A look at the roster the Seattle Kraken could have drafted.

Wouldn't that be something?

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 2 years ago
A look at the roster the Seattle Kraken could have drafted.

The Seattle Kraken have officially entered the National Hockey League as the league's 32nd franchise but for many fans they did so with a bit of a whimper, playing things very safe during the course of their expansion draft and seemingly building their roster with cap savings being at the forefront of their gameplan.

It will almost certainly prove to be a good gameplan in this flat cap era of the NHL with salary cap dollars being more valuable now than they ever have been in the past, but it didn't include any of the sexy moves that fans had been hoping to see. We might still see some big splashes from the Kraken in the offseason, both via trade and when free agency opens up on July 28th, but their initial roster wasn't exactly star studded.

Take a look at their picks:

Forwards:

Tyler Pitlick

Morgan Geekie

John Quenneville

Joonas Donskoi

Calle Jarnkrok

Nathan Bastian

Jordan Eberle 

Colin Blackwell

Carsen Twarynski 

Brandon Tanev

Alexander True

Yanni Gourde

Jared McCann 

Mason Appleton 

Kole Lind

Defensemen:

Jeremy Lauzon 

William Borgen

Mark Giordano

Haydn Fleury

Gavin Bayreuther 

Jamie Oleksiak 

Dennis Cholowski 

Adam Larsson 

Carson Soucy 

Cale Fleury 

Vince Dunn

Kurtis MacDermid

Goaltenders:

Chris Driedger

Joey Daccord

Vitek Vanecek

Sure there are some very solid names on that list but I think you would be hard pressed to argue that it contains a great deal of star power when compared to some of the players that were snubbed by the Seattle Kraken for lack of a better word. The Kraken had the opportunity to go with at least a few star caliber players.

Just take a look:

Forwards:

Josh Bailey - Max Domi - Vladimir Tarasenko

Evgeni Dadonov - Alex Kerfoot - Jakub Voracek

Frank Vatrano - Cody Eakin - J.T. Compher

Nick Cousins - Derek Grant - Nic Dowd

Defensemen:

Marcus Pettersson - Dylan DeMelo

Nikita Zadorov - Troy Stecher

Jake Bean - Cal Foote

Kale Clague - Oliver Kylington

Radek Simek - Connor Clifton

Goaltenders:

Carey Price

Kaapo Kahkonen

Ben Bishop

Do you like the Kraken's approach or would you have tried to make a bigger splash right out of the gate? 

Source: