Players aren’t the only former members of the Seattle Kraken organization landing in new hockey destinations.
Former Kraken Assistant Coach
Bob Woods served on head coach Dan Bylsma’s Seattle staff in 2024-25. Woods coached his 1,000th NHL game on March 22, 2025. Like in Seattle, he’d coached defenses during previous stops in Washington, Anaheim, Buffalo, and Minnesota.
When Bylsma was dismissed after one non-playoff season, so was Woods. He spent this past winter in upstate New York. “I was driving by (the Utica Curling Club) rink,” he told the Rome Sentinel. “I was always like ‘man, I’d love to get back into that.’ Not working this year, that opportunity arose.”
Woods put curling on the back burner this week, taking an assistant coaching job with the Hartford Wolfpack, AHL affiliate of the Rangers. From AHL.com: “Woods, 58, is one of three people ever to win Calder Cups as a player (1997), assistant coach (2006) and head coach (2009), all with the Hershey Bears.”
Former Kraken Goalie Coach
Steve Briere has been hired as the director of goaltending development for the Wisconsin Badgers.
Briere previously served with the Maple Leafs (2015-22) and Kraken (2022-25). He’d built a relationship with Kraken goalie Joey Daccord’s father when both were goalie coaches in Canada. He told NHL.com about working with Daccord and Philipp Grubauer.
“We try to have a goalie dinner once every couple of months, just the three of us. They want to know that you have their best intentions at heart.
“Sometimes you have to have difficult conversations, but you love them so much. It’s like your kids, right? I think that learning (the goalies) is probably the number one key, off ice or on the ice, understanding their game better than they do.”
Former Kraken Beat Writer
Marisa Ingemi, with Geoff Baker an original Seattle Times Kraken correspondent, now covers hockey for the San Jose Mercury-News. You can read her story this week about a former Seattle Torrent player here.
Ingemi, a multi-award-winning sports reporter, was fired by the Times without explanation on Jan. 28, 2022.
Before the expansion Kraken season started, she wrote, “Coming from Boston, preparing for a season in which Seattle will pursue the Stanley Cup for the first time in nearly 100 years, has been different.
“I feel really grateful to help guide fans along in what for some is your first season as a hockey fan.”
In the first month of the 2021-22 season, Ingemi asked, “How was a team without a bona fide top-line center, without a top six reminiscent of previous teams that went on deep playoff runs, going to score goals?”
The more things change…
Earlier Seattle:
— Call Him ‘Tony Stark’; Larsson Is Kraken Iron Man
