SEATTLE — Seattle Kraken General Manager Ron Francis will be the first to tell you the results in 2024-2025 weren’t what he had hoped for.

But in the interest of fairness, he’ll point out how nobody could have anticipated missing key players like Yanni Gourde, Vince Dunn and the captain Jordan Eberle for extended periods of time this season.

Francis suspects that the team being roughly five-six games out of the playoff picture at this juncture in mid-to-late March likely isn’t that much of a deficit if those guys are around.

“I think we’re much closer than maybe some people think at this point and hopefully with the right tweaks over the offseason we can be right where we want to be,” Francis told me.

The right tweaks are indeed coming.

That’s because, while it was certainly painful for fans to see original Kraken players like Yanni Gourde and Brandon Tanev traded away along with a star in the 2023 playoffs Oliver Bjorkstrand, the Kraken has put itself in prime position to make major upgrades to the roster this upcoming offseason.

“We were able to get two first-round picks, two second-round picks and a seventh for those players, so what it also did was free up a lot of cap space,” Francis said, adding, “It’s an opportunity for us to try and go out in the free agent market or via trade with the draft capital we have, moving some of that now to get players to move this thing forward.”

Francis now has roughly $20 million in salary cap space entering this summer, money that will be put to good use in finding what this team needs moving forward: More consistent scoring.

And the total draft haul Ron mentioned above? That brings the Kraken total to three first-round picks and three second-round picks over the next three years. Draft capital that Francis has no intention of stockpiling.

“We’re not looking to draft 10 players with those three drafts with those picks, we are hoping to parlay those into acquiring players that will make our lineup really stronger,” Francis said, pointing to how the team used draft picks to acquire Bjorkstrand ahead of that 2022-2023 season where he helped the Kraken get within a goal of the Western Conference Finals.

It cannot be stressed just how good of a position the Kraken now finds itself in regards to making upgrades to the roster this summer.

Certainly, it was a tough decision to trade those players to get to this point. Especially with guys like Gourde and Tanev on contracts that were set to expire this summer.

A decision that was made easier, too, by the emergence of the young Kraken talent which are still complimented by a veteran core of guys like Jordan Eberle, Jared McCann, Vince Dunn, Adam Larsson, Jamie Oleksiak, Kaapo Kakko and several others.

Matty Beniers looks like the player we expected him to be.

Shane Wright is leading the team in scoring since November.

Even in an incredibly small sample size of three games, rookie Jani Nyman has scored two goals already.

For perspective:

The Kraken first and second round picks of 2021 (Beniers and Ryker Evans) are mainstays in the lineup and now, the first and second round picks from the 2022 draft (Wright and Nyman) appear ready to contribute for years to come.

“Some of what we think we can replace with is internally, some of our young guys are progressing to the point where we think they can push for jobs,” Francis said.

“And the other thing we did is we didn’t get all those picks in this year. If you did it this year, the draft is in June you have a short window to accomplish what you want to accomplish. But by moving out some of those picks next year, the year after, you have more time,” he added, which of course means that opportunity to move some of those 2026 and 2027 picks in potential July trades if necessary.

So look at the larger picture.

Is there a perception when you’re a team essentially out of contention for this season trading established stars for draft picks? Sure.

But the Kraken plan is that they won’t be out of contention for long, flipping those picks for immediate help this summer. Using cap space to take on larger contracts.

Flexibility, Opportunity. These are all words that much more accurately describe what the Kraken is up to than terms like selling or playing for the more distant future.

“There’s a lot of flexibility,” Francis said.

“That’s what we’re hoping for. We created that to be able to do that, now it’s about going out and finding the right pieces. It’s never been a question of our ownership saying, hey, ‘you can’t spend to the cap,’ that’s always been a given. They’ve said absolutely, we spent $94 million last year on free agents and my owners were happy. We’re hoping to do some of that again this summer and if not in the free agent market with some trades to help close that $20 million gap that sits there right now,” Francis said.

It’s not the popular thing to look past what’s been a roller-coaster season, but the Kraken plans on using these final 14 games to help that young talent take another step forward. But it’s impossible to ignore the potential for the 2025-2026 season.

The Kraken must bounce back next year, any fan knows it. And their general manager just put them in the absolute best position possible to make that a reality. He did so with moves that caused immediate difficulty for the rest of the season.

And he did so with a clear vision to make that happen.