The Seattle Kraken’s 8th-overall pick in the 2024 NHL Draft is sticking around the big show for now. Berkly Catton eclipsed the 10-games-played mark over the weekend and the first year of his three-year entry-level deal is officially activated. If he plays 40 games this season, he’ll be a year closer to arbitration rights and unrestricted free agency.
Also along the way, should Jared McCann and/or Freddie Gaudreau ever return to the line-up and Catton sits out five consecutive games as a healthy scratch, he’s allowed to go the American Hockey League’s Coachella Valley Firebirds for a two-week conditioning stint.
Yippee! No seriously, that would actually be a good thing. Full on practice and lots of ice time for two full weeks.
Otherwise he’s not allowed to be shipped down there; unfortunate since he’s played a little more than eight minutes over his last two NHL games and is goalless through his first eleven.
Part of the Kraken’s decision to keep him around, as opposed to shipping him back to the Spokane Chiefs of the Western Hockey League, had to center around the fact the club has been playing shorthanded due to injuries and his body is needed.
It’s at least some valuable experience at hockey’s highest level, but raises the question of “what’s next” when those bodies return.
He is still eligible to play in the World Junior Championships for Canada. Depending on whether the Kraken’s health situation improves by late December, that maneuver is a likelihood.
Catton can play center or wing. He’s mature. He’s physical. All of those attributes factored into the decision to let him stay with Seattle. Not earth shattering either way, but it does clip a year off his inexpensive entry-level deal. Fellow forward Shane Wright had the triggering of the first-year of his deal slid back two separate times.
It’s an option the Kraken had again with Catton, that they didn’t take.
Earlier Kraken:
— Blue Jackets Drop Kraken In A Shoot-Out 2-1
