Matt Calkins: Kraken need a rebuild to have any chance at reclaiming Seattle spotlight

Matt Calkins, The Seattle Times on Apr 11, 2026

Published in Hockey

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SEATTLE — If you’re one of the least popular kids in school, you’re not going to win a student-body election with a nice speech. That fresh haircut probably won’t do much either — nor will that crisp new outfit.

The best move is to step off the campaign trail, work on yourself for a couple of years and come back when you’ve proven you have what it takes to win. Which brings us to the Seattle Kraken.

The fervor surrounding this franchise has dwindled down to a flicker over the past three years. Seattle was just eliminated from the NHL playoffs for the third straight season and fourth time in the past five — with that magical spring 2023 being the solitary spark for the die-hards.

The Kraken do not have a star. The Kraken do not score goals. And in their spiral, they have ceded any potential attention to a Super Bowl-winning NFL team, a division-winning MLB team, and — perhaps most pertinent — a yet-to-return NBA team.

As a result, Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke has called for an organization-wide audit to try and fix whatever is ailing the team and frustrating its fans. Hey, that’s a start — and it’s coming from a man who makes no excuses for Seattle’s on-ice shortcomings.

But the honest truth is this: A rebuild is likely the only way forward. A part-time stay at the bottom beats a 30-year mortgage in the middle.

“Middle” might be a generous term for a team that will end the season having fallen shy of the playoffs for the third straight year. But the postseason has at least felt like a possibility for much of that stretch. Before the Olympic break this year, the Kraken looked as if they would be playing for something more than pride by season’s end. Then came a 6-14-2 skid that has them 28th in the NHL in points entering Saturday’s game with the Flames.

Compounding this disappointment is a style of play that makes ice hockey about as entertaining as ice melting. The defensive-minded Kraken are 12th in points allowed but 27th in points scored. This isn’t a criticism of Lane Lambert’s coaching style. Playing in such a manner was probably essential to keeping Seattle’s playoff hopes alive through the first three quarters of the season. But fans want to see the puck find the back of the net. That doesn’t happen much at Kraken games.

Whether there is a “big bad” in all this is up for debate. Ron Francis, who began as general manager before becoming president of hockey operations — a role he will step down from at season’s end — has overseen this half-decade of mediocrity, but it’s hard to know how much more he could have done. The Kraken were an expansion team that came into the league four years after the Las Vegas Golden Knights, who made it to the Stanley Cup Finals in their inaugural season. But league executives learned from that expansion draft and prevented the Kraken from building a team of the same stature.

Instead, they had one improbable playoff run in 2023 — when they came into the postseason with the seventh-best record in the Western Conference, upset the defending champion Avalanche in the first round and took Dallas to seven games in the second. It was not lost on this town — or this newspaper, for that matter, which saw Kraken articles top the list of most-read stories day after day.

But you have to wonder if the joy of that spring begot complacency in the years to come. After all, look what could happen if you simply made the playoffs? Why not make that the goal each year?

I’m not pretending to know what’s in the minds of Kraken executives. But I know it’s hard to start over when you’re overseeing a fledgling franchise that sold out its inaugural season tickets in 12 minutes. Fans are as reluctant to accept the word “rebuild” as the brass is to utter it. It just looks like it’s time.

That game-changing free agent isn’t walking through those Climate Pledge Arena doors anytime soon. This is a team that, for now at least, looks like it has to build through the draft. That usually means selling off assets to acquire key picks. And it usually means at least a couple of years as bottom feeders.

The sports world is replete with teams that went from the cellar to celebrations in a few short seasons. The Kraken will likely have to take that same route.

Will it mean fading away as the rest of Seattle sports revels in the spotlight? Probably. Is there any other choice at this point? Probably not.

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