Per a team announcement, the Seattle Kraken have acquired forward Tomas Tatar from the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for a fifth-round selection in the 2024 NHL Draft. After signing with the Avalanche on a one-year, $1.5MM contract this past summer, Tatar will end his tenure with Colorado after having only played 27 games.
In what will now become a very brief experiment with the Avalanche, Tatar struggled to fit into the team system in Colorado, only scoring one goal and nine points overall. Only averaging a touch over 11 minutes of ice time per night, it was Tatar’s lowest usage rate since his sophomore campaign back in the 2012-13 NHL season.
With a relatively cheap contract, and brought in late in the summer to serve as increased offensive depth for the Avalanche, Tatar became an easy contract to move out, allowing Colorado to replenish a separate fifth-round selection, after having moved out their own two years ago in a trade for Andrew Cogliano.
Moving forward, the Avalanche will likely utilize either Ross Colton or Miles Wood in their top six, replacing Tatar on the wing. Also brought in as offensive depth over the offseason, Colton and Wood have translated much better to the system in Colorado, outperforming Tatar in almost every metric.
Similar to the reasoning that brought him to Colorado in the first place, the Kraken are dealing with their own injuries up front, as both Andre Burakovsky and Jaden Schwartz find themselves on the team’s injured reserve and long-term injured reserve, respectively. Upon the eventual return of both forwards, Tatar should still have a relatively safe spot in the Kraken’s middle six forward group.
Being a change of scenery candidate, Tatar can only benefit from this move to the West Coast, as he is in the midst of one of the worst seasons of his 13-year career. Sporting career lows in shooting percentage, points per game, and CorsiFor%, Tatar can only improve his game from here on out.
Unfortunately, with both the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers passing them in the standings over the last few weeks, Seattle has an uphill climb to return to the playoffs this season. Being only one of three teams to pass the 30-game mark up to this point, the Kraken are sporting a 10-14-7 record, Seattle sits two points back of the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference with two more games played.
This is is his 6 team in the past 5 years. Appears he has now reached journeyman status
I’d rather have the cap space.
There’s no shot there’s a spot for Tatar if everyone is healthy. He’s not playing over Schwartz McCann Eberle Burky Tolvanen or Bjorkstrand or Tanev. Kartye deserves to be on the team so that leaves you one spot on the 4th line and you’ve still got Bellemare and Yamamoto.
Tatar never seems to fit on any team except the Wings and even then…
Kind of a head scratcher….
Eh, not really. If Tatar produces for Seattle, well and good, and they didn’t give up much to get him. If he doesn’t, they can bury almost all of his cap hit in the minors. Consider, after all, that they’re only two points out of a playoff spot. Fans wouldn’t much tolerate Francis giving up on the season quite yet, after all.
They are only within 2 points because they have played so many more games than most teams. Point percentage wise (which is the only thing that matters) they are buried. I have no problem with a low cost, hey at least they are still trying move. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, they will need Tatar after they move Eberle and Wennberg at the deadline.
(shrugs) St Louis is the next team up, with two more points than Seattle. Seattle’s played two more games. I wouldn’t phrase that as “so many more.” They are a good bit less “buried” than Edmonton was a month ago.
The Kraken have to address there defense and goaltending but Francis has never been much of a GM.
Obviously the Kraken was less palatable without a touch of Tatar
Tatar just wasn’t a good for the Avs. His lack of speed and his 11 minutes per TOI were just not enough to help contribute. Good luck to him in Seattle.