Over the summer, only three fan bases had less confidence in their respective front offices than the Kraken’s, and now, only three franchises are projected to finish the season with fewer points. Give the fans their credit; they have the situation pretty well diagnosed.
It’s one thing to be sub-mediocre, which Seattle has certainly managed over the last two seasons. It’s another to seem functionally directionless — and that’s where the Kraken now find themselves. A new GM (Jason Botterill) and new head coach (Lane Lambert) are charged with plotting a new course, but the immediate future, after several batches of questionable contracts and poor cap management, looks bleak.
The projection
Seattle is a great example of this sport’s year-to-year variance. The first year of Kraken hockey was a worst-case scenario of 60 points. The second season was a best-case scenario of 100 points. Immediately after, they found their level with 81 and 76-point seasons — right in between the first two extremes. This is what the Kraken are.
Without many big changes going into the 2025-26 season, the Kraken enter with the same baseline at 77 points. There’s a 1-in-20 chance they get 97 points or more and there’s a 1-in-20 chance they get 57 points or less. Neither are realistic expectations; they’re extremes.
The realistic expectation is this: The Kraken will probably not be very competitive this season, with a much higher chance of landing in the league’s bottom third than being in the playoff hunt. Whether that means 11th or 15th in the West is the question.
The big question
Do Matty Beniers and Shane Wright deserve more hype?
When it was time to assemble our NHL Player Tiers for the 2025-26 season, we expected pushback in a few specific areas, and our decision to initially leave Beniers off the list was one of them. We kept an open mind, though; if our panel of execs, analysts and coaches wanted to argue Beniers on, en masse, they could’ve done it.
It didn’t happen. Virtually everyone we spoke to — more than 20 sources total — felt that, for now, Beniers is unlikely to be one of the 150 best players in the league this season. That fact, perhaps more than any other one, illustrates why Seattle is in such a jam. Beniers (and Wright, too) are good players. They’ve got potential. They’re also dealing with issues that a) stop observers from stumping for them in exercises like Player Tiers and b) have too much of the franchise’s future well-being riding on their development.
In explaining his rationale for leaving Beniers off, one coach laid it plain.
“That’s one of those situations where I think he’s struggling a little bit,” the coach said. “Maybe the team’s in the same boat. It’s like, ‘What exactly are you as a player?’
“I don’t know if he’s a No. 1 center. And that’s OK because he’s a really good No. 2 or 3. But if that’s the guy you’re building your team around, the production should be higher based on ice time alone.”
That lack of production, period, is why Beniers found himself outside the top 150. A player with his Defensive Rating (3.7 projected, fourth among forwards behind only Sam Reinhart, Aleksander Barkov and Seth Jarvis) has to be pretty rough offensively to ultimately miss the cut — but Beniers managed. He scored 1.68 all-situations points per 60, the same as bottom-six centers such as Jake Evans and Calle Järnkrok. Neither of those guys saw meaningful power-play time; Beniers played more than 190 minutes with the man advantage. Neither had top-six quality linemates; Beniers’ most frequent was Jaden Schwartz, a player who can be counted on to score at (at least) a 20-goal pace.
Most importantly, neither Evans, Järnkrok nor anyone within shouting distance of their level of production is counted upon to be a franchise building block — and Beniers, unfair as it might be, is just that with the Kraken. In some respects, it’d be more reasonable to argue that he deserves less hype than he receives. Until he produces more, or at least starts positively impacting offensive play on the level of a top-six forward, that’s the reality of his situation.
Wright, in some regards, is the inverse of Beniers. In his first full NHL season, the No. 4 pick in 2022 produced 2.03 points per 60 at five-on-five, 76th in the league and in line with players such as Macklin Celebrini (2.04) and Quinton Byfield (2.0). He also showed some signs of power-play capability, and his outlook for 2025-26 reflects as much. A projected Offensive Rating of 3.4 is something to build upon, especially for a 21-year-old with 95 career NHL games played. For Wright, the asterisk is an overall lack of two-way substance; Seattle’s coaching staff in 2024-25 played him in a largely sheltered role, and his defensive struggles were still immense — certainly too serious to start the hype train for 2025-26.
