player soon. Today, we’ll take a brief look at what Seattle gave up from its asset pool to acquire the speedy, pending UFA winger.
Rewind to December, when the Kraken traded Mason Marchment to the Columbus Blue Jackets for a 2026 fourth-round pick originally belonging to the New York Rangers and the Blue Jackets’ own 2027 second-round pick. As it turns out, this trade nailed—or, perhaps, set—the market for comparable moves at the trade deadline, including the McMann deal.
Following the Marchment transaction, the Kraken had three 2026 fourth-round picks and three 2027 second-round picks. It’s no coincidence that Seattle dipped back into those areas of depth and paid a similar price for McMann that they received for Marchment. Seattle gave Toronto a 2026 fourth-round pick originally belonging to Anaheim (acquired for Brian Dumoulin) and the worse of the 2027 second-round picks originally belonging to Winnipeg (acquired for Brandon Tanev) or Columbus (acquired for Marchment).
All told, this price is just slightly less than what the team obtained for Marchment. The 2026 fourth-round pick given up should be about half a round worse, and the 2027 second-round pick given up will be the same pick or a worse one, depending on next year’s standings. Importantly, the team did not encumber or trade any of its own picks, either. This leaves open the possibility of an offer sheet using those picks in the next two years (since offer sheets must utilize a team’s own pick).
It always seemed unlikely the Kraken would utilize three fourth-round picks in this year’s draft, particularly with the team’s prospect pipeline at full flow. Utilizing one of those picks and a future asset to obtain immediate value makes a lot of sense.
In his most recent 32 Thoughts Podcast, Elliotte Friedman indicated that the Kraken were working toward bigger moves on the level of the Artemi Panarin transaction at the trade deadline but couldn’t get those trades done.
On the Called Up Podcast, Cam Robinson suggested that some inactivity on the high end at the deadline was due to an industry belief that additional big names could come available at or before the NHL Draft, such as Auston Matthews, Brady Tkachuk, or Nico Hischier. Potential buyers were reticent to empty the assets cupboard now for fear of sidelining themselves in those conversations later.
Seattle’s quest for a first-line difference maker will continue this offseason, with four first-round picks and three second-round picks in the next two drafts still at their disposal.
Kraken sign undrafted WHL center Ryden Evers
March 1 is the first day NHL teams can sign players to entry-level contracts that begin the following season. This makes it effectively the “opening day” of undrafted free agency. College and European free agents tend to sign a bit later, when their seasons are over. Junior players can sign immediately, though. Seattle signed Tye Kartye on Mar. 1, 2022, for example, while the Soo Greyhounds were still in action.
History repeated itself this season. The Kraken were the only NHL team to dip into CHL free agency on day one, signing 20-year-old centerman Ryden Evers to a three-year entry-level contract earlier this week. Evers received the CBA-mandated maximum 10 percent of total contract value as a signing bonus. This could indicate there was interest from other teams, but it should be noted that Seattle has given a 10 percent signing bonus to most of its rookie free agent signings—including Kartye and Logan Morrison.
What did the Kraken like in Evers? The first thing that jumps off the page is that he’s a 6-foot-4 center. This size profile is coveted in the NHL, particularly given that he has a real shot to stick up the middle. Evers’ 1,424 total faceoff attempts and 852 wins are both by far the most in the WHL this season. His 59.8 percent win rate is sixth-best among all players with at least 200 draws this season. Add in a hardworking defensive profile, physical puck protection ability, and a sturdy net-front presence in the offensive zone, and you can see the makings of a bottom-six pivot.
Yet it was Evers’ scoring this season in the WHL that elevated him into a legitimate NHL prospect. Until last season, Evers played in the BCHL, a junior league that is a step below the WHL. He topped out at 1.11 points per game in the BCHL in 2024–25, which is an unremarkable figure in NHL prospect circles. This year Evers has actually improved that mark against significantly better competition, posting 1.14 points per game. This baseline of offensive production is an important indicator that he has a chance to bring enough offense at the next level.
Ryden Evers had been committed to attend Clarkson University next year, but signing an entry-level contract means he’ll no longer be going the college route. Penticton sits second in the WHL Western Conference, so, depending on how long his WHL playoff run goes, Evers will either debut professionally late this season or at the beginning of next year.
For more on Evers’ play, check out his shifts from Penticton’s Jan. 31, 2026, game against the Portland Winterhawks above. We’ll plan to circle back with a deeper dive on Evers’ game in an offseason “film room” post once we’ve had the chance to watch some more tape on him.
Notes on three Kraken prospects
Julius Miettinen | F | Everett Silvertips (WHL)
Julius Miettinen exploded with seven goals and four assists in three games last week, which makes him one of the easier choices for Sound Of Hockey Prospect of the Week in recent memory. Miettinen was the WHL Player of the Week as well.
Miettinen’s big week included a hat trick and an overtime game-winner in Kent against the Silvertips’ rival Thunderbirds last Saturday. The celebration made it fairly clear that the sports hate is alive and well between these two Puget Sound WHL franchises. Check it out below. Sound Of Hockey’s Cameron Riggers wrote an (incredibly well-timed) profile on Miettinen last week, too. Give that a read.
