{"id":548925,"date":"2026-04-09T18:33:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T18:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/548925\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T18:33:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T18:33:14","slug":"kraken-wont-go-far-without-a-superstar-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/548925\/","title":{"rendered":"Kraken won\u2019t go far without a superstar player"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Seattle Kraken<\/a> are still in their infancy as a franchise, but it appears they\u2019ve come to the realization every NHL team has to have from time to time: sometimes, the path you\u2019re on just isn\u2019t working, and you have to start over. On Wednesday, Seattle and executive Ron Francis mutually agreed to part ways<\/a>. Francis has been with the team since its inception, acting as their first general manager and then becoming their President of Hockey Operations last offseason. Whether Francis\u2019 departure is related to the team\u2019s underwhelming on-ice performance, it signals the end of one era and the beginning of the next in Kraken hockey.<\/p>\n

One thing Seattle\u2019s new management team can learn from its predecessor is that there\u2019s no replacement for elite talent. The Kraken have yet to boast a true star-level player, and it\u2019s been a limiting factor for them through five seasons. Unfortunately for Seattle, there doesn\u2019t seem to be an ascending star within their organization, either, so they\u2019ll have to exercise some patience to get the superstar player they crave.<\/p>\n

On Thursday\u2019s episode of\u00a0Daily Faceoff LIVE<\/a>,\u00a0hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed the need for the Kraken to find their franchise-leading superstar.<\/p>\n

Carter\u00a0Hutton:\u00a0This is a team where, and you talked about it with their fanbase, they don\u2019t have a superstar. I\u2019m breaking down the numbers here, and I\u2019ve said this before on the show, Jordan Eberle right now is their leading scorer with 53 points<\/a>. Jordan Eberle on a good hockey team, where\u2019s he playing, on your third line? He\u2019s not really a guy that\u2019s going to generate a lot of offense. He\u2019s first on your team. Matty Beniers is who he is. Obviously Bobby McMann\u2019s been great coming over, but he\u2019s 106th in the NHL in points. <\/p>\n

You look at Connor McDavid right now, Connor McDavid just peaked at 133 points, so 80 more points than the leading scorer on the Seattle Kraken. So now you\u2019re talking about comparisons and I\u2019m trying to compete with this. So there alone, where are those extra points coming from. You can win by committee, and I think Lane Lambert has done a very good job of getting this team to play a very structured team game. But at the end of the day, how do you compete? And now you\u2019re talking about trying to win a best-of-seven series. I think it\u2019s just very hard for this team to get anywhere without a superstar.<\/p>\n

You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Thursday\u2019s episode here\u2026<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Seattle Kraken are still in their infancy as a franchise, but it appears they\u2019ve come to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[5,4188,4,2686,234,5318],"class_list":{"0":"post-548925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-kraken","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-kraken","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-seattle","12":"tag-seattle-kraken","13":"tag-seattlekraken"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116376187973713807","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}