{"id":432829,"date":"2023-10-10T14:15:24","date_gmt":"2023-10-10T18:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=432829"},"modified":"2023-10-10T14:10:12","modified_gmt":"2023-10-10T18:10:12","slug":"kraken-roster-set-for-opening-night-seattle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2023\/10\/10\/kraken-roster-set-for-opening-night-seattle\/","title":{"rendered":"Seattle Kraken Roster Set for Opening Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last week, every team in the NHL struggled to finalize their opening night rosters. The player limit stands at 23 bodies, but plenty of teams dropped their rosters below that upper limit. The Seattle Kraken<\/a> roster features 22 players, and like many other teams, that likely came as an effect of the salary cap. Training camp provided the Kraken with ample opportunity to see what they have in the pipeline. With tons of competition, they made some difficult decisions and sent down quite a few players with NHL experience.<\/p>\n

Kraken Roster Reduced to 22, Ready for Opening Night<\/h2>\n

Since last Thursday, the Kraken reduced their roster dramatically. They re-assigned a total of 15 players from training camp to their AHL club, the Coachella Firebirds, in a four-day span. That included 13 players who needed to clear waivers, and all 13 did just that. And while many of them were long shots to crack the team, some had higher expectations than how things resulted.<\/p>\n

At each position, Seattle now possesses quite a bit of NHL experience down with their AHL club. All but one of the 15 players re-assigned this last week played at least one contest in the NHL, some though with significantly more than others.<\/p>\n

Kraken Offence Reduced to 13<\/h4>\n

On offence, the Kraken roster looked nearly locked before camp began. With the abundance of lineup regulars returning for 2023-24, the squad had little to no openings. Andre Burakovsky<\/a>, Jordan Eberle<\/a>, Jaden Schwartz<\/a>, Oliver Bjorkstrand<\/a>, Yanni Gourde<\/a>, Jared McCann<\/a>, Alexander Wennberg<\/a>, Brandon Tanev<\/a>, Eeli Tolvanen<\/a>, and Matthew Beniers<\/a> unquestionably locked up ten of the 12 lineup slots from the get-go. That left two slots to be determined through camp, plus a couple of potential openings for extra bodies.<\/p>\n

In the end, Seattle opted to carry just one extra forward. That meant only three additional players cracked the roster, in addition to the ten mentioned above. Newcomers Kailer Yamamoto<\/a> and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare<\/a> snagged two of the three slots. That was an unsurprising result, as both featured as lineup staples in their careers elsewhere to date.<\/p>\n

In reality, then, Seattle pitted all their prospective forwards against one another in camp for just that 13th and final roster spot. And ultimately, Tye Kartye<\/a> earned his way onto the roster.<\/p>\n

Kraken Defence Reduced to Seven<\/h4>\n

Opting to carry 13 forwards meant the Kraken roster could feature as many as eight defencemen. However, they decided to only retain seven. Just like the forward group, most of these slots felt pre-decided heading into camp. Vince Dunn<\/a>, Jamie Oleksiak<\/a>, Adam Larsson<\/a>, Justin Schultz<\/a>, and William Borgen<\/a> all returned, plus newcomer Brian Dumoulin<\/a> played top-four minutes across his career before signing in Seattle.<\/p>\n

Once again, that left only the seventh slot open for competition. And the winner of that spot wound up being Jaycob Megna<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kraken Goalies Reduced to Two<\/h4>\n

Interestingly enough, Seattle opted to carry just two goalies. As a result, the Kraken roster stands one shy of the 23-man limit. For the first time since selecting him in the expansion draft, Seattle elected to carry Joey Daccord<\/a> as one of their top two netminders. He snatched the backup role away from Chris Driedger<\/a>, who lost his whole 2022-23 NHL season to an injury sustained last summer.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for Driedger, his recovery took a really long time; simultaneously, Daccord had a career-best season in the AHL, which ended with a dramatic game seven overtime defeat in the championship. Despite that disappointment, it looks like he did enough between last year and this year’s camp and preseason to earn an extended opportunity at the NHL level.<\/p>\n

Kraken Pipeline Depth<\/h3>\n

As noted above, the players sent down still have plenty of NHL experience. A good number of them should expect a shot at some point with the big club. Anything can happen, whether it be an injury or just underperforming players, so missing out on the opening night roster is far from a death sentence.<\/p>\n

On forward, the Kraken moved Shane Wright<\/a>, John Hayden<\/a>, Marian Studenic<\/a>, Devin Shore<\/a>, Andrew Poturalski<\/a>, Max McCormick<\/a>, Kole Lind<\/a>, and Cameron Hughes<\/a> to the AHL. Each of those eight players already logged NHL games, half of them actually appearing with the Kraken already. Cumulatively, they hold 850 career NHL games under their belt, led by Shore (422) and Hayden (247). Perhaps the most interesting name remains Wright, the club’s first-round (fourth overall) pick in the 2022 draft.<\/p>\n

Defence and Goaltending Depth<\/h4>\n

On defence, Seattle re-assigned Jimmy Schuldt<\/a>, Ryker Evans, Cale Fleury<\/a>, Mitch Reinke<\/a>, Connor Carrick<\/a>, and Gustav Olofsson<\/a>. Evans, who the team selected 35th overall in the 2021 entry draft, stood as the last player without NHL experience before his re-assignment. The other five accumulated 367 games played between them, largely thanks to Carrick and his 242 games.<\/p>\n

Finally, in goal, Driedger wound up as the odd man out. The decision to waive him likely came in part due to the salary cap; Driedger’s $3.5 million cap hit pushed the team right to the upper limit, but now only costs them $2.35 million that he’s buried in the minors. They also risked losing him to another team via a waiver claim, though the rest of the league passed on that opportunity. The explanation there remains the same; everyone’s cap situation looks tight enough as-is to risk taking a flier on a mid-priced goalie returning from a year off due to injury.<\/p>\n

Expect plenty of movement up and down as the season moves along. All it takes is a single injury to begin the shuffling, and with so many solid options to select from, Seattle might juggle names more often than most. That feels even more likely considering their “win by committee” approach. If any weaknesses surface early, tons of qualified names are waiting in the wings for a chance to leapfrog.<\/p>\n

Main Photo Credit: Perry Nelson-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the last week, every team in the NHL struggled to finalize their opening night rosters. The player limit stands at 23 bodies, but plenty of teams dropped their rosters below that upper limit. The Seattle Kraken roster features 22 players, and like many other teams, that likely came as an effect of the salary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2377,"featured_media":432859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5369,2,4547,4548],"tags":[1019,480,2017,1883,4005,1340,943,7024,3984,7725],"class_list":["post-432829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-seattle-kraken","category-featured","category-hockey","category-nhl","tag-brian-dumoulin","tag-chris-driedger","tag-connor-carrick","tag-jaycob-megna","tag-joey-daccord","tag-john-hayden","tag-kailer-yamamoto","tag-seattle-kraken-analysis","tag-shane-wright","tag-tye-kartye"],"modified_by":"Alec Roberson","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2377"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}