🎙️ “JULIUS MIETTINEN COMPLETES THE COMEBACK FOR EVERETT!”
— xy – Everett Silvertips (@WHLsilvertips) March 1, 2026
Kim Saarinen | G | HPK (Liiga)
Kim Saarinen continues to stack strong performances for HPK, even as the rest of Liiga’s top goaltenders have cooled in recent weeks. His .917 save percentage is now seven points clear of the second-best figure in Finland’s top professional league. And Saarinen is doing this at 19 years old. Like Nikke Kokko before him, Saarinen is likely pushing the timeframe for a North American arrival much earlier than the team could have reasonably projected.
The challenge is in finding North American playing time for him, particularly if Semyon Vyazovoi comes to Coachella Valley next season as expected. Saarinen is signed with HPK through 2027–28, per Elite Prospects, so it’s possible, if not likely, he’ll stick around in Liiga at least another season despite his stellar play.
Gustav Olofsson | D | Coachella Valley Firebirds (AHL)
While not exactly a “prospect,” Gustav Olofsson, 31, finds himself within the ambit of these updates for the first time this season as a player signed to an NHL contract. The 6-foot-3 blueliner is an “original Kraken” and in his fifth season with the organization. He had been playing under an AHL-only contract this season, but team and player ripped up that contract, and Olofsson signed an NHL deal on Mar. 2. After passing back through waivers—as is necessary for any non-exempt player on an NHL contract to play in the AHL—he is back with the Firebirds again. He is now available to be recalled to the Kraken should the need arise. Olofsson’s 17 points this season matches his previous AHL career high.
Kraken prospects data update
Alexis Bernier continues to drive positive results when he is on the ice. He is a remarkable plus-17 in just 14 games played.
Jake O’Brien is back atop the heap in the OHL with 1.72 points per game this season. His pace is second in the entire CHL behind only Tij Iginla among those with more than 15 games played. We’ve previously analyzed what junior scoring like this means for a player’s NHL projection.
Saarinen matched his .917 season mark in three starts this week, including a win opposite fellow Kraken prospect Visa Vedenpaa on Friday, Mar. 6.
Vedenpaa earned two Liiga starts last week (plus another today, Mar. 7 not included within this update).
1:Alexis Bernier, Barrett Hall, Ollie Josephson, Tyson Jugnauth, Nikke Kokko, Oscar Fisker Mølgaard, Logan Morrison, Victor Ostman, Zaccharya Wisdom
Previewing the week ahead
This week’s Deep Sea Hockey Games of the Week are two matchups between Saarinen’s HPK and Vedenpaa’s Karpat on Friday and Saturday. Elsewhere the NCHC Playoffs are underway with a Kraken prospect participating in each first-round matchup.
Tracking 2026 NHL Draft prospects: Ryan Lin
Ryan Lin is a five-foot-11 right-shot defenseman who makes up for a lack of size with keen offensive instincts and an efficient skating and transition game. He’s been a bit quiet in overall impact in the couple of games I’ve watched, but that’s a small sample and doesn’t mean a lot. He looks like a right-handed Ryker Evans with a slightly higher talent level to me. His 1.20 points per game are second among first-time draft-eligible defensemen in the WHL. Lin ranked No. 15 on the midseason Big Board.
Curtis is a Sound Of Hockey contributor and member of the Kraken press corps. Curtis is an attorney by day, and he has read the NHL collective bargaining agreement and bylaws so you don’t have to. He can be found analyzing the Kraken, NHL Draft, and other hockey topics on Twitter and Bluesky @deepseahockey.
Just when you thought the Seattle Kraken were standing pat at the NHL Trade Deadline, they swung an 11th-hour deal with the Toronto Maple Leafs for Bobby McMann, sending a fourth-round pick in 2026 and a second-round pick in 2027 the other way.
“We wanted to look and try to add a piece to our group, someone who can play in our top nine,” general manager Jason Botterill said. “We look at Bobby as a player that brings speed to our lineup, gets pucks to the net, gets to the net, and I think can complement the rest of our group very well.”
McMann, 29, is a speedy 6-foot-2, 217-pound forward who can play wing or center, though the Kraken will almost certainly use him primarily on the wing. Following a four-year college career at Colgate University, the Wainwright, Alb., native worked his way up through the Leafs organization after initially signing a free-agent AHL deal with the Toronto Marlies in 2020.
While he has been (mostly) a full-time NHLer since the 2023-24 season, he did play six AHL games that year with the Marlies and appeared in only 56 NHL games.
He solidified himself as a full-time NHL player last season, scoring 20 goals and 14 assists in 74 games. This season, McMann has posted an impressive 19 goals and 13 assists in 60 games while averaging north of 15 minutes per night for Toronto, often in a top-six role.
“You look at Bobby’s history, he’s worked at every level to get his opportunity to be a successful story in the National Hockey League. His ability to play up and down the lineup, we just felt it was something that would fit very well with our group from a skill set standpoint.”
