With the offseason departures of Jaden Schwartz and Jamie Oleksiak, eight Seattle Kraken remain who suited up in the team’s expansion season of 2021-22. Of those, center Matty Beniers, goalie Joey Daccord, and defenseman Cale Fleury all played in 10 or fewer games.
That leaves five true Seattle Survivors: goalie Philipp Grubauer, defensemen Adam Larsson and Vince Dunn, and forwards Jared McCann and Jordan Eberle.
What prompted this trip down memory lane is noting the Kraken will meet the Blue Jackets in Columbus on December 17th, and wondering which players might find the public address voice at Nationwide Arena vaguely familiar. The man the Blue Jackets just hired, Josh Hunter, held the same job for the first half of the first Kraken season at Climate Pledge Arena.
Big Game Hunter
Josh Hunter was behind the CPA microphone (image above) on Oct. 24, 2021 when the Kraken played their first-ever regular season home game, a 4-2 loss to the Vancouver Canucks. “According to his LinkedIn,” says the Columbus Dispatch, “he made it halfway through the season before his financial situation, which required him to commute from Colorado to Seattle rather than immediately moving to the Pacific Northwest, led to the Kraken hiring a different announcer who was locally based.”
Well, sort of locally based. Chet Buchanan owns the enthusiastic voice that Seattle fans have now come to know and love. Buchanan lives both in Seattle and his former haunt, Las Vegas. Until leaving the gig this past February, he broadcast his radio show for a Vegas station from his Puget Sound home.
He’s also known as a saint in Sin City, raising more than $60 million hosting annual Christmas toy drives for a quarter-century. When Buchanan had to miss Kraken home games last December, it was Hunter who filled in.
Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You – And Kraken Did!
Buchanan originally applied for the job that Hunter got. “Buchanan happened to be in Seattle,” said the Las Vegas Sun, “when the team asked if he was still interested in the position.” Oddly, his first game, on Jan. 1, 2022, also featured the Canucks as visitors.
“For the first 10 games or so,” Chet told the Sun, “I was, in hockey parlance, gripping the stick. I was tense.” Anyone who’s attended a Kraken game knows he long ago conquered that tension. He also does PA work in Vegas for NASCAR and the WNBA Aces.
“When a kid reaches out (to me),” Buchanan told Fox5 Vegas, “saying, ‘Here’s my imitation of Chet Buchanan doing a goal call,’ and they’re not messing with you, that’s huge, because I was that kid.”
Earlier Seattle:
— Time Ticking For Kraken’s Ancient Mariner
