As the trade deadline approaches, we’ll be doing a team-by-team look at who should be buying and selling and which players might be on the move. Here, we have the Seattle Kraken.
The situation
The Seattle Kraken look a lot more like what you’d expect an expansion team to look like in their first season than what we got the last time around.
The Vegas Golden Knights hit the ground running and never stopped. They ran all the way to the Stanley Cup Final in their first season and have been a legitimate contender ever since.
Things are going to take a little longer in Seattle.
The Kraken own a 14-25-4 record, third-last in the league in terms of points percentage, and well out of the mix for a playoff spot.
While nobody expected them to capture the same magic as the Golden Knights did in their inaugural season, this has been a disappointing start for the Kraken, a team that appeared to be, at the very least, good enough to be competitive in a mediocre Pacific Division.
Before the season, Seattle was pegged as a team without much high-end offensive talent but a strong blue line and a very good goaltending tandem. The thought was that the Kraken wouldn’t score that many goals, but they’d compensate by being a very difficult team to score on.
The first part of that prediction has been accurate, as the Kraken rank 24th in the league in goals, but the second part hasn’t come to fruition at all, as Seattle ranks 30th in the league in goals against, and their goalies have a combined for a .885 save percentage.
Players to watch
Earlier this week, Linda Cohn of ESPN reported that Kraken general manager Ron Francis is listening to offers for everybody on the team’s roster. With Seattle firmly out of the playoff race, Francis’ objective now is to sell off some players to build draft and prospect capital while also determining which players he’s going to build around.
In terms of impending unrestricted free agents, Mark Giordano is the biggest name Seattle has to offer. He was ranked No. 17 on Frank Seravalli’s trade targets list for January but will have quite a bit of say in regard to where he winds up.
Giordano has a modified no-trade clause that allows him to provide a list of 19 teams he can be traded to. As Seravalli mentioned in the trade targets post, Francis won’t move Giordano unless it’s to a place where he’s comfortable and could help in the Stanley Cup chase.
Two more rental names Seattle could move are veteran forwards Calle Jarnkrok and Marcus Johansson. Jarnkrok has been a good two-way winger in the league for years, while Johansson can provide depth scoring on a playoff team.
The interesting thing to watch when it comes to the Kraken will be how they handle some of their veteran players who are signed beyond this season.
Jared McCann has been Seattle’s best forward this season, as he leads the team with 17 goals and 26 points. McCann is a restricted free agent with one more year left of team control before he can hit the open market. He’s young enough to be considered a long-term player for Seattle, but he could also net a lot in return in a trade.
It’s a similar situation with defender Vince Dunn, who’s signed for one more year with a $4 million cap hit. Dunn leads Seattle’s defensemen with 17 points through 38 games and is logging 19:57 per game. At just 25 years old age, he could be a part of the Kraken blue line for years to come, or the team could sell high.
One final thing to note about the Kraken is that they boast nearly $7.5 million in open salary-cap room, which gives them the flexibility to be creative at the trade deadline. They can take on problematic contracts from other teams in order to help facilitate deals or as a way to acquire more draft picks.
More must-reads: