Post-Mortem: Three Reasons Why Kraken Failed Once Again in 2025-26
The 2025-2026 NHL regular season is now over. The Seattle Kraken failed to score a goal in their season finale, going out without much of a whimper, falling 2-0 to Vegas to bring another disappointing campaign to an end.
The Kraken finished 34-37-11, totaling 79 points. That ranks third among the five seasons in Seattle Kraken history. They fell three points shy of being the second-highest point total in franchise history. They also failed to have a winning season in Lane Lambert’s first year as head coach, finishing below .500 for the fourth time out of the five years, along with three straight years of sub-.500 hockey.
The Kraken have gone through three head coaches in five seasons. It appears as if Lambert will get a second year, barring an unexpected development.
So, what happened? Why did the Kraken fail to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the third straight season?
Lackluster Offense
This was the theme over the entire season. For the third straight year, the Kraken failed to have any skater reach 30 goals scored. For reference, the Colorado Avalanche have three players north of 32 goals, including Nathan MacKinnon’s Western Conference-high 53 goals.
Overall, the Kraken ranked 28th in total goals scored, 27th in shots on goal, and 21st in shooting percentage. They simply had nobody step up to become the needle-mover on offense, until far too late. The acquisition of Bobby McMann provided some juice (10 goals, 14 points in 18 games). However, there was only so much he could do with a severe lack of support around him.
Once promising prospects, both Matty Beniers and Shane Wright disappointed this year. Wright managed just 27 points over 74 games. Their lack of development into true difference makers, despite both being top five overall picks, has been a huge reason why the Kraken are stuck in the mud. If the Kraken have any hopes of making the playoffs next season, there needs to be another addition or two to put the offense on a higher level. This simply isn’t good enough as is.
Penalty Kill - Or Lackthereof
The Kraken brought in Lane Lambert partially because they wanted to see major improvement in their power play situations. On the attack during their own power plays, the Kraken did show improvement under Lambert. Last season, they ranked 23rd in power play goal percentage. This year, a slight improvement to 21st, averaging a percentage point better.
However, their penalty kill effort was one of the worst in the NHL. They rank 31st in penalty kill, killing opponent power plays at only a 72.22% clip. The head-scratching part is that the Kraken actually thrived in avoiding penalties, acquiring the sixth-least number of penalties. Meaning, if a penalty was called against Seattle, there was a good chance they would allow a power play goal. Good teams don’t do that.
Poor Goaltending After Olympic Break
The combination of Joey Daccord and Philipp Grubauer at the net started off really well for Seattle. Before February’s Olympic Games break, Daccord had a great start, going 16-12-5 in his first 33 starts of the season, before the Olympics. The Kraken at one point had the No. 5-ranked goaltending unit in the NHL.
One of the biggest stories of the first half of the season was backup goalie Philipp Grubauer’s resurgence in a new phase of his career. Before the Olympic break, he had a team-high .916 save percentage, with a 2.27 goals-allowed-per-game rate, which was one of the best marks in the NHL.
Daccord also had a save rate over .900, allowing less than three goals per game.
Unfortunately, whether it was the long layoff, the grueling Olympics for Grubauer, or just worse luck, neither goalie experienced the same success down the stretch.
Daccord allowed 3.29 goals per game with a putrid .286 winning percentage after the Olympic break. Grubauer was not much better, at 2.9 goals allowed with an .892 save percentage.
“We were right in it before the Olympic break,“ forward Jaden Schwartz told the media on Friday. “And then we weren’t able to elevate our game. We weren’t able to rise to the occasion and that’s disappointing ... We’re all not happy with that."