McMann also brings a history of working with Kraken head coach Lane Lambert, who was an associate coach with the Leafs before being hired by Seattle. Botterill said Lambert loved McMann’s work ethic and noted that when he’s not scoring goals—he has shown to be a streaky scorer—he still brings a strong “backup B game.
McMann’s contract situation
One perplexing angle of the trade is that McMann is on an expiring deal that carries a remarkably reasonable $1.35 million average annual value. That’s perplexing because we at Sound Of Hockey did not envision a move for a so-called rental player this season—someone who could theoretically finish the year here and then walk as an unrestricted free agent this summer.
There’s no doubt McMann improves the current Kraken roster, at least on paper. But we were anticipating a swing at a top-six player with term who could help the team both now and for years to come. While McMann could play on one of Seattle’s top two lines, he’s not a bona fide top-sixer, and there’s no guarantee he sticks around after this season.
“We’ll get him to Seattle, get him part of our mix, and just sort of see how he fits in,” Botterill said. “I think it’s a situation of seeing how he fits in with our group and making sure that he likes Seattle, he likes his role here, and then we’ll see where it goes in the offseason.”
Where McMann fits with the Kraken
Adding McMann without moving out a current player only makes the roster logjam more complicated.
Here were the Kraken forward lines in their last game against St. Louis, which also aligned with how they practiced on Thursday:
Jared McCann — Matty Beniers — Jordan Eberle Jaden Schwartz — Chandler Stephenson — Eeli Tolvanen Berkly Catton — Shane Wright — Kaapo Kakko Ben Meyers — Frederick Gaudreau — Jacob Melanson
Assuming Lambert moves a top-nine forward down to the fourth line to make room for McMann, who moves down? And which fourth-line player gets scratched when Ryan Winterton is already out of the lineup?
Botterill repeatedly stated that the Kraken do not want to block their young players from opportunities in the lineup, but getting everyone into games will be difficult if the roster remains healthy. McMann’s addition could also lead to some miscasting of a player like Catton or Wright onto the fourth line.
Due to immigration issues, McMann will not be in the lineup Saturday against the Ottawa Senators, so we won’t get a clear answer on how Lambert plans to deploy him for at least a few days.
Do we like it?
How McMann affects things going forward is difficult to predict. He brings a nice combination of size, speed, and skill, and he shoots the puck—something Seattle has often struggled to do. From that standpoint, he improves the current roster.
But his addition also raises new questions while only marginally addressing the team’s need for more scoring.
Had this been the lesser of two trades made by Seattle—with a bigger, splashier move for a star scorer serving as the primary transaction of the day—we would have loved the addition. But because it’s the only move the Kraken made, it likely isn’t enough to push this roster into a guaranteed playoff spot, and it certainly doesn’t vault them into contender status.
In short, it helps, but I would have liked to see a bigger swing than a (likely) third-line winger who could walk after the season.
Eberle re-ups for two more years
One of Seattle’s four pending unrestricted free agents, Jordan Eberle, signed a two-year extension on Friday just before the trade deadline.
The 35-year-old captain, who leads Seattle in goals this season with 22, received a pay raise from $4.75 million to $5.5 million and a full no-trade clause.
“We’re very excited, obviously, when you have an opportunity to sign your captain for another two years, your leading scorer, a player that exemplifies so much that the Seattle Kraken are about, we are just ecstatic to have Jordan part of our organization for two more years.”
With Eberle back in the fold and McMann added, the Kraken now still have four pending UFAs: McMann, Jamie Oleksiak, Eeli Tolvanen, and Jaden Schwartz.
Darren Brown
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at soundofhockey.com and the host of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is a member of the PHWA and is also usually SOH’s Twitter intern (but please pretend you don’t know that). Follow him @DarrenFunBrown and @sound_hockey or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
Here we go! Things do seem to be heating up around the NHL as we barrel toward the NHL Trade Deadline, which hits at 12 p.m. Pacific on Friday. So far, it’s been mostly fringe, secondary, and tertiary players who have moved, with a few notable names like Tyler Myers (Vancouver to Dallas), MacKenzie Weegar (Calgary to Utah), Sam Girard (Colorado to Pittsburgh), and Conor Garland (Vancouver to Columbus) already being dealt.
Perhaps the biggest deal so far came late Thursday when the Anaheim Ducks, one of the teams Seattle is chasing, landed veteran defenseman John Carlson from the Washington Capitals.
The returns for the players that have moved have not been astronomical, indicating that this is truly a “buyers’ market.” So, we could see some more fireworks before midday on Friday.
Meanwhile, all is quiet on the Kraken front, so the team’s players are playing it cool, trying not to pay too much attention to the few rumors that have bubbled up around the club.
“Obviously, we’ve put ourselves in a spot where we have an opportunity to make the playoffs and make a run here,” captain Jordan Eberle said. “Whether that means we add or we stick with the group, I don’t know, those decisions are above me. But at this moment in time, I’m proud of the way that this group has battled to get ourselves an opportunity to hopefully get in.”
