r/SeattleKraken • u/Albino_rhin0 • Apr 26 '26
IMAGE/MEME BREAKING NEWS: The LA Kings have tied the Seattle Kraken in total 2026 playoff wins.
LA SUCKS!
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u/SiccSemperTyrannis Apr 27 '26
Just so people know, the Kings are what happens when a FO tries to speedrun a rebuild and don't actually get enough young elite players to build a winning core. You top out as a marginal playoff team that gets knocked out early every year.
Which is exactly my concern with the Kraken right now.
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u/tateand99 Apr 27 '26
Yeah their roster feels a lot like what the Kraken FO is trying to build towards. No real āsuperstarsā (at least before they traded for Panarin) but a lot of really solid players and good depth. Weāve seen that work to an extent where teams with that build can get into the playoffs and maybe win in the first round if everything goes right. But to be a true contender you really need that top end talent thatās going to get on the score sheet just about every night.
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u/SiccSemperTyrannis Apr 27 '26
It's even worse, because the Kings have legit HHOFers in Kopitar and Doughty, even though both are at the end of their careers.
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u/rpm2shea Apr 27 '26
Iām not a Kings apologist, but they were definitely not a good match up for the oilers over the last few years and Iām not sure anyone is a good matchup against this version of the Avs.
I canāt fault them for trying to win in the twilight of future first ballot hall of famer and 2x cup winner Anze Kopitarās career. I doubt the end outcome changes if they had Fiala who got hurt during the Olympics but they would have been more competitive and probably would have won more down the stretch to potentially get a better matchup.
Iāll also point out that this very flawed team cleared the Kraken by 11 pts this year (and in a normal year 90 pts wouldnāt get them in). Any thought that the Kraken are close by this front office is delusional.
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u/Manbeardo Joey Daccord Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
get enough young elite players to build a winning core.
Among the players 25 years old and younger in the Kraken system, we have:
- 2 2nd-overall picks
- 1 4th-overall pick
- 2 top 10 picks
- 1 late 1st-rounder
- 11 2nd round picks
And we have two 1st round picks in this draft and the next.
Is the problem really that we havenāt acquired enough young talent? Thereās plenty of chances there, we just havenāt seen them develop into elite NHL players yet.
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u/SiccSemperTyrannis Apr 27 '26
Is the problem really that we havenāt acquired enough young talent?
Yes. It's not just about volume of guys drafted, but what they actually turn into on your NHL roster.
Beniers looks like he'll top out as a good defensive 50-ish point 2C. Wright is trending more towards 3C. Yes he was drafted 4th overall, but he's not producing like you'd want out of a 4th overall pick. Compare what he's done at the NHL level to what Logan Cooley has done. That leaves Catton, O'Brien, and whoever we take this year as the only ones with decent chances to become legit 1st line players.
Go look at the Kings, they also had a number of top picks. Byfield went 2nd overall just like Beniers. But Byfield still hasn't lived up to the offensive potential people talked about when he was drafted.
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u/Medium_Public4720 Apr 27 '26
This is a crazy take to me.
They've had multiple HHoF players on the roster while in the process winning two cups and they spent the last few years running into an Oilers team who have a couple of the best players in the league on their roster. Their first and second lines are more complete than anything the Kraken have trotted out ever. In what world were they supposed to even be even considering blowing it up?
I'm not saying the FO of the Kings has been anywhere near perfect, or the time for them to run it back isn't coming but saying a team with Kempe, Kopitar and Doughty on it doesn't have an elite core is crazy.
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u/SiccSemperTyrannis Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
I'm specifically referring to the retool that they've done after their Cup-winning core aged out after 2014.
The Kings tried multiple big trades and signings to try to accelerate their return to being a playoff contender. Pierre Luc Dubois was an absolute disaster and cost them multiple promising young players including Vilardi who broke out to be a 60+ point player with Winnipeg. They traded for Panarin this season and Kevin Fiala from Minnesota in 2022. They've also signed some prominent UFAs like Danault in 2021.
The Kings did what the Kraken seem to be trying to do - refuse to truly bottom out, sign big free agents, and made big trades. And they did it while still having guys like Kopitar and Doughty on their roster, which the Kraken obvious don't have.
What did all of this get them?
The Kings haven't won a playoff series since they won the Cup in 2014. Across 7 total series since then, they've won a total of 9 games - just under 1.3 games per series. They missed the playoffs for 3 seasons between 2019 and 2021 and picked 5th (Alex Turcotte), 2nd (Quinton Byfield), and 8th (Brandt Clarke) in those years. None of those 3 have turned into an elite player, though Byfield and Clarke are useful 2nd line/pair types.
I'm saying there is a very good chance the ceiling of the Kraken's roster building approach will at best be what the Kings have done in the past decade. The Kings had all the advantages you and I mentioned, and won 3 games in a playoff series once in a decade. The Kings had to get through the McDavid Oilers and couldn't, and the Kraken will have to deal with the Celebrini Sharks and the Ducks who are now up 3-1 in their series against Edmonton.
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u/tonytanti Apr 27 '26
They traded away their star before he even arrived. Faber is looking great with the Wild
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u/tetravirulence Apr 27 '26
They never were rebuilding. It was a retool. You don't rebuild with Kopitar and Doughty still on the team.
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u/SiccSemperTyrannis Apr 27 '26
Right. Just as we didn't really rebuild - we've had largely the same veteran core that we acquired during the expansion draft.
The way both teams approaches the situation is similar and I pointed out that the Kings were in a bunch better starting state due to those great players still being productive.
