Did The Seattle Kraken Trade Away Too Much?

The biggest sellers of this year’s NHL trade deadline were the Seattle Kraken.

The NHL’s newest franchise was unable to replicate the inaugural season success of the Vegas Golden Knights and, just like you’re friendly neighborhood going out of business furniture store, held an “everything must go” sale. Now we guess you can say that when it comes to the Kraken’s roster, the Seattle Kraken are Krack-a-lacking? We hope you enjoyed that pun, we’re very proud of it.

The Seattle Kraken now have 25 picks in the next two drafts, including nine in the first two rounds. In the days leading up to the deadline, the Kraken made six separate trade transactions. The only expansion team since the 1990s to have more transactions leading up to the draft deadline were the Atlanta Thrashers who had seven.

The biggest sellers at the NHL trade deadline were the Seattle Kraken. Did the NHL’s newest franchise give away too much that it’s a bad look for the league?

The Tampa Bay Lightning also had six trades leading up to the deadline in their first season. The Columbus Blue Jackets had five. The Minnesota Wild and San Jose Sharks each had four. The Florida Panthers, Anaheim Ducks and Nashville Predators each had three.

For the record, we defined “leading up to the deadline” as the beginning of the year up until the trade deadline. For example, in Seattle’s case, any trade from the beginning of 2022 until the deadline was counted. Any deals before that, such as expansion draft trades, were not included in that total.

The biggest difference between the expansion teams of old and the Kraken is that the NHL had tried to make their new expansion franchises more competitive than their older siblings, thus giving them certain advantages the older expansion franchises never had.

Kraken general manager Ron Francis also said their main goal was to build through the draft. Francis also said he expected this team to be more competitive. Looks like Francis is doubling down on his draft strategy while punting away the rest of their first season.

So what happened? The much anticipated Seattle franchise established nothing more than a roster of rentals. Fans who bought a jersey of anyone other than Phillip Grubauer, Jordan Eberle, or Yanni Gourde might have to get a new one already.

Did the Kraken trade away too much? It’s hard to say, because if the answer is “yes”, how would the NHL fix it? Would they impose rules that future expansion teams are only allowed so many trades? That would cause more problems than it’s worth. In the end, it’s just a bad look for the league’s newest team to send all its newly minted players packing.