Control what you can control
It’s interesting to feel the palpable difference in mood between a team battling for the playoffs (like this season’s group and the 2022-23 team) compared with the three seasons when the Kraken have been obvious sellers on the eve of the deadline. Even after a stinging loss to the St. Louis Blues on Wednesday, the players don’t expect the front office to be selling off veterans on expiring contracts Friday.
“We’ve been here the last couple years where we’ve kind of been selling off guys, and the first year, right? The vibes are not good [in that situation],” Eberle said. “You’re saying bye to friends, saying bye to teammates. It’s always not a fun situation. That’s why at the end of the day, you want to try and play meaningful games all the way to the end.”
Eberle, by the way, is one of four players—along with Eeli Tolvanen, Jamie Oleksiak, and Jaden Schwartz—on expiring contracts. I do not expect to see those players moved simply to collect draft picks like we’ve seen the past two seasons. If any of them are dealt, it would likely be because general manager Jason Botterill receives an offer he can’t refuse and believes the team can still make the playoffs without that player.
Tolvanen echoed Eberle’s sentiments, despite his own contract situation.
“What happens happens. You can’t really focus on that,” Tolvanen said. “I mean, it can be December when you get traded like Kaapo [Kakko] did, or it can be tomorrow, or you can stay. I don’t really care about that.”
While I’ve gotten no indication that Tolvanen is re-signing, my intuition tells me he’ll stick around beyond this season. As Tolvanen himself said, “We’ll see what happens.”
Meanwhile, coach Lane Lambert is likely ready to move past the deadline and eliminate any related distractions for his group.
“There’s always trepidation, I guess, with guys, and it’s not an easy time of the year,” Lambert said. “Most of them, not all of them, but most of them have been through it, a lot of them on multiple occasions. So the bottom line is, in anything—it doesn’t matter if it’s hockey or life—it’s you can control what you can control. And if there’s rumors or there’s outside noise, you’ve just got to not listen to it, because a lot of times that’s exactly what it is, just rumors and outside noise.”
When I asked Lambert if he’s hoping to see moves from the front office, he said there are things about the team that he really likes and would be hesitant to see disrupted. Still, there’s no doubt he’d welcome the addition of a player or two who can put the puck in the net.
“I’ve been on teams in the past where it did kind of mess it up a little bit, but I’ve also been on teams where it helped. So, you just have to make sure that you do your homework, do your research, know what you’re doing and know what you need.”
What happened against St. Louis on Thursday?
With every point in the standings feeling critical right now, it was disappointing to see the Kraken follow up their impressive 2-1 win over the Carolina Hurricanes on Monday with a 3-2 loss to St. Louis on Wednesday—their second defeat against the underperforming Blues in just eight days.
Eberle gave his take on how that happened, crediting the Blues as a team that’s better than its record indicates.
“I thought we started the game really well, obviously opened the scoring, and then we died off in the first period a little bit. They obviously tied it up. I thought our second period was great. I thought we created some chances, we had opportunities. Third period, we gave up one, and then we were just chasing.”
Added Lambert: “The game for me, could have went either way. We made a couple of mistakes, they made a couple of good plays, and we had some opportunities but failed to capitalize on them. There was a lot of things about that game that I really liked.”
Los Angeles won Thursday night, so now the Kings and Sharks are both within three points of the Kraken, who remain in the final wild-card spot. Getting two points against the Blues would have pushed Seattle back ahead of Edmonton for third place in the Pacific Division.
Tolvanen recalls Olympics
This was my first time chatting with Tolvanen since he and countryman Kaapo Kakko returned from the Olympics in Milan with bronze medals.
Like we heard from Grubauer last week, the event was clearly memorable for Tolvanen.
“I think the whole experience was unbelievable,” Tolvanen said. “The city of Milan was unreal, great weather, just the history behind the city, seeing all the athletes at the village walking around, hockey players, different athletes. It was unbelievable.”
He said the Finnish team stayed in the Olympic Village and spent plenty of time together biking around the city and hanging out in the team lounge.
Tolvanen spoke proudly about winning bronze but admitted he hasn’t yet found a permanent home for the medal. For now, it’s sitting in his closet, though he plans to eventually create a display featuring the medal and his jersey from the tournament.
Darren Brown
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at soundofhockey.com and the host of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is a member of the PHWA and is also usually SOH’s Twitter intern (but please pretend you don’t know that). Follow him @DarrenFunBrown and @sound_hockey or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
The Kraken seem to have a way of rising to the occasion when they know they’re up against a tough opponent—and easing off when playing against squads below them in the standings. After a high-intensity, nearly perfect defensive effort to earn a 2-1 win over the high-flying Carolina Hurricanes on Monday, the Kraken let a long stretch of uninspired play sink them against the fire-selling St. Louis Blues on Wednesday.
“I don’t think it was anything they were doing,” coach Lane Lambert said when asked about his team’s struggle to hold momentum. “We just didn’t continue with our pressure. There’s no excuse for it. I don’t have an answer for you.”
