The Kraken picked centers in the 1st-round of both the 2024 and 2025 NHL Drafts. Both Berkly Catton last summer, and Jake O’Brien this summer, were taken 8th-overall.
So where do they stand?
Righty O’Brien will once again play for the Brantford Bulldogs in the Ontario Hockey League this upcoming season. The club recently named him team captain.
He posted 32 goals and 98 points in 66 major junior games last season. Sending him back for his 18-turn-19-year-old season is standard operating procedure for teenage centers not named Connor Bedard or Macklin Celebrini.
O’Brien is known for his hockey sense and his play-making ability. He’s elite among his peers in that category. He’s 6-foot-2, about four inches taller than the young man chosen twelve months before him, but weighs about the same, 175-pounds. He’ll grow and strengthen into his frame, just as Catton has started doing over the last year.
O’Brien signed his entry-level NHL contract during Kraken Development Camp in July.
“I think it’s great to see the potential,” then Seattle director of player development Jeff Tambellini said of O’Brien. “You can just see the sense, and what he can do at 6-2. So we project that at 22-years-old, what that’s going to look like, and from our standpoint, we get very excited.”
(Tambellini has since moved on to become an assistant GM with the Tampa Bay Lightning)
Catton will get a serious look at Kraken training camp this September after leading his Spokane Chiefs to the Western Hockey League final series. The team captain and scoring leader, he piled up points in the postseason. His biggest strength lies elsewhere. Catton would be more known for his shot; an ability to change angles, toe drag, whatever’s necessary to rip a puck and find the net.
Seattle is deep in middle-six centers. Catton will be competing with and against veterans and 21-year-old, second-year NHL’er Shane Wright.
Based on the rules in the current NHL collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and the operating agreement with Canadian major juniors, Catton will have to return to Spokane for another season if he doesn’t make the big club. The latter is what’s presently expected. He’ll turn 20 in January.
Rookies report on September 12th with the full Kraken training camp scheduled for the 19th.
Earlier Kraken:
— Kraken Exclusive; ‘We’re Not Trading McCann’
