2025–26 NHL team preview: Seattle Kraken

LAST SEASON

Unlike the Vegas Golden Knights, their older brothers in NHL expansion, the Seattle Kraken have had a tough time finding consistent success in their infancy. Four years into their existence, the Kraken have spent the majority of their time close to the league median in most categories, with their surprising 2022-23 playoff campaign looking much more like a wild outlier than a harbinger of future success.

That’s not to say the Kraken don’t have anything going for them. They’re in a world-class city with a fantastic fan atmosphere in one of the league’s coolest arenas. It took way too long for top-tier pro hockey to return to Seattle, and now they’ve got a PWHL team on the way for good measure. But they won just 35 games in the 2024-25 season, putting them all the way down in seventh in the Pacific Division with one of the most inconspicuous rosters in the entire league.

We’re still waiting on the first true star player to wear Seattle’s beautifully understated uniforms. Not a single player on this Kraken team scored even 30 goals or 70 points last season — in fact, they’ve never had a single player exceed 70 points in their existence. It’s been a bit of a rough go. And with multiple teams in the Pacific (looking at you, San Jose) putting together truly transcendent pools of current and future talent at multiple positions, it’s hard to see Seattle keeping up in the race to contention, or even relevance.

KEY ADDITIONS & DEPARTURES

Additions

Mason Marchment, RW
Freddy Gaudreau, C
Ryan Lindgren, D
Lane Lambert, head coach

Departures

Andre Burakovsky, LW (CHI)
Mikey Eyssimont, C (BOS)
Dan Bylsma, head coach

OFFENSE

The Kraken were surprisingly prolific in the offensive zone last season — relatively speaking, at least. They scored 247 goals, which isn’t particularly impressive on the surface but still exceeds the output from the Calgary Flames, Vancouver Canucks, and Anaheim Ducks, all of whom finished ahead of them in the Pacific Division standings. In a division full of milquetoast offensive attack schemes, at least the Kraken managed to stand out a little.

Still, they weren’t worldbeaters by any means. Get this: Jared McCann, their leading scorer, managed just 61 points all year long. Jaden Schwartz led the team with 26 goals, and only three players on the entire team managed more than 20. Where the Kraken did manage to hold their own more than their counterparts was with their depth, which was genuinely impressive. But there’s always going to be a problem when all a team has is an assortment of different kinds of depth. The Kraken don’t have much more than that.

Faced with a pretty lackluster crop of free agents and trade targets this summer, the Kraken walked away with a pair of veterans up front in Mason Marchment and Freddy Gaudreau. The Dallas Stars‘ loss is Seattle’s gain with Marchment, who scored 22 goals in each of the last two seasons while having very little problem dictating play at both ends of the ice. Gaudreau is a little further beyond his prime but should still be able to help out down the middle (or at other positions).

Even with those two in the fold, it’s difficult to get around the lack of star power in this Seattle forward group. Matty Beniers, Shane Wright, Berkly Catton, and 2025 first-round pick Jake O’Brien all have chances to become the top-end difference-maker(s) this team sorely needs, but they’re not there yet. Hopefully it isn’t too long a wait.

DEFENSE

It’s hard to believe, but we’re five years into this Seattle franchise’s existence and they’ve never drafted a single defenseman in the first round. What does that mean? In part, it means the Kraken’s defensive group still looks a lot like it did back at the 2021 Expansion Draft: a hodgepodge of veterans, castoffs, and unheralded youngsters looking to make names for themselves.

That’s not inherently a bad thing, but it does mean that Seattle’s defense lacks star power in much the same way as its forward group. With all due respect to Vince Dunn, Brandon Montour, Adam Larsson, and Jamie Oleksiak, the Kraken don’t have a bona fide No. 1 guy on the blueline. What they do have is a strong collection of defensemen who could feasibly play with one of those No. 1s, if one of them ever happened to roll around. (Easier said than done).

While part of it had to do with the spotty performances from their goaltenders (one of them in particular), the Kraken ultimately allowed the second-most goals in the Pacific last season — only fewer than the San Jose Sharks, who gave up 50 more (315 vs. 265). The best defensive teams in the division allowed 50 fewer than that. There’s a big gulf for the Kraken to overcome here, and it’ll take a lot more than Ryker Evans blossoming into a top-four guy for them to do it.

The Kraken did add Ryan Lindgren into the fold in unrestricted free agency on a four-year contract, but he’ll need to show he can do a lot better at pushing play in the right direction than he did with the New York Rangers and Colorado Avalanche last year if he wants to make a substantial difference for Seattle. As it stands, Lindgren just looks like another version of what the Kraken already have.

