The Seattle Kraken will look to their young core and new management as they hope to pursue a playoff spot this season. Seattle finished just 35-41-6 last season for seventh in the NHL’s Pacific Division under then head coach Dan Bylsma.
Seattle let Bylsma go and then brought on Lane Lambert, who was last an assistant coach with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Prior to that, he was the head coach of the New York Islanders from 2022 to January, 2024.
During ESPN’s Opening Conference call for the 2025-26 season, NHL Insider Emily Kaplan said from what she has heard throughout training camp and their preseason games, Lambert is bringing a pretty tight structure.
“They are going to be a team with a much more defined identity this season,” Kaplan said. “I think what you saw with Lane in his time with the Islanders could carry over to the Kraken in terms of a very sound defensive team.”
The Kraken also introduced Jason Botterill as the team’s new general manager as Ron Francis was promoted to President of Hockey Operations.
Kaplan said Botterill will obviously work with Francis, but put his stamp on the team. The biggest challenge the Kraken faced with their expansion draft was the knowledge their opponents had. The rest of the league made mistakes when Vegas joined the league, which resulted in their success.
“Seattle just had a much tougher expansion draft because everyone got savvier,” Kaplan said.
Kaplan said there were no bonafide stars and that the Kraken some mistakes as well. But something the Kraken have done well with is their drafting with Kaplan saying they’ve collected a great pool of prospects. However, she said the Kraken are still in a bit of a transition figuring out who they are as a team and who they could be consistently.
“The good news is when you get a new coach, and hopefully Lane Lambert stays there a couple of years, they’ll be able to build that all together and hopefully bring more talent into those doors,” Kaplan said.
ESPN hockey analyst and former NHL star Ray Ferraro was at a Kraken preseason game and said he ran into both Francis and Botterill and said Francis seemed pretty comfortable as the team president.
“He doesn’t have to take eight million phone calls a day anymore,” Ferraro said. “That’s Jason’s job.”
Ferraro echoed Kaplan with the Kraken were dealt with their expansion draft.
“When you come in as an expansion team, you don’t have a farm system,” Ferraro said.
He said it’s kind of time for the young guys to start to pop a little bit. Fans might not have to wait long for that either as Ferraro noticed in that preseason game how fast the young guys are on the ice.
“They’ve got — like a young player like [Berkly] Catton, he gets around the ice so fast, but they’re still so young,” Ferraro said.
“I think there’s a lot of internal enthusiasm in Seattle, and we’ll see where these young guys take them,” Ferraro said.
Vice President of the Kraken’s editorial department Geoff Baker said the team’s management wants players to constantly be improving throughout the season.
“They want to see daily improvement, they want to see weekly improvement, they want to see monthly improvement,” Baker said. “They want the team as a whole to keep improving as the season moves along.”
He said if they can keep that up for an entire season, good things could happen down the road. Baker added on saying they want to provide a lot of competitiveness and entertainment value for the fans.
“We want the games to mean something and that means you have to work at it, from the start of the season to the finish,” Baker said.
As far as what the new management is bringing in this season, Baker said he thinks it’s more of a sense of accountability, discipline and structure.
“I think they got away from that at times last season, especially on the defensive side,” Baker said. “I think that they have systems that they want to implement, and there’s going to be consequences if they aren’t followed, you know, on a nightly basis.”
When it comes to Catton, Baker said there’s really nothing left for him to prove at the WHL level as he said he thinks Catton sticks with the team. He’s scored in the preseason and is flying around the ice with his linemates such as Matty Beniers, Baker said.
So far in the preseason according to Baker, Catton has shown he’s adapted to the professional level with market improvement in each game he plays.
Fans might be concerned with the young core and competing with veteran laden teams, but Baker put that to rest noting how well the team has done against contenders.
“If you look at their track record against the Florida Panthers, going back three, four seasons, they’ve actually done very well against the Panthers, and they’ve beaten them in the Panthers home rink more than once,” Baker said.
He said the players know they can compete and that the core hasn’t changed all that much since the team’s run to the second round a few years ago.
“They’ve actually gotten better on paper, so now they have to stop playing games on paper and they have to start playing games in real life and living up to the back of their hockey cards,” Baker said.
He said they do that, they should be able to compete as he noted they demonstrated at point as recent as last season.
One on ice aspect Baker noted they’re going to have to do is go to the net and he said one of the team’s newest additions in Mason Marchment from the Dallas Stars knows how to do that. He said the team has already gone to the net and scored quite a bit during the preseason. However, it’s not to the coach’s liking yet as he wants them to do it more according to Baker.
“So, Marchment is definitely going to have that presence going to the net front and getting some rebound goals and some deflection goals,” Baker said.
Baker said on the other side of the equation, they brought in Ryan Lindgren, a long time defender from the New York Rangers. Lindgren’s job will be to clear out the net front in front of the Kraken goaltender, according to Baker.
“That was a problem as well in recent seasons where too many guys are standing around Joey Daccord or Philipp Grubauer forcing them to make acrobatic saves night after night,” Baker said. “You just can’t have that to that degree.”
With Lindgren being there to help out defensively in front of the net, he said it’s not going to help everything, but that it’s a step forward.
“Now you have more than just Adam Larsson and Jamie Oleksiak,” Baker said. “You’ve got a real balance in your defensive parents between offensive movers.”
He mentioned guys like Vince Dunn, Brandon Montour and Ryker Evans and now the team has the bigger guys that can do the physical stuff with Larsson, Oleksiak and Lindgren.
To sum things up, Baker thinks the Kraken will be competitive for a playoff spot right to the end.
“I think that’s their mission this year,” Baker said. “That’s their mandate, is to stay competitive and see what happens from there.”
He said the team is counting on a lot of balance and a lot of strength throughout all four lines. Another aspect he touched on was for the team to stay healthy and emphasized performing to the back of their hockey cards.
“The other thing we’re going to try to do is limit the goals against this year,” Baker said. “It’s not so much scoring goals. We scored more goals. We also gave up more.”
Baker emphasized how goal differential is the area to improve on.
“You either increase it by scoring more, or you can narrow the gap by allowing fewer,” Baker said. “I think we are going to allow fewer goals.”
Northwest Sports Desk 