Kraken's problems are far more concerning than the bizarre news conference

A tale of two expansion drafts

The Kraken didn't make the playoffs in their first season in the league. Vegas made the Stanley Cup Final. Historically, Vegas' experience is the outlier.

The expansion draft rules that existed for Vegas and Seattle were significantly more generous for the expansion teams. The NHL was trying to avoid a repeat of past expansion follies. The Nashville Predators and Minnesota Wild each endured difficult inaugural seasons. The Predators won only 28 of 82 games, while Minnesota won 25 of 82. One of the most famously nightmarish expansion stories in NHL history belongs to the Ottawa Senators. They entered the league in 1992-93 with a historically bad 10-70-4 record. The Senators won only 51 games in their first four seasons.

While few thought the Golden Knights would find such immediate success, their front office's manipulation of the rules brought in significant draft capital and numerous young prospects. They were able to do this by making side deals with multiple NHL teams, agreeing to select certain unprotected players or to ignore certain unprotected players. The results speak for themselves. The Golden Knights' treasure trove of assets set them up for a generation, making them the standard for all expansion teams. The Knights have missed the playoffs once in their first eight years in the league.

Seattle continues to struggle

The Kraken have missed that mark by a country mile. Seattle is on its third coach in just five years and its second straight season with a new coach. The Kraken's lone playoff appearance in their second season in 2022-23, which included a shocking upset of defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche in the opening round, looks like an outlier. Their win totals since then are 34 and 35 games in the last two seasons. Now 1-8-1 in their last 10 games, the Kraken are just a point ahead of the basement-dwellers Vancouver Canucks in the Pacific Division. 

It's impossible to pinpoint any one issue in Seattle. The goaltending has been, politely, inconsistent. The team has regularly spent money to try to address needs in free agency, but the scouting process has yielded poor results. In the draft, the Kraken have found NHL players, but multiple swings near the top have not yielded a star. 

The Kraken look like an organization without a direction or an identity. They need to get one quickly or risk alienating the fans in their market like the wayward Arizona Coyotes did in Phoenix. Losing consistently for a franchise comes with consequences. Arizona's story ended with relocation to Utah. The Kraken aren't facing that danger yet, but that doesn't mean they can put this product out consistently and expect fans to show up.

Eventually, they won't.