Are Kraken Worse Now Than When The Season Ended?

I’m not talking about in two or three seasons from now when Kraken 2026 1st-rounder Chase Reid and next summer’s top-5 NHL Draft pick joins the team, I’m talking about right now.

Yes, for the 2026-’27 season and that projected bottom-5 finish.

Mackie Samoskevich was a nice acquisition, but he’s not a complete game changer. He makes the middle six forwards younger. He’s not replacing Jaden Schwartz, Elie Tolvanen, and defenseman Jamie Oleksiak, the three unrestricted free agents walking away this week for nothing. (Ownership’s impact on the trade deadline debacle to be discussed in a different column.)

In fact, who is replacing those three? Curtis Douglas?

Oh wait. Bobby McMann. Yes. But he was here at the end of the season, and was a red hot scorer for a team that plummeted to the season’s conclusion with a record of 5-11-and-2 over his 18 games. We’ll see next season if he lives up to his “streaky” moniker.

Meanwhile, Kraken management keeps raving about the young prospects that apparently will soon be hopping into the line-up. Again, top line or first pair game changers?

So, this is unofficially/officially a rebuild. Year six and the 2021 expansion franchise is in a rebuild. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.

Even the goaltending is a bit of a question mark. Joey Daccord is the number-one. He stumbled a bit, but he can be excellent. A resurgent 34-year-old Philipp Grubauer is finally in the last year of his contract. Is Nikke Kokko or Kim Saarinen the heir apparent? There are no guarantees, especially with netminders.

With star NHL players turning the franchise down left and right as a destination, the club needs to mainly build via the draft, which it’s doing, and maybe by upping the ante in trades by utilizing draft capital. If only the Kraken had that low first-round pick, the two or three second and third round picks they got for those in-demand, saavy veterans on expiring contracts at the trade deadline ……. you know, when they had all the leverage.

Oops.

Enjoy the rebuild. Or maybe, since it’s only year six, we can just call it the “build”.