After jumping out of the gates, the Kraken eased off the gas long enough to cost themselves two critical points.
Here are Three Takeaways from a killer 3-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues.
Takeaway 1: A hot start, and then a lull
For the first few minutes of the game, it looked like the Kraken might run up the score on the Blues. They immediately tilted the ice, fired five shots on Joel Hofer before St. Louis generated anything at the other end, and even scored an easy-looking goal when Jaden Schwartz cleaned up a juicy rebound off an Adam Larsson point shot just 31 seconds into the contest.
THE POWER OF THE SCHWARTZ! 🕺🚨
Big, juicy rebound from Hofer, and Jaden Schwartz cleans up the rebound. Larsson picks up another assist after two last game.
But after that, the momentum swung toward St. Louis. The Blues had the better of the play from about the five-minute mark of the first period through the midpoint of the second.
During that stretch, Logan Mailloux tied the game 1-1 at 6:50 of the first after a defensive breakdown (I couldn’t help notice Chandler Stephenson puck watching at the top of the crease) allowed him to wrap the puck around into an open net. St. Louis then took a 2-1 lead at 7:40 of the second on a well-executed rush finished by recent Kraken killer Dylan Holloway.
1-1. Logan Mailloux gets the rebound and wraps it around the other side.
Schwartz downplayed the notion that Seattle went quiet for nearly half the game.
“It was a pretty back-and-forth game. It was right there. It’s a one-goal game, so a save here, a bounce there.”
He’s not wrong—the Kraken were a bounce away from tying it. But easing off the pressure for that extended stretch ultimately did them in.
Takeaway 2: A nice pushback
To their credit, the Kraken mounted a strong pushback, particularly after falling behind by two goals in the third period.
Seattle generated sustained offensive-zone time and, on many nights, would have found the equalizer—especially during a 6-on-4 advantage in the final two minutes when they created several quality chances.
“We had good O-zone time,” Schwartz said. “We obviously could be around the net a little bit more, there’s rebounds, and their goalie played well. So we could have maybe had more traffic, but we had a good push… We had chances.”
Ultimately, though, only Dunn was able to solve Hofer, who came up with a handful of large stops down the stretch.
Takeaway 3: Robert Thomas had a nice game
The Blues appear to be firmly in sell mode with Friday’s trade deadline fast approaching. One name frequently mentioned as potentially available is Robert Thomas, and I paid close attention to him in this game to see how he might look in deep sea blue.
To be clear, I have no indication that the Kraken are actively pursuing Thomas or that he’d have interest in coming to Seattle, but he’s one of the more intriguing forwards rumored to be available.
Based on Wednesday’s showing, I can confirm that I wouldn’t mind seeing him in a Kraken sweater. The 26-year-old, 6-foot, 207-pound center had a strong game, recording an assist on Mailloux’s early goal and scoring what turned out to be the game-winner. On that play, Thomas found a soft spot in the slot, took a feed from Brayden Schenn, and ripped a shot against the grain that beat Philipp Grubauer.
Hmm. Robert Thomas would like nice in deep sea blue…
I’ve always assumed Seattle would be more inclined to pursue a scoring winger than another center. But if a theoretical deal for Thomas involved Shane Wright heading the other way, the roster construction could make sense: Thomas and Matty Beniers as the top two centers, Chandler Stephenson as the 3C, and some combination of Freddy Gaudreau and Ben Meyers filling the 4C role.
I’m convinced that acquiring Thomas would represent a significant upgrade to the roster. I’m just not anywhere close to convinced the Kraken will actually land him.
Darren Brown
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at soundofhockey.com and the host of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is a member of the PHWA and is also usually SOH’s Twitter intern (but please pretend you don’t know that). Follow him @DarrenFunBrown and @sound_hockey or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
The Seattle Kraken’s signature win on Monday against the Carolina Hurricanes marked Game 60 of the season, which means it’s time for another 10 for 10. If you’re new here, this series pulls together 10 data points from the last 10 games to help show where the Kraken are trending, what’s working, and what still needs attention as the playoff race tightens.
Let’s jump in.
Data Point 1: How they fared
The Kraken went 7-3-0 over their last 10 games, beginning on Jan. 25 against the New Jersey Devils. When you compare that stretch to the other Pacific Division contenders and the wild-card hopefuls, you can see how they’ve positioned themselves firmly in the playoff race.
Data Point 2: Change over the season in the Pacific Division
One fascinating trend this year is the shifting landscape of the Pacific Division. The top five Pacific teams from last season have all seen significant dips in points percentage, while the bottom three have taken major steps forward and are now in playoff contention. No other division has seen a swing this dramatic.
Data Point 3: Holding on to leads
This chart is a bit of an eye-sore, but I stumbled across it over the weekend and couldn’t look away. The Kraken have won 100 percent of the games in which they held a two-goal lead at any point. They’re one of just three teams with a perfect record (23-0-0) in that situation.
If you look one column to the left, their 69.0 percent win rate when holding a one-goal lead is right around league average.
