The offseason has arrived for three-quarters of the NHL for teams that either missed the playoffs or were eliminated in the first round. Accordingly, it’s now time to examine what they will need to accomplish over the coming months. Next up is a look at Seattle.
What a difference a year can make. After the Kraken surprised many by making it to the second round in their second season of existence, expectations were relatively high coming into this season. However, they weren’t able to sustain that success and instead of building on it, they missed the playoffs altogether. As a result, GM Ron Francis will have a busy few months ahead of him. Here’s what should be on his to-do list this summer.
Hire A Head Coach
Despite his previously-signed contract extension not beginning until July, Francis decided to make a change behind the bench, firing Dave Hakstol after three seasons with the team. The Kraken played to a 107-112-27 record under Hakstol’s tutelage, a record that’s relatively respectable considering they were an expansion franchise but their playoff run in 2022-23 accelerated the expectations and they clearly came up short, warranting the change in Francis’ mind.
Seattle has a pair of assistants who could make a real case for the role. Dave Lowry has some experience running an NHL bench having taken over from Paul Maurice in Winnipeg midway through the 2021-22 season after Maurice unexpectedly resigned. Meanwhile, Jay Leach has worked his way up through the coaching ranks and is someone who has been speculated to have had some head coaching interviews in the past. It feels like a matter of time before he gets a chance whether it’s filling this vacancy or going somewhere else.
Alternatively, they could also look to their farm team which is run by former NHL bench boss Dan Bylsma. He has run Coachella Valley the past two seasons, leading them to the Calder Cup Final last season while the team posted a .715 points percentage in both years. Bylsma has head coaching experience at the top level with Detroit and Buffalo but hasn’t run an NHL bench since the 2016-17 campaign.
It would appear that Francis is looking for someone who can help this group get back to the playoffs over kicking off any sort of rebuild. Accordingly, it stands to reason that if they look outside the organization for a new head coach, they’ll look for someone with experience. Among the options currently available are Craig Berube, Dean Evason, Todd McLellan, Sheldon Keefe, and Jay Woodcroft.
Seattle technically doesn’t have to have a head coach in place by the start of free agency but if the new bench boss will have any sort of input on who the team pursues in the summer, they’ll want that hire in place well before July 1st.
Re-Sign Beniers
Heading into the season, it looked like Matthew Beniers was in a strong position to secure a long-term agreement and cement himself as their franchise fixture up front. While that could still happen, his performance in his sophomore campaign has made that long-term deal a bit less certain.
Beniers burned the first year of his contract late in the 2021-22 campaign when he impressed with nine points in ten games. He didn’t produce quite as high of a point-per-game rate last season but still managed 57 points in 80 regular season games, earning him the Calder Trophy. He then followed it up with seven points in 14 contests, not a bad result for his first taste of playoff action. Based on that, expectations were high heading into his second full season.
This season, Beniers was Seattle’s top center fairly regularly and the results were mixed. He got off to a particularly slow start, notching just five goals in the first 39 games (spanning October to December) and while he picked up the pace after that, he still managed just ten in the final 40 contests. For someone who was expected to push closer to the 25-goal, 70-point mark, it’s safe to say he underachieved.
Has he shown enough to get a max-term (or close to it) contract, one that would likely carry an AAV in the $8MM range? Or would one (or both) of the two sides prefer a shorter-term bridge deal to allow for more evaluation time? This feels like the more probable outcome at this point.
So, what would that bridge deal cost? The three-year, $17.25MM contract that Anaheim gave Trevor Zegras last summer stands out as a viable comparable. Zegras’ numbers at the end of his entry-level deal were a bit better but with the salary cap set to jump up by around $4MM, that should balance out the lower production. It’s worth noting that like Zegras had last year, Beniers has five years of team control remaining so Seattle can comfortably go with a three-year bridge deal without running the risk of their key middleman filing for arbitration and walking himself straight to UFA eligibility. These contracts can sometimes take until right up to training camp so it’s possible this won’t be resolved for a while yet.
Add Scoring Help
In 2022-23, Seattle was sixth in the league in goals scored. The offense-by-committee approach worked with the end result being a group that was more impressive than the sum of its parts. However, it’s not always easy to have success with that route and even with bringing back the majority of the same group, things didn’t go as well this season. Instead, they dropped 72 goals and slipped to 29th in total goals scored.
Is this group going to struggle that much moving forward? Probably not and they’ll be hoping that a new coach will help improve things on that front. However, it’s also unrealistic to think that this core can go back to pushing to be in the top five in goals scored league-wide; the realistic outcome is somewhere in between. But that’s still a pretty big divergence in terms of range.
As a result, it would make a lot of sense for Seattle to pursue some scoring help this summer. They’re not in a bad situation cap-wise with around $23MM in cap room, per CapFriendly. Yes, a new deal for Beniers (and for Eeli Tolvanen who is arbitration-eligible and should be eyeing a fair-sized raise on the $1.45MM he made this year) will cut into that but they’ll still have ample space to pursue an upgrade or two beyond potentially adding someone like Shane Wright into the lineup full-time.
While some teams might want to pursue their upgrades via the trade route, it would make more sense for Seattle to look at free agency. Their prospect pool is still relatively thin, understandably so considering they’ve only been around for three years. With that in mind, trading from that pool isn’t as desirable as trying to sign a player outright on the open market, even if they have to pay a bit of a premium to do so.
Look Into Goalie Market
When Seattle made its expansion picks, their goaltending wasn’t looking too shabby. Vitek Vanecek had some upside, Chris Driedger was coming off his breakout year, and Joey Daccord was a third-stringer with some upside. After flipping Vanecek for a second-round pick and signing then-Vezina finalist Philipp Grubauer, it looked like a real strength on paper.
Of course, things haven’t quite gone as planned. Driedger struggled in his first season with the team and has been injured or in the minors since then. Meanwhile, Grubauer hasn’t come close to living up to his $5.9MM per season deal, one that still has three more years left on it. Daccord had a breakout showing this year but is he a sure-fire number one goalie moving forward or did a lot go right this season and he’s a potential regression candidate?
Given the potential uncertainty, Francis would be wise to at least examine what’s out there in the goalie market this summer. With all the speculation surrounding some veteran underachieving netminders, it feels like this could be a year that we see some change of scenery trades, swapping one underperformer for another in the hopes that a new team, a new system, and a new goalie coach will do the trick. There are some of those around the same price point as Grubauer with multiple years left so perhaps there is an opportunity to try to shake things up there.
Failing that, Driedger is set to hit the open market this summer and will be in search of a full-time NHL backup job so it’s unlikely he returns to AHL Coachella Valley. The Firebirds have a pair of youngsters signed for next season in Niklas Kokko and Victor Ostman but neither of them will be NHL-ready for a while. Accordingly, at a minimum, the Kraken should be on the hunt for a veteran third-stringer to give them some more NHL-ready support if injuries strike or someone falters.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
