How equipped are the Seattle Kraken for playoffs?
In their second season, the Seattle Kraken clinched a birth in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Matt Larkin and Steven Ellis broke it all down.
Matt Larkin: Well, let’s head out West, and we had some history made on Thursday night; the Seattle Kraken took down the Arizona Coyotes in year two of the franchise the Kraken clinched a playoff birth. I can’t say I saw this coming, but I’m curious, do you think A. This team could make noise in the playoffs now that’s e know they’re in. And do you think Dave Hakstol is getting enough Jack Adams love? I feel like he’s not; the whole year feels like it’s been a discussion around Jim Montgomery and Bruce Cassidy and I’m not hearing a lot about Hakstol. What are your thoughts?
Steven Ellis: Well, to start, I remember when Hakstol got hired. People were saying “Oh, is this the right guy?” and “There are better options out there,” but he’s taken a team that no one projected to make the playoffs. I was still on board with this team need to continue to be as bad as possible and get all those draft picks, and do anti-Vegas Golden Knights. But instead, I think they outperformed the expectations, and they’ll never say that publicly. Did they expect Vince Dunn to be as good as he was? Did they expect Martin Jones to be as good? It was kind of supposed to be a year where Matty Beniers and Shane Wright would come in and take over, and Beniers did that, but this is a team that has over-exceeded. I wouldn’t count them out at this point, but the thing about the West all year long and specifically that division was, could anyone go over there and win? And yeah, I think Seattle has a chance. You’ve seen small sample sizes, they’re hard to play against, they can get those goaltending performances from Martin Jones, they can get the scoring from anywhere in the lineup, and the defense can be so tough to play against. So yeah, I wouldn’t want to have to play against the Kraken in that first round because I think they have nothing to the lose; they’re these underdog guys no matter what, even though they were the top team, it’s just their history. I think this is definitely a team to cheer for.
Matt Larkin: And it’s funny, you kind of touched on them being ahead of schedule, and I do wonder if we will look back on this year as hurting the Kraken because they didn’t have enough years to build that incredibly massive prospect system. They may have dove in a little too fast, and now they have sort of this middling teaming where they don’t have a superstar, and they won’t have a high pick to build around. So I do wonder if it hurts them in the long run, but regardless they’ve been very impressive this season. Especially in offense, they’re fourth in goals per game, even though they have a weak powerplay, and they currently have 13 players on the roster with at least 12 goals. I do think you have to give a lot of credit to Dave Hakstol for, I don’t want or diss the Kraken, but taking a team that is low on high-end talent, your main scoring threat is Jared McCann, and it’s not like you’re the Colorado Avalanche, but they’ve managed to squeeze a lot out of this group. I’m not that confident in what Seattle can do in the playoffs because of those goaltenders Martin Jones and Philipp Grubauer, and you’re fighting to stay north of .900 and losing that fight all season long; I don’t know if you have the chops in net to go up against a team that has say, Jake Oettinger. There are so many other options in the West, but I’m not super confident in the Kraken in the net in terms of how deep they can go.
You can watch the full episode here…