With the NHL planting both feet into November, it’s appropriate to take a look at how the Seattle Kraken are faring after the first month of play in the 2023-24 season. The usual claims about sample sizes still stand, so don’t get too invested in early trends and data points with 70 games still left to play.
I recently took a peek under the hood to identify the key factors driving the Kraken’s slow start at the wider team level and why they sit 12th in the Western Conference by points percentage (PTS%) with a record of 4-6-2 in 12 games as of this writing.
With the overarching team trends out of the way, we can pinpoint which individuals need to start pulling their weight and how likely they are to bounce back over the rest of the season. Star players? Veteran journeymen? Defensive stalwarts? We’ve got them all covered in this early-season Kraken rundown. Let’s dive in.
Matty Beniers – Center
Whoever said that the sophomore slump doesn’t exist? Even though 21-year-old Matty Beniers is technically in his third NHL season, he was still considered a rookie and eligible for the Calder Trophy (which he won) as the league’s top freshman due to only playing ten regular-season games in 2021-22.
That’s beside the point, however, given that Beniers – the Kraken’s lone All-Star Game representative last season before being ruled out – is ice-cold through the first month of play. He’s tallied four assists to go with no goals through 12 games, and his minus-12 plus-minus rating is by far the worst on the team.
Related: 4 Bold Predictions For The 2023-2024 Seattle Kraken Season
More worrying is that Beniers’ slip in production is due to more than just a run of unlucky finishing. On an individual level, Beniers is shooting nearly one fewer shot per-60-minutes than last season and seeing a significant drop in his rate of chances and high-danger opportunities created at five-on-five.
Head coach Dave Hakstol is still trotting him out regularly, giving him almost a minute more per game at five-on-five compared to last season. He’s also still seeing over two minutes per game on the power play, though his chance creation is lower in that game-state as well.
Beniers is undoubtedly off to a rough start to the year, and he must find a way to boost his offensive numbers beyond just relying on a turn in finishing luck. Still, an on-ice shooting percentage (OiSH%) of under 4% at five-on-five is unlikely to continue, given that he’s been above 10% for his career prior to this season.
I’d wager one of the NHL’s burgeoning two-way stars will find his way. The Kraken don’t have much time to wait for him to find his way before their spot in the playoffs is truly in jeopardy.
Jordan Eberle – Right Wing
Other than Beniers, no other Kraken forward has seen as much of a drop in production from 2022-23 to 2023-24 as veteran winger Jordan Eberle. He was tied for fourth on the team in goals (20) and third in points (63) during the regular season and paced the Kraken with six goals during the 2023 Playoffs.
Eberle’s struggles can be explained by unlucky finishing (his five-on-five OiSH% is half of what it was last season) and not getting into dangerous areas. His five-on-five shot rate is only 0.5 lower per-60 compared to last year, but he’s also creating three fewer scoring chances per-60 and has put up the lowest high-danger chance rate of his career.
It can’t be a coincidence that Beniers and Eberle – each other’s most frequent linemates at five-on-five – are finding it difficult to put goals and points up on the board. Fortunately, the pair feature on two of the Kraken’s top three forward lines by expected goals per 60 minutes (minimum 30 minutes played), so they are at least pushing play in the right direction as a three-man unit with whoever rotates in the final spot.
Eberle turns 34 next spring, so his diminishing offensive numbers could also just be the product of an NHL player’s natural aging curve. They haven’t fallen off a cliff completely, so like Beniers, I think he’ll find his usual level before long.
Adam Larsson – Defenseman
No one who has watched Adam Larsson play on a regular basis would ever mistake the defense-first blueliner for an offensive dynamo, but his scant 2023-24 stat line should still cause some alarm within the Kraken ranks.
Through 12 games, the 30-year-old defenseman has no goals, no assists, and no points to his name while also sporting a minus-5 plus-minus rating (fourth-worst on the team). Any well-informed hockey fan should question the utility of plus-minus in the context of modern analytics, but the number still says something when it comes to extreme values.
It’s not as though Larsson has never provided offense from the backend. He has scored at least 20 points in a season on four occasions since making his NHL debut in 2011-12, including a career-high of eight goals and 33 points set last season.
Defensively, Larsson forms one-half of the Kraken’s top blueline pairing with Vince Dunn, the Kraken’s de-facto quarterback. The duo is playing exactly 17 minutes per game at five-on-five as the most-utilized pair in the NHL this season.
Much of the Kraken’s struggles can be attributed to the fact that their most trusted pairing is taking on water at an alarming rate. Of the 65 defensive pairs to have played at least 75 minutes together at five-on-five this season, the Dunn-Larsson partnership ranks 53rd in their share of shots, 44th in scoring chances, and the Kraken have been outscored 7-5, with the two sharing the ice.
Those results starkly contrast with 2022-23, where the pair hovered around the 53-54% range in those categories while playing virtually the same amount per game.
Dunn has his own problems, to be sure (only three even-strength points after ranking third among all defenders last season), but Larsson isn’t providing value in his usual area of expertise either. As those two go, so do the Kraken.
Kraken Sit Outside of Western Conference Playoff Picture
Due to the built-in randomness of hockey and the small sample sizes early on, the beginning of any NHL season acts as a fertile breeding ground for overreaction.
A player goes on a cold spell, and suddenly, they’re being run out of town and plugged into every trade machine on the Internet. A team rattles off a few bad losses in a row, and fans start dreaming about the top of that year’s draft class and fiddling with draft lottery simulators between coffee breaks.
I should note the persisting factoid that gets parroted around this time each year regarding the standings and their impact on future playoff qualification.
If a team is not in playoff position as of American Thanksgiving, the odds are that they won’t end up qualifying for the postseason. It’s not a concrete rule (why bother playing 82 games when 15 would suffice?), but it’s a fairly reliable barometer of a team’s chances near the quarter-mark of the season.
There are just over two weeks until the magical date (Nov. 23 this year), so there is still room for jockeying. For what it’s worth, the Kraken boasted a record of 6-4-2 after 12 games last season. They then collected eight wins in their next ten games to finish November with a record of 14-5-3 and virtually locked in a playoff spot by New Year’s Day.
Seasons can turn on a dime, so it’s important not to forget that ups and downs are part of any successful campaign. The Kraken must make the most of such a crucial junction of the season, or else the book may be written on their story before people even start putting up their Christmas trees.
Data courtesy of Evolving Hockey, MoneyPuck, Natural Stat Trick, and the NHL.
