Three Things We Learned About Kraken During 2025 Season
With their 6-5 loss to the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday night, the Seattle Kraken’s 2024-2025 season is officially over. They finished at 35-41-6, with a total of 76 points. Unfortunately, that was nowhere near good enough for a playoff spot, as the St. Louis Blues earned the final Wild Card spot in the Western Conference at 96 points. Now, the Kraken turn to the offseason with eyes on making it back to the playoffs next season.
What did we learn about this Kraken team and organization this season, despite missing the playoffs? Here are three things to build on heading into the offseason:
Joey Daccord is the franchise goalie moving forward
File this under “obvious.” Not even halfway through this season, the Kraken had not only moved off of Philipp Grubauer, but they even briefly sent him down to Coachella Valley. Dan Bylsma and company handed the keys to the Arizona State alum to mind the net.
In 56 games, he put together 34 quality starts, the sixth-most in the entire NHL. He ranked 10th among his peers in Goals Saved Above Average. In Goalie Point Shares (basically goalie WAR, referring to baseball’s WAR) ranks eighth-best.
Essentially, Daccord was a top 10 goalie this year by most metrics. And Seattle has him under contract for another five seasons.
The Matty Beniers-Shane Wright combo at center can be elite
The average age of Beniers and Wright is roughly 21.5 years old. They had nearly identical seasons with Seattle. Beniers notched 20 goals with Wright checking in at 19. Wright earned one more point, with 44, than Beniers' 43. They seemed to almost feed off of each other.
In some ways, Wright out-performed Seattle’s Calder trophy winner from two seasons ago this year. Wright had a much slower burn to get up to the NHL than Beniers. Beniers was the first ever draft pick made by Seattle, going second overall in the 2021 NHL Entry draft. He made his NHL debut less than a year later.
For Wright, he went fourth overall in 2022. While he made his debut sooner than Beniers did, he did not look as ready for the NHL lights. In his first two seasons, he played just 16 games at the NHL level. Beniers notched 90 in that same timeframe of his career.
If these two can go tit-for-tat and only get better with age and experience, Seattle has a special core of centers on their hands. It's invaluable to have two young, talented centers come up with the organization at the same time.
This team has the right combination of veterans and youngsters to contend with a strong offseason
As Kraken general manager Ron Francis has emphasized, they do not enter this offseason looking to completely strip it down to the studs and sell off anything that isn’t bolted down. They gained a lot of cap space flexibility along with several more high draft picks during their trade deadline sell-off. They intend on using those assets to make the team better next season.
The core is in place, with the aforementioned youngsters in the middle of Beniers and Wright. Daccord is a steady presence between the pipes now. Plus, the Kraken added Kaapo Kakko from the Rangers. His contract is set to expire but if they can re-sign him, that’s yet another piece of an exciting core. They also added veteran Stanley Cup winner Brandon Montour to the blue line. He was far and away Seattle’s best defenseman this season, with 18 goals and 23 assists. Only three defenseman in the entire NHL scored more goals than Montour. Captain Jordan Eberle also is set to return next season. Veterans Adam Larsson, Jaden Schwartz, Chandler Stephenson, Vince Dunn, Jared McCann, and Jamie Oleksiak are all set to run it back as well.
Seattle has a solid combination of youth and veteran leaders. With a few savvy moves this offseason, the Kraken can get right back into contention like they were in 2022-2023.