If either player meaningfully improves, it should be viewed as a win for the Kraken. The real question is whether incremental growth will be enough to help the rest of the roster make sense.
The wild card
Can Lane Lambert unlock Seattle’s offense?
Outside of the 2022-23 season, when the team’s deep approach fueled its first playoff run, the Kraken generally haven’t been an offensive powerhouse.
Is Lambert the guy to change that?
It’s easy to write him off based on his disappointing tenure as the Islanders’ head coach. But to Lambert’s credit, the team’s five-on-five offense clicked at its highest rate in years under his direction with upticks in both expected and actual generation — despite not having a high-octane roster to work with. The downside is that the defense crumbled under his guidance, and that’s an area that also needs improvement in Seattle after last season.
Lambert’s Islanders’ tenure may have been dicey, but he isn’t the first person to struggle in their first head coaching experience, either. Mike Sullivan and Scott Arniel did, before finding their footing in their second go-arounds.
Maybe Lambert can turn things around in Seattle. He has the chops to be a great assistant coach, between his time in Nashville, Washington and on Long Island. In Toronto last year, he proved he could excel outside of Barry Trotz’s shadow in that capacity, too. So the potential is there for a Lambert-led Kraken team, as long as he has learned from all of those experiences.
The strengths
Where would the Kraken be over the last two seasons without Joey Daccord?
Last year, Daccord saved 20 goals above expected over 57 games while Philipp Grubauer allowed 13 over 26 games. The year before that, it was 16 in 50 games while Grubauer was even over 36 games. In both seasons, it was probably the difference between picking eighth overall and drafting in the top five. Seattle got a pair of good prospects there, but boy, would Ivan Demidov be nice right about now.
That’s the exact type of talent Seattle is missing and Daccord is the main reason. Daccord has been that good for Seattle since breaking through during the 2023-24 season, ranking eighth in GSAx over that time span. He enters the season as the ninth-ranked starter by Net Rating for that reason.
Daccord raises this team’s floor considerably — probably not enough for the playoffs unless everything breaks right, but enough to obscure an otherwise woeful roster. On paper, he might be Seattle’s only genuine strength going into the season, a symbol of how dire things currently are.
If you look hard enough, there is some upside sprinkled throughout the lineup. Beniers has sneaky defensive might, while Wright has subtle offensive pop. If Seattle finally hands them the keys over, say, Chandler Stephenson, the Kraken could be a lot more interesting this season. Rookie Jani Nyman adds intrigue and could reignite the Kraken’s depth advantage if he can port over some of his AHL scoring to the NHL level. Kaapo Kakko is a huge wild card after finally breaking through offensively with a 50-point pace in Seattle.
If you have to squint this hard for any hint of gold, though, chances are slim that there are a bunch of gold nuggets hiding amidst the dirt.
Unless there is a massively unexpected leap from Beniers and Wright this season, it’s likely we’ll be talking about the same ol’ problems in Seattle all season.
The weaknesses
Seattle is four players short of a decent lineup. Unfortunately for the Kraken, it’s the four most important players that are missing.
The Kraken do not have a player worthy of being a first, second, or even third-best forward on an average team. If your team’s best forward is Jared McCann — who led the team with 61 points because someone had to — you’re in serious trouble.
Picture a Kraken lineup that shifts every forward down three slots. A second line of Beniers flanked by McCann and Mason Marchment? Great! A third line of Wright with Jaden Schwartz and Jordan Eberle next to him? Terrific! A fourth line with Kakko, Tolvanen and Stephenson? Amazing! Now all they need is a Mikko Rantanen, a Mark Scheifele and a Jordan Kyrou to fill in the gaps at the top. No biggie!
