Why Kraken are at start of second chapter as training camp begins

by · The Seattle Times

The number five is an important benchmark in many walks of life. Your fifth birthday. A fifth anniversary. A five-year reunion. A five-year plan when it comes to something like college, perhaps.

For the NHL franchise in Seattle, the upcoming fifth season marks a point of delineation. They are no longer NHL newbies. That probably went by the wayside back in that magical second season when the Kraken unexpectedly made a run to the Stanley Cup playoffs and established the expectation for what the highest level of pro hockey could be in Seattle.

No, the fifth season of the Kraken, which begins on Thursday morning with the start of training camp under new coach Lane Lambert, is the season where a true direction for where the franchise is headed should and needs to be established.

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Ownership expects it after two subpar seasons where any chatter of the playoffs mostly evaporated by the time January rolled around. The players feel it as evidenced by some of the preseason comments from Kraken captain Jordan Eberle about how last season’s team underachieved.  

And fans seem to be clamoring for it to the point the franchise made changes to several of their season-ticket packages going into this season, including lowering prices for many of the seats in Climate Pledge Arena.

Throw all those factors together — plus the fact the NBA is not knocking down the door with plans for expansion anytime in the immediate future — and the start of this Kraken season feels like a significant beginning to the second chapter of the franchise.  

“I’ll be honest, I think it matters now. Everybody wants to win, the guys on the ice want to win. Everybody in Seattle saw a taste of the playoffs in season two and people are really excited. And I believe the fans deserve a competitive team on the ice,” Kraken majority owner Samantha Holloway told The Times in an interview near the end of last season. “It’s hard to execute in a short period of time and we’re continuing to work on it. I think that we have a unique fan base and that we have done such a good job with everything else that it’s helped with that experience. So it doesn’t not matter now, but it doesn’t matter as much as it could. But we’re continuing to work on that and our commitment to that is fierce and that we’re working to get that to a better place soon. It always matters, but it will continue to matter more soon.”

The Kraken open camp in a strange position. They are wedged between being a veteran-laden roster still filled with a handful of familiar faces that were around in that second season when the Kraken made the playoffs, and a team in transition as some of the young prospects acquired through the infancy of the franchise start to push for being NHL ready.

As it stands, most of the roster that’ll be on the ice for the Oct. 9 opener against Anaheim can be penciled in with only a few questions about line combinations and how the bottom six of the forward group shakes out. The biggest question is the one that’s been talked about most of the offseason — can Berkly Catton and Jani Nyman earn spots out of camp and inject some significant youth into the lineup?

“I think we have to create our identity and I think what we have to do is get back to similar to what we were in year two,” Kraken general manager Jason Botterill said. “It’s a situation of we have to bring a tenacity. We have to be a team that attacks all over the ice.”

Other than the young kids, most of the roster seems set for camp. Joey Daccord enters his second camp as the clear No. 1 goalie in net. The top defensive pairing of Adam Larsson and Vince Dunn should again be the same. The top line at the end of last season of Matty Beniers at center flanked by Kaapo Kakko and Jaden Schwartz is probably the top line to begin this season.

Lambert and his staff will be tasked with seeing how Mason Marchment slots in with the forwards and Ryan Lindgren with the defensive pairings. But it’ll still be much of the same roster that finished last season with just 76 points and seventh in the Pacific Division.

“Last year, I felt we really underperformed of what we were capable of,” Eberle told The Athletic during the recent NHL media tour in Las Vegas. “I look at our team, I think we have one of the better D corps in the Western Conference, a lot of good depth up front and a good goaltender. In my mind, I don’t see us not competing for a playoff spot this year. We definitely need to be in the mix. The fans deserve that.”

There was a time in the past year when it seemed the Kraken were going to need take more drastic actions to establish their direction as a franchise and stake a claim in the local sports landscape that’s ebbed and flowed for the first four seasons.

When the Kraken gathered for the start of training camp in September 2024, it appeared the NBA was about to take an accelerated look at expansion and the SuperSonics returning sometime in the next couple of years loomed as a possibility.

But the NBA has significantly pulled back the reins on any expansion discussion. What seemed like a formality about the NBA returning has now fallen into the realm of “if” or “when,” and still seems several years down the road.

That gives the Kraken a little more runway as aside from the arrival of PWHL Seattle this winter, there isn’t also the lingering chance of the SuperSonics imminent return on the horizon.

But it also amplifies the need for direction and improvement toward being a playoff contending franchise to begin in Year 5.  

“We have to be a team that wins with our depth and wins with our work ethic,” Botterill said. “I think that’s the identity that we want to create and build. But we’re not there yet.”