Data Point 4: Goals against (minus empty-net goals)
We knew in the offseason that new head coach Lane Lambert would bring a more defensive mindset and structure to the 2025–26 Kraken. That was on full display early in the season as Seattle squeaked out low-scoring wins by minimizing goals against. Things slipped a bit in Games 21–30 and 41–50, but the last 10 games have been outstanding in terms of limiting goals allowed.
Data Point 5: Goals for (minus empty-net goals)
Goal scoring remains an area of opportunity for the Kraken. They’ve struggled for much of the season, and it’s been a recurring theme in national media skepticism about their playoff chances.
Their 2.9 goals for (minus empty-net goals) over the last 10 games is still in the bottom half of the league, but it’s encouraging to see improvement.
Data Point 6: Goals by player (excluding empty-net goals)
Digging deeper into the scoring, Shane Wright and Matty Beniers led the way over the last 10 games with four goals each, excluding empty-netters. Jordan Eberle scored five goals in that span, but two came into an empty net.
Data Point 7: Home is where the wins are
If you’ve been attending games this season, you’ve probably felt a little extra pep in your step walking out of Climate Pledge Arena.
It gets better: in calendar year 2026, the Kraken are 8-2-1 at home.
Data Point 8: Winning in the division
The Kraken are also showing up against their Pacific Division opponents, posting the best points percentage within the division.
Data Point 9: Expected to lose
It’s no secret that much of the national media is betting against the Kraken making the playoffs. With so many analysts based in the Eastern time zone, I’m guessing they’re not staying up late for Kraken games, and if they are, they might be more inclined to watch the flashier West Coast teams like the Sharks or Ducks. I’ve got no problem with that, but it does mean they lean heavily on publicly available advanced analytics.
One category they often rely on is “expected goals” models. For those unfamiliar, expected goals (xG) estimates the likelihood that a given shot becomes a goal based on factors like shot location, shot type, pre-shot movement, game state, and more. They’re useful directional indicators of how well a team played, regardless of the actual result.
In a single game, the sum of expected goals for minus expected goals against is often used to determine who “should have” won. Over the season, these accumulate into an expected goal differential.
The Kraken rank 29th in expected goal differential but 17th in actual goal differential (excluding empty-net goals). Knowing how these stats are used, it’s easier to understand the national pessimism.
Public models are great tools, I use them all the time, but they’re incomplete and can sometimes be misleading. I’m not declaring this a playoff team with certainty, but I’ve long believed the Kraken do something different that public models don’t fully capture.
Data Point 10: Signature win and shot suppression
This 10-game segment closed with a signature win in Game 60, when the Kraken beat one of the NHL’s best teams, the Carolina Hurricanes. Some fans expressed concern about the shot count, but I felt comfortable with how Seattle was playing. After the first period, I thought they had a formula to win. Sure enough, they scored twice in the second (and had a third goal negated by an offside challenge) and held on for a 2–1 victory.
The reason I believed they had a shot was the way they limited Carolina’s quality opportunities. To illustrate, look at the Hurricanes’ shot attempts over their last four games.
It’s clear Seattle did the best job of limiting high-danger attempts in front of the net. Don’t get me wrong — it wasn’t easy, and Joey Daccord still had to play a terrific game, but it was a full-team effort to suppress Carolina’s chances.
Taken together, these 10 games showed a team sharpening its defensive identity, finding just enough offense, and banking points at the right time. There’s still plenty to prove, but the Kraken continue to hang around and make things interesting.
That was a massive win for the Seattle Kraken, who knocked off the second-best (now third-best) team in the NHL thanks to a complete, full-team, 60-minute effort that featured opportunistic scoring, staunch defending, and outstanding goaltending.
The Carolina Hurricanes played exactly the game we expected from them, tilting the ice for long stretches and throwing the kitchen sink at Joey Daccord. But the Kraken’s structured defense was nearly perfect on the night, and when it wasn’t, their goaltender bailed them out almost every time.
Considering Carolina had won five straight and was 10-0-2 in its previous 12, this was something of an unexpected victory for Seattle. Not only was it a big win because of the opponent, it also vaulted the Kraken past Edmonton for third place in the Pacific Division and gave them a five-point cushion over San Jose, Nashville, and Los Angeles for the final wild-card spot.
Here are Three Takeaways from a memorable 2-1 Kraken win over the Hurricanes.
Takeaway 1: The Big Rig game
Was that the best game Jamie Oleksiak has ever played as a Kraken?
Despite his massive frame, I don’t recall him ever looking downright scary to opposing players trying to enter the Seattle zone—but he did in this one against Carolina. The Big Rig finished with 11 hits, a new career high.
“He was outstanding,” Daccord said of Oleksiak. “He’s just such a beast. He’s an absolute beast, he’s a warrior, blocking shots, I thought he had a great stick tonight. He made so many good plays tonight, and then obviously just burying guys too.”
Plus, when the Kraken were forced to kill a 6-on-4 situation over the final 1:29 of the game, he came up with a critical shot block, then won a puck battle to get it out of danger and briefly relieve pressure.