And mind you, that would be an average first line. The best teams aim higher. That, in a nutshell, is the massive problem facing Seattle: A serious lack of high-end talent.
Vegas knew it immediately after Year 1, changing everything about an identity that got the Golden Knights all the way to the Stanley Cup Final that year. They were ruthless in their pursuit of it, ultimately leading to consistent playoff success and a Stanley Cup. The Kraken are seemingly clinging to the faint hope that a 2022-23 second-round exit wasn’t a fluke with regard to their depth approach despite three other seasons of proof to the contrary.
Getting high-end talent is easier said than done, we know. But in years where Macklin Celebrini, Matthew Schaefer and now Gavin McKenna have been the top prizes for the league’s worst teams, it doesn’t feel like Seattle has done nearly enough to position itself as an actual player for the future high-end talent the Kraken desperately need. After a summer where there was a clear seller’s market, it’s baffling that the Kraken added Marchment, rather than subtracted McCann or Schwartz or Eberle or any combination of the three.
It has led to a team that struggles to control play with a 29th-ranked 46 percent xG last season. Seattle’s poster child of ineptitude on that front is Stephenson, who managed a stunning league-worst 37 percent xG last year — seven percentage points worse than Seattle’s next-worst regular forward. We scoured every other team and the next worst gap between worst and second worst was 6.2 percentage points in Tampa Bay from Mitchell Chaffee. He played 12 minutes per night while Stephenson led Seattle’s forwards in ice-time at a shade under 20 minutes per night.
It’s possible that a new coach sets all this right with better tactics and usage. But faced with all of this, it’s difficult to trust the organization’s decisions at large. Lambert has his work cut out for him.
That brings us to the defense, where the problems are just as large; the Kraken are missing a true No. 1 defenseman. If your team’s best option is Vince Dunn, you’re also in serious trouble.
Just like there’s nothing wrong with McCann, who is a good player, there’s also nothing wrong with Dunn, who is also a good player. Dunn was Seattle’s lone representative in the Player Tiers this year, thanks to his still strong offensive ability. The problem is that Dunn is not a great player.
Last year, Dunn’s production dropped to 51 points per 82 from the 60-to-65 range he enjoyed the previous two seasons. Worse, is that his defensive utility has dropped over the past three seasons. The Kraken allowed 3.06 xGA/60 with Dunn on the ice last season, 0.32 more compared to when he was on the bench. That led to a minus-5.8 Defensive Rating, the 10th worst mark in the league, just narrowly ahead of Erik Karlsson and Cody Ceci. Over the last two seasons, Dunn has become a massive target on zone entries, which he’s struggled to defend and the Kraken have bled chances as a result.
That’s far from the only problem on defense, where everyone is slotted one spot too high. Brandon Montour has reverted to his old ways as a risky second-pair defender now that he’s away from the Panthers’ system. Adam Larsson’s defensive game abandoned him last season next to Dunn, and he’s probably closer to a No. 4. Ryker Evans struggled after a promising rookie season, and was especially poor defending the rush, while Jamie Oleksiak and Ryan Lindgren are past their prime — all three look like No. 6s.
From top to bottom, the team’s defense corps just isn’t good enough. Combine that with a lack of dynamic offense up front and Grubauer canceling out most of Daccord’s contributions, and Seattle enters the 2025-26 season with far too many problem areas to be optimistic.
The best case: 65 points
The delusion that the league’s least star-studded team can be competitive is unequivocally put to rest as the Kraken fall to the league’s basement despite growth from Beniers and Wright. Their prize: A potentially generational superstar capable of course-correcting the franchise.
The worst case: 90 points
The delusion that the league’s least star-studded team can be competitive continues as the Kraken finish just a few points outside of a playoff spot. The team doubles down on mediocrity.
The bottom line
Maybe the Kraken will prove the rest of the league wrong; it wouldn’t be the first time. But chances are that Seattle finishes outside the playoff picture once again; just how far it falls outside the top eight could be what helps turn this franchise around.
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