Seattle Kraken: 2021 NHL Expansion Draft Was Bad For The NHL

Things could have gone better for the NHL at the 2021 NHL Expansion Draft.

Wednesday was a great day for the city of Seattle. They got the NHL’s 32nd franchise as their new professional sports team, and Seattle fans finally got to see what the Seattle Kraken team will look like when they take the ice after the roster was unveiled at the 2021 NHL Expansion Draft.

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However, even if it was a great day for Seattle, it wasn’t a great day for the NHL. The Expansion Draft process didn’t necessarily go as planned. Now I’m not talking about who Seattle picked and how they built their roster. There’s plenty of other articles out there to talk about that. I’m talking about the actual process of Seattle making their picks, sending them to the NHL and how they were announced to the public.

Early in the day, the Kraken officially sent over their picks to the NHL. Those picks were going to be revealed later on a special ESPN broadcast at 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time. Well, at least that was the plan. Almost as soon as the list was sent over to the NHL, the leaks began pouring in on Twitter. By about 2:00 P.M. in the afternoon, pretty much the entire roster was known.

Now, you can’t fault the journalists for this. It’s their job to find news and report back to their readers. Websites like Twitter and Facebook have only accelerated the process. The real problem lies in either the Seattle or NHL organizations themselves that saw and gave out information on a list that was supposed to be private.  They have more leaks than a screen door on a submarine.

What was a highly anticipated day for hockey fans became an underwhelming event at best. We can thank multiple information leaks and an over convoluted ESPN broadcast for that.

2021 NHL Expansion Draft wasn’t the best look for the NHL or ESPN

That was odd, considering there wasn’t the same problem with leaks during the Vegas Golden Knights Expansion Draft in 2017, although we still had the power of Twitter at our finger tips. Maybe people in Vegas are just better at keeping secrets. That made watching Vegas’s Expansion Draft fun and exciting, even though everyone expected their big acquisition to be Marc-Andre Fleury from the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Actually, the leaks started the day before when a taped bit featuring NHL Network’s Kevin Weekes showed him picking Alexander Kerfoot from the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Kraken said they were filming multiple takes with multiple players to get the video bit ready, and they weren’t necessarily picking Kerfoot.

Fans were skeptical of the team’s excuse, but they were proven wrong when Seattle took recently acquired Jared McCann. The pick was announced the same with a video clip of Weekes as part of a pre-taped skit.

In the pre-taped bit, Weekes was at the Pike Place Fish Market and had a fish with the card with McCann’s name on it thrown to him. ESPN’s Dominic Moore threw a fish, live on camera, to Kraken analyst J.T. Brown for some odd reason. Someone who put this show together must have thought to themselves, “you know what hockey fans want to see? Fish being thrown, let’s add more of that”.

That brings me to my next point of what went wrong last night when we talk about ESPN’s Expansion Draft television special. I’d say it was a dumpster fire, but keeping with the hockey theme, let’s say it was a burning Zamboni of a presentation. There were multiple blunders throughout the night.

Firstly, nobody’s microphone could work to begin the show. Next, ESPN cut to a feed of a Seattle hockey bar showing fans wearing seemingly every NHL jersey but the Kraken. We may not have seen fans in Kraken jerseys, but we did see Macklemore announce a pick in a Gucci fedora.

There was a large outdoor audience for the event, but not a lot of excitement. Seattle seemed to have a very lackluster Expansion Draft, and you could tell from the crowd’s reaction. Every time General Manager Ron Francis, while wearing a gold chain that would make Tony Soprano jealous, made a pick the crowd reacted with the enthusiasm of someone who never heard that name before.

The very few newly minted Kraken players in attendance didn’t seem thrilled either. Seriously guys, what’s wrong? Did Seattle take you hostage? Mark Giordano blink twice if you’re okay.

In between picks were little skits filled at famous Seattle locations and tourists attractions, just like the leaked clip of Kevin Weekes. ESPN turned the Expansion Draft into part Expansion Draft, part Travel Channel TV show. The skits were filled with forced comedy, like when Weekes asked a fisherman what a Kraken cost and the fisherman said “you wouldn’t be able to afford it”. What does that mean? Seriously, what does that mean? That joke fell flatter than Eric Lindros after a Scott Stevens hit.

If that wasn’t enough to get you thinking “maybe I should change the channel”, then came the blunder that would break Twitter when ESPN presenter Chris Fowler accidentally called the Carolina Hurricanes the Carolina Panthers. The NFL team and the real Hurricanes had a little fun on Twitter, and Fowler even became part of the joke. I’ll give Fowler the benefit of the doubt that it was a brain fart, for lack of a better expression, but it wasn’t a good look for ESPN for their first major NHL broadcast.

I’ll give ESPN credit for trying. The thing I can’t get over is the leaking of the picks. What was marked on every hockey fans calendar as a night of must-watch television became reduced to a weird, hockey themed variety show on ESPN. At least we got to see those jerseys in person for the first time.