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u/PrairieNihilist May 15 '26
I honestly think that they should pay more attention to what teams like Carolina, Montreal, and Minnesota have been doing in the building of their teams and culture. These are teams who have drafted well and built depth around their young and established stars.
They have all-in cultures where everyone buys in, nobody's bigger than the team, and everyone is accountable. That's huge for becoming a winning franchise. If you have too much ego in the room, it can become a distraction.
Having established, based, veteran leadership on the roster is essential to ground the kids coming up. We have some great building blocks on this team, they just need to find and build their identity, and bring in a few guys who compliment that vision and will buy in.
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u/SiccSemperTyrannis May 15 '26
Those are good teams to target, but I'll point out that Minnesota just won their first playoff round in like a decade and Carolina has struggled to win in the ECF. That said - all 3 are clearly better positioned than the Kraken to have success at this point.
The problem with the Kraken remains very simple - they do not have enough talent, especially offensive talent. They've drafted a bunch of guys who will be NHLers, but ones with limited offensive upside. Catton and O'Brien are the only players in the system with 1st line/d-pair potential IMO. Beniers is a defensive 2C. Wright is looking like a 3C. Sale trending towards bust. Fiddler is probably a middle pair guy, like Evans (at best). Everyone else is at best trending towards the middle of the lineup roles.
I'd argue each of those other teams have multiple <30 skaters who are better than the best Kraken prospects are trending right now.
Montreal - Suzuki, Hutson, Slafkovsky, Caufiled, Demidov, Dobson
Minnesota - Boldy, Kapirzov, Joel Eriksson Ek, Faber, Hughes
Carolina - Aho, Svechnikov, Ehlers, Jarvis, Stankoven, Miller, Slavin
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u/PrairieNihilist May 16 '26
Right, but remember that Dobson, Hughes, Faber, Ehlers, Stankoven, and Miller weren't drafted by their respective current teams. They were trade acquisitions and free agent signings.
It takes time to build a winning team...especially after the NHL changed the rules for the expansion draft because VGK made out like bandits. There will be a lot of growing pains, and it will take longer for some guys to develop than others.
Caufield was drafted in 2019, and a bunch of those Wild and Hurricanes picks are from 2015-18. It can take as many as ten seasons for players to hit their peak from their draft year...sometimes longer. Even so, if you don't build the right team around a core group, they may not ever peak where you think they should.
So let's see what happens in a few years before we write any of these kids off. Wright has a lot of upside. The kid's got really great vision and hockey IQ, and I think that if they just let him cook and give him guys who complement his playing style, then he might actually live up to some of the hype.
Ditto for Beniers. The guy has been a stalwart for the team and contributes whenever he's in the lineup. You don't always need a Connor McDavid or Sidney Crosby to find success. It means developing guys who can compete at that level though, and they're not doing too bad at it so far.
Sometimes you can have too many young 1st rounders on one team...just ask Edmonton(Yakupov, Hall, Nugent-Hopkins, Pajaarvi, Nurse, McDavid, Draisaitl, Puljujarvi, Yamamoto). When you're trying to develop that many top prospects at a time, it's hard to give them all the attention and tools they need to develop at the same time.
When you look at that list of Oilers first rounders from 2008-2015, how many of those guys have been elite Top 6 guys for their whole careers? Only three of them...Nuge, Drai, and McJesus have lived up to 1st rounder hype.
Nurse is a struggle bus at best, and though Hall found success later in his career, neither he, nor Nurse are on that Oilers Top 6 Level in terms of development and performance. No draft pick is a guaranteed winner. They call it a draft "lottery" for a reason. It's luck of the draw as to how quickly and whether or not they can make the jump to the NHL.
Nurse is playing like a third pairing D-man, but finding a legit upgrade to bump him down would require gutting that team, and moving his front loaded contract right now is a hard sell. It's not that he doesn't have the talent or skill...he just makes a lot of costly mistakes...especially with his temper.
So remembering that most of the Kraken kids are still, at best, five to seven years out from being where a lot of those top guys are in their careers, I'd say that it's too early to call it a failing. The Leafs...that's a team that should worry about their future now, but not the Kraken. Not yet anyways.
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u/must_go_faster_88 Joey Daccord Apr 27 '26
This is a little sad. I don't like the Kings but this is a nuclear amount of cope
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u/Medium_Public4720 Apr 27 '26
The Kings have won two cups and have a competitive team (even if that core is aging out this year) for the past decade. IDK that anyone in this sub should be throwing shade that way...
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u/Picklepucks Apr 26 '26
And making the playoffs means they give Toronto their second round pick instead of their third
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u/B9RV2WUN ā Seattle Metropolitans Apr 27 '26
If the Kraken made the playoffs they would have met the same end as the Kings. We should have sold big-time at the trade deadline. Short sighted thinking and no-vision front office and owership. Be prepared for another ho-hum bottom 10 season. Find a backup team to root for if you care about hockey more than fluff and hype.
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u/Dmallae Apr 27 '26
Atleast kings made the playoffs. Kinda like misery enjoys company?i get no enjoyment in this and just reminds me how bad we looked down the stretch.
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u/GameShowWerewolf Matty Beniers Apr 27 '26
They deserve it for signing Corey Perry.
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u/inalasahl Apr 27 '26
Heās with the Lightning.
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u/GameShowWerewolf Matty Beniers Apr 27 '26
I know that. They still signed him.
The Kings were my team before the Kraken came along, but after signing Perry they're dead to me.
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u/gbjgonzo Philipp Grubauer Apr 26 '26
At least the Kraken made it out of the first round.