Will the Kraken continue to offload during the offseason?
With the NHL Trade Deadline behind us, the Seattle Kraken are a team that is once again looking toward the future as they are on the path to missing the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the second year in a row, and the third time in the franchise’s four-year history.
The wheels were already in motion for the team to pack it in for the year. Last week, Seattle sent Oliver Brorkstrand and Yanni Gourde to the Tampa Bay Lightning, acquiring two first-round picks in the process. Then, Brandon Tanev was on his way back to the Winnipeg Jets for a second-round pick. In a smaller deal, the Kraken received a seventh-round pick for Daniel Sprong in trading him to the New Jersey Devils.
For a team that has fallen far below expectations over the past year or so, it’s positive to see the team receive assets they can use to build toward the future.
On Tuesday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk discuss whether or not general manager Ron Francis will stay busy after the season is over.
Tyler Yaremchuk: They did what was necessary [at the the deadline]…To me, the judgement of Ron Francis will be, come this offseason, what do you with Jamie Oleksiak? What do you do with Jared McCann? Do you continue to offload, or does he try take the assets that he got at this deadline and go start to add again…To me, I think they should continue offloading.
Frank Seravalli: I think this was way more “dip your toe in the water.” You see the market evolving the way that it is, and you get a great return for Yanni Gourde and Oliver Bjorkstrand, but the defense market was super thin…could you have investigated the Jared McCann situation a little bit more? I get it. Great contract, 40-goal scorer…Your team is stuck in neutral. You need a push to go in one direction or the other. It seemed like as much as they wanted to go down that path of really making a swing to collect assets, that they then almost sat back.
You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…