Dobber's offseason fantasy hockey grades – Seattle Kraken

For the last 18 years (12 with The Hockey News) Dobber has reviewed each team from a fantasy-hockey standpoint and graded them.

The 19th annual review will appear here on DobberHockey throughout the summer. This is not a review of the likely performance on the ice or in the standings, but in the realm of fantasy hockey both for the season ahead as well as the foreseeable future. Offensively, will the team perform? Are there plenty of depth options worthy of owning in keeper leagues? What about over the next two or three years? These questions are what I take into consideration when looking at the depth chart and the player potential on that depth chart.

Enjoy!

Gone – Most of their cap space, their leverage, and the mystery.

Incoming – The entire team.

Impact of changes – Well, this team is going to score a lot more than last year, but also let in a lot more goals. A full set of team records will be set.

Kidding aside, the new expansion team is still a bit of an unknown. The team will add another possible playoff team to the Pacific division. There will be 82 more goalie starts, a lot more powerplay minutes to go around, and some opportunities for players to break out and hit career highs.

Jared McCann (career high of 35 points), Calle Jarnkrok (35), Mason Appleton (25), Vince Dunn (35), and Joonas Donskoi (37) are the best candidates to break out and really take a big leap forward. McCann started last season and put up 32 points in 43 games with a 3.2 points per 60 minutes metric. With Yanni Gourde out to start the season, McCann and Alex Wennberg should lock up the top-two centre slots. Players with more NHL experience such as Jordan Eberle and Jaden Schwartz have known floors and ceilings by this point, and shouldn't largely be impacted by the move. Same goes for the depth pieces.

On defence, Dunn was mentioned above as someone who should break out offensively, especially since he should be running the top powerplay without too much internal competition. Mark Giordano can manage it as well, but he will likely be logging heavier minutes, and it will be easier to shelter Dunn with the added powerplay time (not that he needs it). The other regular defencemen could see a big bump in minutes, really helping out their peripherals; especially the possible shutdown pairing of Adam Larsson and Jamie Oleksiak.

Ready for Full Time –

Seattle has one or two players that were not given a real opportunity to break into the NHL with their former teams. From the 2021 draft, Matthew Beniers is going back to Michigan and none of the other selections are close to the NHL. The pipeline will take a while to catch up.

Will Borgen – Playing in 10 games last season, Borgen managed well for being on the back end of a bad Buffalo team. He played with a poise not often seen in rookies, especially ones without a high draft pedigree. He has the upside of a minute-munching second-pairing defenceman with excellent peripherals that can help out on a second power play unit, but for now with the crowded blueline in Seattle he will be battling for third pairing minutes. It's a tall order with the list of defencemen on the depth chart in front of him, but he's more than ready for the task.

Carsen Twarynski – Twarynski didn't exactly thrive as a bottom-six forward in limited minutes with the Flyers over his 22-game career there thus far. However, he was given tough assignments with only a sliver of starts in the offensive zone, so the fault isn't only on him. For fantasy purposes, he has put up 2.5 hits per game while only averaging 10 minutes of ice time, so if he was to be a lineup regular and see above 12 minutes per game, we might see that hits number crawl up to three. The offensive upside is limited, but the fact that he was targeted as the pick from Philadelphia while there were better names available makes you think that he will play a role with the Kraken.

Fantasy Outlook:

The Kraken are built to be a bit more of a deep and reliable defensive team that can roll four lines and three defensive pairings rather than one with a set of top scorers and some players more for playing the matchup games and on the defensive end of the puck. As a result, the team will struggle to have a single player hit 60 points, but will have a bevy of options in the 40- to 50-point range. There will be lots of options for those in leagues counting peripherals, and they may even be one of the first sets of players to target in those cases.

As a result of the makeup of the skaters, the team will try and win a lot of one-goal games, and likely play a tighter checking style. This should result in more favourable ratios for both Philipp Grubauer and Chris Driedger, though the wins won't be quite as plentiful as they were for Vegas in their initial expansion season.

Grade – C+ (last year was non-existent)