If you thought the pandemic has had a negative effect on the hype surrounding the Seattle Kraken expansion team, you would be wrong. With the Kraken set to officially enter the league late this season followed by formally forming a roster in the 2021 Expansion Draft next summer, the NHL’s newest club is having no trouble drumming excitement amid the COVID chaos. TSN’s Pierre LeBrun relays word from Seattle CEO Tod Leiweke that the team expects to have sold out of their season ticket package offerings by February or earlier. The club was forced to cap season tickets as demand continued to grow, limiting the number to 15,000 of a total 17,000+ available seats. They also expect a waiting list for season tickets before the puck even drops on their inaugural season. There appears to be no shortage of anticipation for Kraken hockey in Seattle.
- While the Kraken won’t be able to ice a team until the 2021-22 season, they will be involved in roster transactions before then. LeBrun notes that the Coronavirus pandemic has not impacted Seattle’s ability to maintain their installment payments to the league on their expansion fee. Assuming that continues, the club will have paid their $650MM entry fee by March. At that point, they will be eligible to join in league functions such as Board of Governors’ and GM’s Meetings and can begin making trades and signing free agents from the junior, collegiate, and European ranks.
- One area that the Kraken will not skimp on is analytics. As Ryan Clark writes for The Athletic, Seattle is already believed to have put together the second-largest analytics staff in the league even though they are still a year away from even playing a game. It’s a diverse group who aren’t all necessarily experienced in the way of hockey analytics, but it is a talented group nonetheless. Statistics will clearly play a major role for the new franchise, who have a number of major decisions to make in the impending Expansion Draft.
Hope they get a good squad after this crappy situation and $650 million dollars. Should be at least middle of the pack good.
But I’m worried it won’t.
I can’t wait for the border wars with Vancouver! Unlike the Toronto baseball fans coming down and having more people in the stands than the Mariners do with us being down and having lots of tickets available, I don’t think there will be a lot of noise from Vancouver fans unless they have a lot of wealthy people willing to pay stubhub like prices. Early on I wouldn’t think there would be many people giving up there tickets for anything.
Second-largest analytics group besides Toronto. I don’t think that’s particularly worked out well for Toronto, considering many of their successful picks were chosen based on their connection to the team beforehand (Marner, Nylander). Toronto has no grit and all that analytic work has gotten them a grand total of zero playoff series wins despite having some of the league’s most talented players. Good luck to Seattle, but I frankly think analytics in hockey are overrated. You can not get anywhere without smart hockey minds. Hopefully they listen to Ron Francis instead of telling him what to do, because he’s a well-versed GM and player.
The stat about save percentage from high danger areas seems useful, otherwise yeah, most hockey analytics are as useful as rain dances.
Corsi and Fenwick are downright bunk.
Agreed. I’m sure teams analytics departments are somewhat useful, but I always laugh at the Twitter stat heads who consistently make clowns of themselves. It’s not hard to look at a chart and know if the data is clearly wrong, but they just love putting hot takes out that are wrong every single year.
Well versed General manager? Not really. Besides trading for Tuevo and drafting Aho, Ronnie didn’t do much. He refused to make trades.
This coming from a Canes fan who names Ronnie and Larry Bird my favorite athletes while growing up in Hartford.
Well versed compared to anyone else on that team. Look at their analytics picks. Besides their head, who previously worked with the Wild, they’re all newbies.
When did nerds start liking sports anyways? Watching a baseball game is like taking a math class sometimes.
As a Leafs fan, I can say that Elite-Finnish is 100% correct in his assessment of the Leafs.
I never liked the name Kraken, but now it’s associated with losing over and over and over.
There’s still time to be the Seattle Pilots or Totems or whatever.
How has it been associated with losing?
Totems, Pilots, Metropolitans, just anything but Kraken.
Where have you heard fans are excited about the Kraken? There has been less interest in them that the Mariners and that takes some doing, The franchise has gone out of its way to annihilate its potential fan base by choosing a name that a small minority wanted and setting up a management and marketing strategy that makes the Donald Sterling era Clippers look good. There will be too much money involved to just fold the franchise but the betting odds it will leave Seattle within the decade.
Agree on about 85%.
We have the biggest bandwagon community here in Seattle that I could totally see them leaving as a possibility.
People talking to me about hockey at work is unbearable at times and they all love the name Kraken. The people who grew up playing and watching hate the name Kraken. Alienating the fanbase that would of been loyal seems odd.
That being said: If Ron Francis can find us an Aho in the second round I’d take it. Also hoping that we suck and get 1st overall for Wright in ’22.
Anyone in the area got a good report on Wright? What’s a realistic comp?
If you hate your home team because of the name then you’re not a reliable hockey source…if you played growing up you should be thankful you even get an NHL franchise in your city.
The fact that you won’t be loyal to your local team because of their name speaks about your character.
My biggest problem with the name is that the fans are already being called “krak heads” and with legalized marijuana already, it’s not a good connotation.
Haha
Your way of how to judge one’s character through a post on PHR is astonishing.