How the Kraken Became the Most Irrelevant Team in the NHL
December 2, 2025
The development comment stung, but I can't really disagree with anything said here.
8 comments
I don’t know why people are determined to give air to people that do nothing but read stat sheets and fart out an opinion. His takes are extremely surface level, as one would expect, and dripping with hindsight bias.
Our player development is going just fine. Our OLDEST prospect just turned 23 and is already producing Selke candidate worthy defensive numbers
Y’all just need to chill
Edit: just looked at the comments and he’s agreeing and laughing at a comment saying “why do they keep drafting centers?” That should tell you all you need to know about his “knowledge”.
I could easily disagree with the title of your post…
CBJ say hello 👋
NHL fans when the expansion team doesn’t win a cup in their first five years (The only expansion team they know is Vegas)
I mean we’re literally in playoff position. Yeah we are in a scoring slump but fuck off with this rage bait.
Why do we care?
Yay, more garbage from someone who doesn’t watch the team or know how expansion rosters are built.
No clicks from me.
When I see stuff like this posted by anybody who says a thing I don’t like, I just fall back to one of these canned thought terminating responses:
1. Hurr durr, numbers aren’t real, and only lame nerds that don’t know anything about Hockey use them. Those guys who are so obsessed with hockey they spend hundreds of hours breaking down stats and checking tape know way less than I do. I’m one of the best players in my D level beer league man, I know *so much about hockey.*
2. They just don’t watch the *games.* You see all those passes around the perimeter on the PP? We got like 2-3 decent shots on 6 last game, c’mon, we’re not that bad! Me watching every Kraken game, and almost no others, have so much more perspective to make excuses with.
/s
Just sayin though, lot of people butthurt in the comments but nobody arguing *any* of this guys points or observations. And honestly, this dude is super even keeled with his criticism, and it’s fairly clear to me he’s put some time into researching this and knows a bit what he’s talking about.
I think the outsider perspective is interesting at least, and it’s not like the first guy I’ve heard say something like this. Heard SDPN with some similar takes albeit way less in depth, was something like “I have no idea what they’re doing over there, they’re kinda doing nothing over there,” etc.
I think those folks have a real point; I don’t really think our team strategy has been particularly clean or obvious to follow at times. I don’t get continually signing aging middle-6 dudes if your plan is to draft and develop. If you’re trying to focus on the pipeline, focus on the pipeline and make less win-now moves. High draft picks will help us. Giving time to guys like Shane will help us.
Maybe you hate tanking, but at the very least it was incredibly easy to explain what the Sharks were doing and how it would lead to them being good. Get an effectively guaranteed top 5 pick for a few years in a row, hope that some of them hit. Granted, the Sharks *also* had some great luck with this with Smith and Celebrini. Not every draft is equal, yada yada yada. But if you draft high over several drafts, you will get some great players. Those assholes have a 25% chance at also getting McKenna at this point.
Anyway, title is maybe a bit hyperbole, but honestly, I don’t think it’s too far off. There is a reason nobody talks about us, we don’t do that much that is very newsworthy. That’s good and bad, you can get in the news for being a dumpster fire or making terrible moves too.
8 comments
I don’t know why people are determined to give air to people that do nothing but read stat sheets and fart out an opinion. His takes are extremely surface level, as one would expect, and dripping with hindsight bias.
Our player development is going just fine. Our OLDEST prospect just turned 23 and is already producing Selke candidate worthy defensive numbers
Y’all just need to chill
Edit: just looked at the comments and he’s agreeing and laughing at a comment saying “why do they keep drafting centers?” That should tell you all you need to know about his “knowledge”.
I could easily disagree with the title of your post…
CBJ say hello 👋
NHL fans when the expansion team doesn’t win a cup in their first five years (The only expansion team they know is Vegas)
I mean we’re literally in playoff position. Yeah we are in a scoring slump but fuck off with this rage bait.
Why do we care?
Yay, more garbage from someone who doesn’t watch the team or know how expansion rosters are built.
No clicks from me.
When I see stuff like this posted by anybody who says a thing I don’t like, I just fall back to one of these canned thought terminating responses:
1. Hurr durr, numbers aren’t real, and only lame nerds that don’t know anything about Hockey use them. Those guys who are so obsessed with hockey they spend hundreds of hours breaking down stats and checking tape know way less than I do. I’m one of the best players in my D level beer league man, I know *so much about hockey.*
2. They just don’t watch the *games.* You see all those passes around the perimeter on the PP? We got like 2-3 decent shots on 6 last game, c’mon, we’re not that bad! Me watching every Kraken game, and almost no others, have so much more perspective to make excuses with.
/s
Just sayin though, lot of people butthurt in the comments but nobody arguing *any* of this guys points or observations. And honestly, this dude is super even keeled with his criticism, and it’s fairly clear to me he’s put some time into researching this and knows a bit what he’s talking about.
I think the outsider perspective is interesting at least, and it’s not like the first guy I’ve heard say something like this. Heard SDPN with some similar takes albeit way less in depth, was something like “I have no idea what they’re doing over there, they’re kinda doing nothing over there,” etc.
I think those folks have a real point; I don’t really think our team strategy has been particularly clean or obvious to follow at times. I don’t get continually signing aging middle-6 dudes if your plan is to draft and develop. If you’re trying to focus on the pipeline, focus on the pipeline and make less win-now moves. High draft picks will help us. Giving time to guys like Shane will help us.
Maybe you hate tanking, but at the very least it was incredibly easy to explain what the Sharks were doing and how it would lead to them being good. Get an effectively guaranteed top 5 pick for a few years in a row, hope that some of them hit. Granted, the Sharks *also* had some great luck with this with Smith and Celebrini. Not every draft is equal, yada yada yada. But if you draft high over several drafts, you will get some great players. Those assholes have a 25% chance at also getting McKenna at this point.
Anyway, title is maybe a bit hyperbole, but honestly, I don’t think it’s too far off. There is a reason nobody talks about us, we don’t do that much that is very newsworthy. That’s good and bad, you can get in the news for being a dumpster fire or making terrible moves too.