GOALTENDING

It’s Joey Daccord’s crease to lose in Seattle. The 29-year-old netminder is locked in through 2030 at a very reasonable $5 million cap hit and has all but completely supplanted Philipp Grubauer as the team’s full-fledged starting goaltender. Daccord went 27-23-5 with two shutouts and a .906 save percentage in 57 games with the Kraken in 2024-25, a far cry above Grubauer’s miserable 8-17-1 line and .875 mark.

The Kraken made an enormous investment in Grubauer as their starting goaltender before their first season, and to say it hasn’t worked out would be an understatement. He’s entering his fifth year in Seattle at a huge $5.9 million cap hit, and he has to record a save percentage above .899 in a single season to date. There was talk about the Kraken potentially exercising a buyout on the final two years of Grubauer’s deal this offseason, but that never came to pass. Now, they just need him to be able to hold his own as the second-in-command behind Daccord, a former Arizona State University standout and NHL late bloomer.

COACHING

‘Disco Dan’ Bylsma’s tenure as head coach of the Kraken lasted all of one season before he was relieved of his duties by now-ex general manager Ron Francis, who was under plenty of pressure himself to get this team back to the playoffs. It’s no longer 2021 in Seattle; it’s all about results, and Bylsma didn’t deliver much in that department in the 2024-25 season, leading the team to just 76 points and another bottom-10 finish.

Lane Lambert is the new chief decision-maker on Seattle’s coaching staff. It’s more than fair to question whether the Kraken made a lateral move in swapping out Bylsma for Lambert, whose main claim to fame as an NHL head coach has been leading the New York Islanders to a pair of middling 42-win seasons. That’d be an improvement for Seattle, sure, but not the one they need to truly buck their trend as one of the most mediocre teams in the West. If Lambert is unable to mesh any better with the talented players in Seattle than Bylsma did, it might not just be his job on the line.

ROOKIES

We mentioned Berkly Catton in passing earlier, and he truly looks like this Kraken team’s best bet to become a star forward. The 2024 No. 8 overall pick is coming off back-to-back terrific seasons with the WHL’s Spokane Chiefs, most recently piling up 109 points in just 57 games in the 2024-25 regular season before collecting 42 points in 20 playoff contests. He’s one of the best young forward prospects in the game, and while it’s not a given he’ll play center in the NHL, he could become a franchise-defining talent at the position if it all comes together for him.

Don’t overlook Jani Nyman, who, unlike Catton, has critical professional experience under his belt and has also skated in 12 NHL games during his young career. The 2022 second-round pick is a pro-sized winger (6-2, 212) who starred in the Finnish Liiga before coming to North America with the AHL’s Coachella Valley Firebirds. After scoring 28 goals in the AHL last year, Nyman should get a long look in Seattle’s bottom nine to start the 2025-26 campaign.

BURNING QUESTIONS

1. When will Matty Beniers take the next step? To an untrained eye, Beniers — the No. 2 overall pick in 2021 — appears to have plateaued. But there are real signs that he’s made legitimate strides on both sides of the puck towards becoming a legitimately impactful two-way center. Still, scoring 20 goals and 43 points in a season does not a star player make. With internal competition mounting from a fellow high pick in Shane Wright, it’s going to fall to Beniers to start producing significantly more in the years to come.

2. Will Chandler Stephenson bounce back? Stephenson still has a lot to do to prove his success with the Golden Knights wasn’t solely a product of Mark Stone. The veteran center still managed 51 points in his first year for the Kraken, but that’s not enough when you’re making $6.25 million through 2031, and especially not with defensive metrics as deleterious as his. The Kraken won’t go far unless Stephenson is able to prove he can live up to his big ticket.

3. Is Kaapo Kakko for real? Acquired from the Rangers midway through the 2024-25 season, Kakko enjoyed one of the most productive stretches of his young career down the stretch after arriving in Seattle. The big Finn scored 30 points in 49 games post-trade, a far cry from the 14 points in 30 games with the Rangers to start the season. What’s better is he was actually playing every night instead of getting scratched. If Lambert can push Kakko’s buttons the right way, Seattle might have a gem on their hands.

PREDICTION

The Pacific is far from being the NHL’s best division, but it’s hard to look at this Kraken team and confidently say they’ll be in the top half when all is said and done. They just don’t have the firepower … yet. President of hockey ops Francis and new GM hire Jason Botterill are slooooowly building a decent-looking team, but they’re still a few years away from rising above mediocrity at the very best. If they do reach that point, it’ll be guys like Catton, O’Brien, and Wright driving the bus, and they’ll need to draft a few good defensemen along the way.

For now, we’ll say Seattle ends up finishing somewhere around sixth in the Pacific. It ain’t much, but that’s still one spot ahead of where they finished in 2024-25. Baby steps.

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