Seattle Kraken Start Youth Movement After 2025 Trade Deadline

For how much of an underwhelming slog the 2024-25 season has been for the Seattle Kraken and the fanbase, the future appears bright for the franchise. Seattle was one of the more active teams at the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline after facing the music and finally committing to a rebuild with an eye towards contending by the end of the decade.

General manager Ron Francis got a headstart on the deadline dealings by trading Oliver Bjorkstrand and Yanni Gourde to the Tampa Bay Lightning for a handful of assets, including multiple first-round picks, and later added a second- and a seventh-round pick for Brandon Tanev and Daniel Sprong after sending them to the Dallas Stars and the New Jersey Devils respectively. 

All in all, it was a very successful deadline for the historically conservative executive, and has cleared the way for the Kraken’s youth to take on bigger roles. With a middling record of 29-34-5, the emphasis is now firmly on the future, and the early returns suggest that was the correct course of action.

Kraken’s Young Players Getting Opportunities to Develop

Gourde (seventh), Bjorkstrand (eighth), and Tanev (10th) were among the Kraken’s ten most-utilized forwards by average time on ice (ATOI) in all situations prior to the deadline, and moving them for mostly futures cleared space for the team’s younger players to step into bigger roles and expedite their development. Here are the Kraken’s five NHL regular forwards with their ATOI in all situations before and after the deadline.

In what should be seen as a promising sign for the future, Tolvanen (first), Beniers (sixth), and Wright (seventh) are among the team’s leaders in goals. In addition, if Kakko’s 35-game Kraken career was extrapolated over the team’s 68 games this season, he would rank fifth on the team in goals (14), second in assists (31), and tied for second in points (45).

In the five games since the deadline, Tolvanen, in particular, has jumped onto the newfound opportunity. He has the second-most goals (three) and third-most points (five) over that span.   

Rookie forward Jani Nyman was one of the players earmarked for a call-up from the AHL after the deadline and hasn’t wasted any time in making a good first impression. The 20-year-old has two goals in his first three NHL games, with his early success coming off of leading all AHL freshmen this season with 26 goals in 55 games with the Coachella Valley Firebirds. He has seen an average of 12:18 minutes per game during his first foray into the NHL.

The Kraken’s young forwards are already some of their best players. This only bodes well for the future as they reap the rewards of increased opportunity in their development.

Kraken Have Questions on Blue Line

The Kraken traded defenseman Will Borgen to the New York Rangers midway through the 2024-25 season for Kakko, so Ryker Evans has not seen a jump in ATOI after the deadline. 

Before Borgen was traded, Evans was seeing 20:11 per game in all situations but has only been getting 18:40 in the time since. Much of that discrepancy is due to the injury to and eventual return of Vince Dunn, who ranks second among Kraken defenders in ATOI for the season as a whole.

Evans’ season-long average of 19:27 minutes per game only represents a slight increase over the 19:11 minutes he played per game during his rookie campaign, but he ranks fourth among the team’s blueliners. Despite the minor decline in usage since Dunn’s return, the 23-year-old has already set a new career-high with 60 games played in 2024-25 and has made enough of an impression that the coaching staff trusted him with the increased deployment in Dunn’s absence.

Related: Seattle Kraken’s Kakko Experiencing Career Resurgence

The future on defense is the lone spot of worry, with Evans the only prospect of much note on the blue line. In The Athletic’s annual prospect pool rankings, the Kraken come in at 10th in the NHL, but only five of their top 15 prospects are defenders, only three in the top 10, and none in the top five. Assuming that Seattle picks somewhere in the top 10 of the 2025 NHL Draft based on their current place in the league-wide standings, GM Francis should have his pick of several very talented blueliners.

Matthew Schaefer (Erie Otters, OHL) is a challenger for the number-one spot, so winning the draft lottery might be the only way the Kraken can get their hands on one of the most exciting defensive prospects in years. While the rest of the top 10 is mostly made up of forwards, Kashawn Aitcheson (Barrie Colts, OHL) and Jackson Smith (Tri-City Americans, WHL) have the potential to be regulars in any NHL team’s top four for the foreseeable future. 

Any of those three would immediately leapfrog Evans and become the organization’s top defensive prospect, so bypassing the 2025 draft class’ intriguing collection of forwards might prove to be the prudent decision for the front office.

Kraken at a Crossroads With 2025 NHL Offseason

For all of the good the Kraken accomplished with their deadline activity, the 2025 offseason presents the opportunity to go all-in with the nascent youth movement.

Jaden Schwartz, Jordan Eberle, Jamie Oleksiak, Philipp Grubauer, Andre Burakovsky, and Jared McCann are all 28 years of age or older and are set to become unrestricted free agents (UFAs) during the 2026 or 2027 offseasons. That collection of players can be traded this summer for massive hauls, which would kick the Kraken rebuild into overdrive and unequivocally hand the keys to the organization’s young players and up-and-coming prospects.

The Vegas Golden Knights have created an irrational expectation for the timeline of success for expansion teams with a Stanley Cup win (2023), two appearances in the Stanley Cup Final (2018 and 2023), and three trips to the Conference Final (2018, 2020, and 2023) over the first seven seasons of their existence. 

The Kraken are flailing to clear that quite high bar, but the foundation is sturdy enough that such success can be expected before too long. The organization’s prospect pool is considered in the upper tier, and that is with Shane Wright becoming a full-time NHLer, but doesn’t account for the fact that the Kraken could get a top-five pick through the 2025 NHL Draft Lottery.

The first four seasons of the Kraken’s NHL existence have not gone according to plan, but that doesn’t mean that the next four (and beyond) can’t mark the start of an era of legitimate contention.

Data courtesy of the NHL and PuckPedia.