Kraken have major repair job ahead. Here’s what’s coming up | Analysis

Now that the Kraken have a television solution that eliminates one barrier to growing their fan base, they must repair the on-ice product so anyone tuning in will keep watching.

Thursday’s replacing of the team’s ROOT Sports deal with over-the-air “free” broadcasts on KING 5/KONG and Amazon Prime streaming was just the start of a major Kraken repair job. General manager Ron Francis must revamp a team that fell from contention with a month to go, finishing 34-35-13 with the NHL’s fourth-worst offense.

That starts with looking beyond statistics to precisely gauge where it all went wrong.

“There are things that we deal with internally that aren’t out there,” Francis said at his season-ending news conference. “But it was just one of those years with some of those things that happened.”

Injuries, nonperformance, bad luck and questionable team preparation all resulted in the Kraken failing to replicate the prior season’s 100 points and playoff run deep into the second round.

Despite departures of fourth-line free agents Morgan Geekie, Daniel Sprong and Ryan Donato — who’d combined for 44 goals the prior season — the offensive drop-off was only partly because of just 23 goals by direct replacements Tye Kartye, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and Kailer Yamamoto. Teams count on fourth lines more for checking and defense. Where the Kraken really faltered was declines above the fourth line.

Francis has already indicated higher-end offensive improvements will be sought, the obvious being one or two new top-line centers or wingers.

“We’ll look at every angle and the beauty is, we have the (salary) cap space,” Francis said. “So, we’re going to look at free agents. We’re going to look at possible trades with other teams.”

Top pending unrestricted free-agent forwards include Sam Reinhart, Jake Guentzel, Elias Lindholm, Steven Stamkos and Jonathan Marchessault. The Kraken don’t have much above-average talent to trade, meaning they’d likely need to move a popular player. Francis hasn’t ruled out dealing prospects from a growing pool that includes Shane Wright, Jagger Firkus, Ryan Winterton, Logan Morrison, Ville Ottavainen, Carson Rehkopf, David Goyette and Jani Nyman.

Francis said top-scorer Jared McCann appears better suited on the wing after experimenting at center, meaning the team could import a centerman in addition to incoming AHL prospect Wright.

Less obvious than adding talent is figuring out how the team’s overall mindset and approach played into the downfall.

The first issue is the future of coach Dave Hakstol and assistants. Francis said a coaching-staff evaluation remains ongoing, presumably exploring uncomfortable topics such as a terrible opening start that doomed the Kraken into playing catch-up all season.

Coaches spent the preseason messaging Kraken players that last spring’s playoff run would see opponents better prepared for them. Yet they started 1-4-1 and scored one goal or fewer in five of six games, which Francis admitted “was not really what I wanted to have from our guys coming in” given prior warnings.

“I think in some regards they heard that,” he said. “But I don’t know if they necessarily believed it.”

The Kraken at times were seemingly operating at less than full-throttle. They scored just twice in three opening losses before a home opener in which Logan O’Connor of the Colorado Avalanche went after Kraken forward Jordan Eberle and threw the offense into further turmoil.

Eberle inadvertently blindsided Avalanche journeyman Andrew Cogliano in the prior spring’s first-round playoff series — fracturing two bones in his neck — and O’Connor was seeking revenge. Gloves dropped, punches flew and Eberle, who hadn’t fought in years but knew Avalanche retribution was coming, skated away with a broken bone in his right hand. 

Eberle scored just four of his 17 goals the opening three months while his weakened state seemed to ripple across top Kraken forward lines. Calder Trophy winner Matty Beniers needed four weeks to score and managed just five goals before January. Eeli Tolvanen took nine contests before scoring and had three goals until the game before Thanksgiving.

Andre Burakovsky was again hurt and looked tentative when playing and was held scoreless until January and to two goals by March.

Beniers and Tolvanen are due contract extensions as restricted free agents. Tolvanen, in particular, could be a trade piece the Kraken might shed for the right deal.

The home-opening loss to the Avalanche became an early indicator the Kraken were unprepared to deal with setbacks and the physical intimidation game within an NHL game. Notably, Avalanche star defender Cale Makar, whose late hit knocked McCann out of the same playoff series last April with a concussion, wasn’t once forced to answer for his blow.

Makar ducked several verbal challenges from McCann. Unlike O’Connor standing up for Cogliano, no other Kraken player forced the issue with Makar.

While NHL fighting has greatly diminished, physical intimidation remains an ongoing tactic. Those who hesitate where responses are warranted can mark themselves for future victimization. Philosophical feelings Kraken players may have about fighting aside, their lack of response to several situations raised early questions about their preparedness to play with the intensity required to regularly win.

Kraken forwards Yanni Gourde and Brandon Tanev play with heightened intensity and there isn’t much on-ice they don’t instantly react to.

