Seattle Kraken best and worst case scenarios for 2024-2025 – The Hockey Writers –

With the preseason now over and almost all training camp cuts in the rearview mirror, the Seattle Kraken’s 2024-25 season has mostly taken shape. We already know who will stand between the pipes, who will defend the blue line and who will be the attacker. So it’s time for the final mega announcement of the season. We’ll simplify the situation – with a bit of humor – by predicting two possible outcomes: the team’s best-case scenario and worst-case scenario.

Best case scenario arguments

Beniers, McCann and Company amp up the offense

There are no two ways about it. Seattle’s offense was flawed last season. It went beyond the fact that I didn’t score many goals (2.61 per game, 29).^vol entire league). They didn’t even hit the net very often – a total of 2,347 shots, no more than 26^vol. Completing the trifecta of mediocrity was a shooting efficiency of 9.1%, which gave them 29th place.^vol.

If all goes well, the forwards who made progress two seasons ago will return to player status. Jared McCann, Matty Beniers, Jordan Eberle, Oliver Bjorkstrand and Jaden Schwartz each scored 20 goals. McCann was a real threat, leading the team with 40 goals.

Montour and Stephenson prove the doubters wrong

The talk throughout the season was: How could general manager (GM) Ron Francis agree to such a terrible pair of free agency deals, signing defenseman Brandon Montour and forward Chandler Stephenson to long-term deals? They are on the wrong side of 30 and there have been a few holes in their game or health lately.

If the upcoming season is successful for the Kraken, it doesn’t take a degree in hockey science to guess that strong and healthy seasons are needed from both players. Montour played alongside Adam Larsson during camps and pre-season matches. Over the months, they create an insurmountable wall as a second defensive pair, repelling anything that gets in their way.

Related: More articles previewing the Seattle Kraken season

Stephenson, whether he’s playing with McCann and Eberle, Bjorkstrand and Eeli Tolvanen, or even Andre Burakowski, is having a season to remember. He broke the 60-point barrier for the third time in his career, scoring 75.

Climate Pledge Arena is a fortress

A good team must defend its home ice. It’s already difficult to win away. The least the club can do is make visiting teams feel uncomfortable when they take the ice. In 2023-24, the Krakens posted a disappointing 17-18-6 record at Climate Pledge Arena. In the 2022-2023 season, when they earned a playoff spot, they were much better on the road, posting an outstanding 26-11-4 on the road to a respectable, if unspectacular, 20-17-4 at home. We don’t need to get into the first 2021-2022 campaign, which was downright bad in every respect.

In short, through three seasons, the Kraken have never been an impressive home team. This has to change. If the club can keep its head above water on its trips, great. However, a solid effort at home is a prerequisite to being a formidable franchise.

The Climate Promise becomes a fortress. Opposing teams shake and shake as the PA announcer shouts, “It’s time to unleash the Kraken!” and the audience went crazy during the opening ceremony. The arena’s calling card is its dedication to renewable energy and crushing the spirits of anyone who dares to oppose the Kraken.

Joey Daccord is the real deal

Nets keeper Joey Daccord came seemingly out of nowhere last season when regular starter Philipp Grubauer was injured in December. The 28-year-old was a total nobody at the time. He played in 19 games over four seasons with the Ottawa Senators and Kraken. Moreover, he has posted terrible goals against average (GAA) and save percentage (SV%) – 4.30 GAA and .850 SV% in 2021-2022. Phew.

Related: 3 potential trade destinations for goaltender Jeremy Swayman

In the 2024–25 season, he will show the hockey world that he is really good. In fact, he’s playing so well that he’s the obvious number one, with Grubauer mostly supporting him. Seattle is entering the playoffs and no one doubts that Joey is the man to defend the net in April and beyond. How You act?

This is Friends I’m sending it back – you know what, it doesn’t matter.

Best best case: 2^II Playoff round

This happens every year. A club that failed to make much of an impact last campaign is blowing fans away next season. The 2022-2023 Vancouver Canucks team didn’t have much to say, and in the 2023-2024 season they won the Pacific Division and reached the 2nd round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

At least head coach Dan Bylsma and his staff can ask themselves a somewhat legitimate question: Why not us?

Reaching the Western Conference Finals would be ambitious, especially with teams like the Edmonton Oilers, Dallas Stars, Canucks and Colorado Avalanche standing in their way.

