Salk: Where do the Seattle Kraken go from here?

Talking about the Seattle Kraken is such a challenge because they really are in between, and there’s nothing worse in sports than being in between.

You never want to be one of the teams that is just on the verge of the playoffs. You never want to just miss the playoffs, certainly not in the leagues like the NHL and the NBA. It’s an in-between gray area, and that’s a terrible spot to be.

They have made some decisions this week, moving on from president of hockey operations and former general manager Ron Francis. It was time. He’s a Hall of Famer as a player and by all accounts a great person, but it’s been 13 years that he’s been in charge of organizations between here and Carolina, and he’s got one playoff appearance and one playoff series win in that time. That’s just obviously not enough, and the people of Seattle, who are mostly new to this game, need more than that.

Is Jason Botterill going to be the guy? He was the GM under Ron Francis, so this is not a full house cleaning. I’m not saying he’s the problem. I probably would have felt more comfortable if they had just completely cleaned house and said, let’s start over.

NHL standings

At the end of the day, I’m sure Botterill understands the problem as well as anybody else does, and it’s the same thing I’ve said time and time again. They just don’t have top-tier, top-level, star-power talent. They’ve got a lot of good players on the team, players that are nice who fill in around the star players, but they don’t have anybody who threatens you.

I like Matty Beniers. But he’s not a top-line center because he doesn’t really threaten the defense the way San Jose’s Macklin Celebrini does, the way Chicago’s Connor Bedard does, the way Edmonton’s Connor McDavid does, the way Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon does. These guys threaten you all the time.

The Kraken will just have a lot of good players on their team until they find a way to come up with great ones. So what does that mean? Is it tanking and hoping you end up with Gavin McKenna or the top pick in a draft who can be a Celebrini for your team? Sure, that’s one way to go. But remember, it takes time, it takes patience, it takes losing, and not everybody has the stomach for that.

So they’re going to have to figure it out. They have not had a lot of guys on this team in its history who have exceeded expectations. Their free agent signings have mostly not worked out. Their draft picks have not exceeded expectations and turned into stars. So until they find a way to do that, they’re going to be exactly where they are right now: stuck in the middle, not good enough to really go anywhere, but not bad enough to make the changes necessary to find those star players.

This post is a transcript of the video at the top of the post. It is edited for clarity. Catch Mike Salk weekdays from 6-10 a.m. on Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk.

Salk: Where do the Seattle Kraken go from here?

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