At their birth, Seattle Kraken general manager Ron Francis faced a team-building choice: win quickly, or win for years to come. Francis decided, "Why not both?"

"We said from day one, we want to do two things. We want to have a competitive team, which I think we've built, and we want to continue to build from the ground up.

"We started this two years ago. We had nobody in our system. The only player from our first draft that played in (AHL) Coachella during the season this year was Ryker Evans (pictured above). We'll finally start to see the Wintertons and the Melansons and the Ottavainens start to transition in there next year, but that's a key part of our process.

Editor's Note: Francis is referencing 2021 Kraken draft picks Ryker Evans (2nd round, defense), Ryan Winterton (3rd round, center), Ville Ottavainen (4th round, defense), and Jacob Melanson (5th round, right wing).

"We've used a lot of different things. We use cap space and free agency. We use the trades and the draft picks we accumulated. We used our amateur staff in drafting guys like Matty Beniers and finding Tye Kartye. Our pro staff has helped us on a lot of those things, the waiver wire, including (Eeli) Tolvanen.

"Because we did all those things, we didn't have to do certain things at the deadline. So we've been able to maintain what we set out to do, and that's build from the ground up so that those guys can roll in at some point, but make sure we're competitive up top.

"If there's a way we can improve our team, we're certainly not going to hesitate to do that. But we've got a good group and we're heading in the right direction."