A realistic scenario is that the Kraken will finish third in the Pacific in the postseason, likely behind the Oilers and Canucks. They beat Vancouver in a first-round upset, then fight back valiantly from a Round 2 loss. Heartbreak in Game 7. The Kraken return to their home waters for the summer, furiously plotting revenge for 2025-26.

The worst arguments

Seattle gets bad Dan Bylsma

Most hockey fans remember Bylsma arriving in Pittsburgh in mid-2008-09 and coaching the Penguins and a young Sidney Crosby to a Stanley Cup win. It was a great story.

But the Krakens get Bylsma from the Buffalo Sabres era. It was believed that he would be the one to dig this dying franchise out of its pulp of mediocrity. They missed the postseason in both the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons, although neither season was a complete disaster (81 and 78 points, respectively). The problem Bylsma mentioned in his introductory press conference last summer was that he wasn’t that good at building relationships back then. The headlines have been disastrous, like the one from NBC Sports in 2017 about the Jack Eichel situation.

Bylsma’s connection with his squad is mediocre at best and completely breaks down as the losses accumulate. Screaming matches can be heard in the corridors of the Climate Pledge Arena.

Neither Grubauer nor Daccord are reliable

The big question surrounding Daccord is whether 2023-24 was a one-hit wonder. We’ve seen them before. Think Jim Carey in the mid-90s. Daccord gets a little too comfortable when Seattle’s newfound favorite starts letting in some wimps and loses his confidence. In September 2025, he will be fighting during training camp for the reserve position in the Columbus Blue Jackets team.

Grubauer, well, he is what he is. We have written about it before. He is “almost a man.” He almost earned glory, but sat on the bench when the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup in 2018. He was almost a solution in Colorado, but was shown the door in the summer of 2021, an offseason before the Avalanche capitalized on Nathan MacKinnon’s potential and won the Cup. Grubauer is Grubauer. He’s fine. But he’s not this guy.

Montour and Stephenson are gassed and struggling with injuries

Hockey is a difficult sport. There’s a reason the phrase “the bad side of 30” is used. It wasn’t born out of the realities of hockey, but it easily kept it alive.

Montour, in addition to being 30 years old, missed the 2023–24 season due to injury. He also participated in back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals when the Florida Panthers lost to the Golden Knights in 2023 and then beat the Oilers last June. Maybe he’s a little gassy.

The same goes for Stephenson, who played a key role in the Vegas Cup victory two seasons ago. This team’s 2023-2024 season was full of ups and downs. Controversial decisions of the management, lack of consistency, problems with injuries. Stephenson, instead of feeling rejuvenated, needs 2024-25 to shed physical and emotional fatigue, and is not the big-play leader Seattle thought it signed. On the December evening when he becomes the game’s first star, he feels a strange sensation in his right arm as he tries to “fish out” to the Kraken fans. He’ll be gone for a month.

All is not well with the children

That would be a sharp twist of a knife. Beniers’ 2024-25 season is getting plenty of expert attention, with fans wondering if his 2022-23 Calder Trophy-worthy season was a one-hit wonder. He never regains this offensive form and is a defensive defender throughout the season. Why is he making $7.142 million a year for one good campaign he ran as a 20-year-old?

Shane Wright, after much screaming since June 2022 when the franchise selected him in the first round of the draft, never seems to live up to Seattle’s dreams. He doesn’t have the speed, touch or physicality to make a serious impact. His minutes are limited on the fourth line, and he stares blankly from the bench, bleary-eyed, on nights when the first line is hopelessly trying to make something happen in the third period of a 5-2 game.

Ultimate worst case: no playoffs

The Kraken misses the postseason. What’s more, they’re not close because they spend the last three weeks of the regular season playing because their contracts require it.

Seattle is bad, but not terrible enough to have a serious chance of going No. 1 overall in 2025. They land somewhere in that awkward 7-10 range and make the best of it after the teams ahead of them have blown tears of joy because they chose the new Connor Bedard and Macklin Celebrini.

Here are our best- and worst-case scenario projections for the Kraken in 2024-25. Can any of them come true? We will find out over the next seven months whether they will miss the play-offs or perhaps more if they manage to get this deep into the League Cup. There is little time left and the pucks drop in the match against St. Louis Blues will take place in less than a week on October 8.