Two of his biggest hits—one on Taylor Hall with 22 seconds left in the first period and another on Seth Jarvis with 14 minutes remaining in the third—indirectly led to scoring chances going the other way.
As we were saying…
Now Oleksiak steps up and absolutely blasts Seth Jarvis, who was slow to get up and hobbled to the bench.
If Oleksiak played like that every night, he’d be one of the most feared and dominant shutdown defensemen in the sport.
“I just thought he was hard,” Lambert said. “I think there’s games where he’s equally as hard. Maybe the hits don’t show up, necessarily, on the score sheet so much. But his presence, and certainly his presence around the net in the defensive zone for us tonight was huge.”
Takeaway 2: Joey was excellent, too
It’s true Seattle’s defensive structure was mostly airtight in this game, with many of Carolina’s attempts coming from the outside. But you don’t win a game in which you’re outshot 36-15 without a special night from your goalie.
Daccord was visibly dialed in from the opening face-off. There weren’t many acrobatic saves—largely because he was square to shooters and the Kraken kept chances to the perimeter—but his play reading, puck tracking, and rebound control were excellent.
The home crowd chanted Joey’s name multiple times throughout the night—rightfully so—and he earned first-star honors.
“A big thing with playing a shot volume team [like Carolina] is just controlling your rebounds,” Daccord said. “Because they’re going to try to just get pucks in that create chaos, so if I can suck up pucks, get a lot of whistles, put pucks in the corner, that helps our D a lot in terms of just killing their motion in the offensive zone and resetting the play with a D-zone drop.”
There were brief stretches this season when it felt fair to wonder whether Daccord would rediscover the elite form that endeared him to fans last year. He appears to have found it. He’s now won six of his last seven starts, dating back to Jan. 25.
This is a very good time for Daccord to be playing his best hockey.
Takeaway 3: Critical goals at critical times
Seattle did an excellent job keeping the game low-scoring, but you still have to capitalize when opportunities arise.
The Kraken appeared to score three goals but were only credited with two after a beautiful give-and-go between Jaden Schwartz and Kaapo Kakko was overturned on an offside challenge.
That play came at 7:57 of the second period, with Seattle already holding a 1-0 lead thanks to Kakko’s icebreaker on a 2-on-1 with Berkly Catton. The overturned goal could have deflated the group—but instead, the Kraken responded with a crucial tally from their fourth line.
The sequence started with Jacob Melanson doing Jacob Melanson things in the defensive zone. After Daccord rimmed the puck around the boards, Melanson beat Sebastian Aho to it, absorbed contact against the wall, and protected the puck long enough to slide it to Adam Larsson, who quickly transitioned play up ice.
“‘Mel’ made a great play on the wall, got it to ‘Lars’ in the middle,” Meyers said. “He just moved it quick to me, I got it to Freddy, and then just drove the net. I was able to put her home after a great pass from Freddy too.”
B-B-B-BEN MMMMEYERS! 🚨
It starts with a physical, hard-nosed play in the defensive zone by Melanson. Gaudreau feeds Meyers, who sticks with it and gets a good bounce.
Meyers’ finish wasn’t pretty, but it counted—and it ended up being the game-winner after Nikolaj Ehlers cut the lead to 2-1 late in the second.
From there, it was defend, defend, defend until the fans counted the Kraken down to the final horn, after which Daccord was mobbed by his teammates.
Darren Brown
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at soundofhockey.com and the host of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is a member of the PHWA and is also usually SOH’s Twitter intern (but please pretend you don’t know that). Follow him @DarrenFunBrown and @sound_hockey or email darren@soundofhockey.com.
The Kraken returned to action last week, and that means Monday Musings returns as well. It was a bit of a slow start from the out of the blocks, but the boys are officially back.
A slow start and a needed bounce-back
The Kraken returned to action with two road games: one against the Dallas Stars and the other against the St. Louis Blues. I can understand the stinker of a game against the Stars where they lost 4-1, but the 5-1 loss to the Blues had me panicking a bit.
The Blues are currently 31st in the league, and the night they played the Kraken, they were without one of their best players, Robert Thomas. This is the NHL, where anyone can beat anyone, but with the standings so tight right now, you would have expected a better overall effort from a team fighting for a playoff spot.
Fortunately, they finished the week with a decisive 5-1 win against a quite frankly bad Vancouver Canucks team. The Kraken jumped out to a 2-0 lead about halfway through the first period. Other than a five-minute stretch in the second when the Canucks pulled within one, this game felt very one-sided.
The Canucks are bad, but the Kraken still really needed to take care of business there and not let this post-break skid fester.
Firing up the line blender
It has been interesting to watch the forward lines get jumbled up over the last three games as the team tries to figure out some post-Olympic break chemistry.