But the collective team, even during the prior playoff season, had times where it appeared unfocused, out of gas or disinterested. The challenge is pinpointing whether that stems from effort level, or, as defenseman Vince Dunn suggested in his season-ending media availability, lacking focus on the task at hand.

Laments about not playing complete 60-minute games became more frequent last season.

“We didn’t work smart,” Dunn said. “We worked hard every night. But I think strategically and in the system sometimes, we weren’t 100% there.”

Evidence of a higher Kraken gear than displayed their opening six games came the ensuing road trip. They beat a red-hot Detroit team with Eberle — broken hand and all — scoring the overtime winner in what Hakstol termed “a full 60-minute game.”

Facing three future playoff squads, they lost in overtime to Carolina, were defeated late in regulation by Florida and won in overtime against Tampa Bay. The trip’s 2-1-1 mark was huge improvement.

“I thought we played better on this trip than we did in our previous games and it’s good to get rewarded,” Gourde said afterward.

Still, there were mental letdowns, having blown two-goal leads in all four games. After returning home and defeating Nashville, they managed just 10 shots the final two periods of an ugly home loss to Calgary.

“I feel like maybe they were more desperate than us,” Bellemare said afterward.

Early in that defeat, Flames forward Andrew Mangiapane cross-checked a defenseless McCann face-first into the ice. No Kraken player reacted — again raising questions about intensity and focus levels — while Mangiapane was quickly ejected and ushered off.

Just 16 days later, in a return Flames visit, Mangiapane skated around untouched by any Kraken player looking to avenge the hit.

In the season’s sixth game, Burakovsky broke his clavicle when shoved off-balance into the boards by notorious New York Rangers “hit” man Jacob Trouba — again without the Kraken responding. And though they eventually got better at immediate responses to dangerous blows, most notably with Dunn and Kartye going after offenders, word by then seemed to have gotten around the league as opponents continued hammering top Kraken talents.

Beniers in January was leveled dangerously into the boards by Cole Sillinger of the Columbus Blue Jackets and missed several games. Dunn was later knocked out of all but two of the team’s remaining 21 games when illegally blindsided by Martin Pospisil of the Flames.

Francis played in an era where teams had designated “enforcers” protecting top players. But it’s tougher to find such fighters with enough hockey skills to hold roster spots in today’s highly skilled game.

“I’ve always been a believer in team toughness more than in one individual,” Francis said.

So, somehow toughening the existing team seems in order. It’s not about beating opponents up, but mental preparedness for confrontational situations. Also, absorbing net-front blows to generate scoring chances beyond perimeter shots. And overcoming adversity so a setback or two doesn’t morph into season-killing streaks.

“Honestly, we’ve just got to try to find ways to compete for 60 minutes, find that chip on our shoulder, that swagger,” Gourde said in mid-December soon after the Kraken’s first eight-game losing streak.

Naming a team captain might help enforce player accountability beyond the head coach’s voice. The Kraken are considering it.

They regained some late-December swagger as backup goalie Joey Daccord played incredibly in injured Philipp Grubauer’s absence, fostering an 11-0-2 run through early January. But that merely extended the doomed season’s expiry date a tad. The Kraken won just 23 of 69 games outside that streak — a .333 percentage — and never quite sustained Daccord’s supplied momentum.

As the team won its ninth straight game in January, a virus worked through the locker room. Such things aren’t uncommon, but the Kraken crumbled — losing eight of the next 10.

They lost to NHL-worst San Jose right before the All-Star Game. And looked so lifeless in ensuing post-break road defeats to Philadelphia and New Jersey they called a team meeting.

“Really, our compete, our execution, just took us out of this hockey game for the first 35 minutes,” Hakstol said after the New Jersey game.

Defenseman Will Borgen agreed: “We all know how to play. We just didn’t come prepared.”

They recovered and hung around the fringes of contention. But the season pretty much ended when Pospisil injured Dunn from behind on March 4.

While the Kraken won that night and the next, they dropped 14 of the final 20 with Dunn mostly sidelined by a neck injury.

“It’s not easy to point at one thing,” Dunn said. “But I think overall it’s just really frustrating that we came in with such high hopes and obviously such high expectations from last year and weren’t able to meet those.”

That the Kraken even had lofty expectations suggests fixing the problem in one summer remains possible.

Daccord and Grubauer helped post the NHL’s ninth fewest goals allowed per game at 2.83. They were aided by continued solid play from blue-line mainstays Adam Larsson and Jamie Oleksiak alongside offensively inclined Dunn and a continually improving Borgen. They also eased rookie defenseman Ryker Evans in full-time.

Francis must upgrade without harming areas already working. And safeguard against allowing any inconsistent approach and attitude to linger.

“We’ll look at everything that we have to do to try to make our team better,” he said.