NHL Hot Seat Radar 2023: Seattle Kraken

The Seattle Kraken will try to improve even more this season with Matty Beniers and company. But two of their goalies are on the hot seat.

We’re still moving through the NHL’s 2023 off-season, and in this ongoing THN.com series, we’re focusing on the different pressures felt by players, GMs, coaches and team owners. Today, the Seattle Kraken are our focus.

We’ve been examining NHL teams in alphabetical order, identifying one player, coach, GM or team owner as someone on the hot seat, dealing with huge pressure to post above-average results this coming season or wind up in the organization’s doghouse. A second person will be labelled as being on the warm seat as someone unlikely to be fired or traded imminently but who may be dealt sometime in the next year. A third player, coach, GM or team owner will be a cold-seat individual as someone very likely to remain with their team for an extremely long time.

With the Kraken coming off an unexpectedly terrific season, there aren’t many players or team personnel you could suggest as being on the hot seat. But there are a couple of people in Seattle who will feel pressure to produce according to expectations, and one of them is Grubauer. 

The since-departed Martin Jones played the most of any Kraken goaltender this past season. Although Grubauer asserted himself as the starting goalie by the playoffs, his regular-season individual statistics – including an .895 save percentage in 39 appearances – were not commensurate with his salary cap hit of $5.9 million.

Grubauer is signed for the next four seasons, and he has a full no-trade clause for 2023-24, per PuckPedia. In 2024-25, the clause shifts to a 10-team no-trade list. But make no mistake – this upstart Kraken franchise wants positive results from whoever is tending its net. 

If Grubauer can’t handle the workload of a starter, he’s going to be banished to the bench in favor of someone who can. That might be veteran Chris Driedger (and more on him below), or GM Ron Francis may go shopping for another goaltending option and leave Grubauer as the team’s (highly expensive) No. 2.

In any case, Grubauer must deliver wins, and the pressure in that regard has already risen on him as he enters the 2023-24 campaign.

Since the Kraken acquired Dreidger in the 2021 NHL expansion draft, the goalie has carried a cap hit of $3.5 million. He’s entering the final season of his contract after not playing an NHL game since 2021-22 due to injury. Upon expiry of his current deal, he’ll be a UFA, and that’s probably why Francis could go with Grubauer as the starter and 27-year-old Joey Daccord as a backup. 

Some teams need goaltending help, and if Driedger can demonstrate he’s healthy and able to resume his NHL career, it may be best for him to do so with a different employer.

Driedger also has a 10-team no-trade list. But this is a seller’s market for netminders, and the Kraken could add to their prospects and draft picks by moving Driedger. They may lose him anyway via free agency, so it makes sense to ship him out at or before the trade deadline.

The reigning Calder Trophy winner as the NHL’s top rookie, Beniers amassed 24 goals and 57 points in 80 games last season. He’s Seattle’s best center, and this coming season, he’ll probably skate on a line with veteran Jordan Eberle and 40-goal scorer Jared McCann. He’s going to have high expectations at the tender age of 20, but Beniers had high expectations in 2022-23 and thrived at hockey’s top level.

Beniers is only going to get better from this stage, and he’s central to the Kraken’s blueprint for success. Beniers averaged just 17:05 of ice time per game last year, but that number is likely to rise as well this coming year. There’s virtually no circumstance in which Beniers would become an ex-Kraken player, and he can just relax and perform to the best of his abilities.

Some rookies face major heat, but not Beniers. He can rest assured he’ll be in Seattle for the foreseeable future.