In the three games last week, only the Matty Beniers, Jordan Eberle, and Jared McCann line stayed together. Meanwhile, a new combination of Shane Wright, Berkly Catton, and Kaapo Kakko looked very good against the Canucks despite not scoring. They collectively had nine shot attempts, and a few times, Wright and Catton found themselves in 2-on-1 opportunities but just couldn’t finish the play. I would really like to see that line stick together a bit longer to see if they can start generating some goals.
Power play finally breaks through
For the first time since coming back from the Olympic break, the Kraken finally broke through for a power-play goal on Saturday against the Canucks.
Up until that goal, they were 0-for-8 on the power play since the break. That isn’t great, but it seemed like they were still generating quality chances on the man advantage in those two road games. Here is a look at the power-play shots by game:
Note that blocked shots are captured at the location of the block and not the origin location of the shot. This might make the blocked shots appear closer to the net and therefore more dangerous than they initially were.
Trade deadline approaches
The NHL Trade Deadline is coming up on Friday. I provided an overview of possible trade deadline strategies and how the Kraken might fit with them earlier last week. We then posted a Kraken Roundtable that touched on some trade deadline specifics.
Nothing has materially changed since then. In short, I could see the Kraken moving a player or two from the pending free agent group of Jamie Oleksiak, Jaden Schwartz, or Eeli Tolvanen. Jordan Eberle is also on an expiring deal, but I would be surprised to see him get moved unless he has made it clear to management that he wants a realistic shot at the Stanley Cup this year.
Other musings
The Kraken scored one goal in each of their games Wednesday and Thursday. It was their first time scoring one goal or fewer in two consecutive games since Nov. 9 and 11.
Saturday night was the 22nd game the Seattle Kraken held a two-goal lead at any point. Would you believe me if I told you that they are one of three teams not to lose a game when they had a two-goal lead at any time? The other teams are Minnesota and Colorado.
In case you missed it, Darren posted the (somewhat) funny “hat trick that wasn’t” on Saturday. I wonder when the actual scoring change happened, because it wasn’t announced in the arena until Eberle scored his apparent third goal. The goal that got changed occurred five minutes earlier. There were four stoppages between the changed goal and Eberle’s faux-goal.
Jordan Eberle’s 22 goals this season is the most he’s had through 57 games since 2011-12.
I’m interested to see which AHL players might get the call-up after the trade deadline. There is no roster limit, but the team is limited to only three four call-ups after the trade deadline. There’s a decent chance we see Jagger Firkus get the opportunity, but beyond that, it might be more of a situational need.
It would not surprise me to see one or two Kraken pending free agents signed to an extension before the trade deadline on Friday.
Finally, the organization lost Tye Kartye on waivers this week. Kartye was a hard working player that made it to the NHL the hard way. I don’t think there will be a Kraken fan from Season 2 that will ever forget his debut.
The Kraken do have one of the more challenging schedules remaining among the teams fighting for a playoff position.
Players of the week
Julius Miettinen (EVT/SEA): The 2024 second-round selection of the Seattle Kraken had a monster week with seven goals and four assists over three games. Miettinen is second in the WHL in points per game.
Jordan Eberle (SEA): The Kraken captain had two goals and one assist in their game against Vancouver. He currently leads the team in goals and continues to defy his age.
Alexis Bernier (CHQ/SEA): The Kraken’s third-round selection of the 2024 draft had been injured most of the season and finally got back into a game on Jan. 23. The Chicoutimi Saguenéens defenseman has 10 points in 13 games since then, including three assists in two games over the weekend.
Goal of the week
Nothing super special about this one, but you’ve got to love seeing a 35-year-old vet beating a 22-year-old rookie down the ice to reestablish a two-goal lead.
O, CAPTAIN! 🫡 🚨
Great speed from Eberle. He nearly loses it, but regains control and sneaks a backhander under Lankinen’s arm.
The week kicks off with a tough matchup against the Carolina Hurricanes on Monday night. The Canes are second in the league with a .695 points percentage and are 8-0-2 over their last 10 games. The Kraken are a surprising 2-2-0 against the Hurricanes at Climate Pledge Arena. When they played them in Raleigh back in January, the Kraken had just 12 shots in their 3-2 loss, but somehow managed to hold a 2-1 lead in the third period. I am not expecting much from this game but will still want to see a lot of “compete” from the Kraken.
The schedule gets easier on Wednesday when the Kraken host the Blues. Yes, those are the same Blues that beat the Kraken 5-1 last Wednesday. The Blues won their first road game since Dec. 20 when they beat the Wild on Sunday. Regardless, I expect the Kraken to come out pissed and hopefully demonstrate that last Wednesday’s loss was a bit of a fluke.
Finally, the Ottawa Senators come to town on Saturday. The Senators are fighting for their playoff lives, as they currently sit five points out of the last wild-card spot with two teams between them and that spot. Regardless of what happens in the Senators’ two games between now and Saturday, I expect a lot of desperation from them, which should make for an entertaining game.
These games are critical, but I am not going to be overdramatic and call them “must-win” games. Obviously, wins are important, but if they can capture three of six points, they will be fine to stay in the playoff hunt. Four would be good, and five would be fantastic.
It has been a while, how are we all feeling out there?
