The Seattle Kraken look dead in the water in terms of the Western Conference playoff race with a week remaining in the 2025-26 NHL regular season. Despite sitting in a wildcard spot as recently as Mar. 11, the Kraken have only won six of 23 games since the beginning of February, and four of 18 since the beginning of March. The team’s playoff chances have plummeted with every successive week, with the Kraken now 28th in the overall league standings by points percentage (PTS%).
After such a precipitous decline over the past month, the team has also announced that Ron Francis – the Kraken’s president of hockey operations and the franchise’s first-ever general manager – will step down from his post at the end of the 2025-26 season. First named general manager in July of 2019, Francis presided over the team for six years before current general manager Jason Botterill was promoted in tandem with Francis being moved upstairs into the president role. Botterill will now assume Francis’ responsibilities and duties as executive vice president and GM for the time being, with no immediate plans to hire a new president.
On the surface, the abrupt timing of Francis’ departure is unsurprising. The Kraken are 26th in the NHL in PTS% since their inaugural season (2021-22), are on pace to miss the playoffs for the fourth time in five years of existence (and third in a row), and are not considerably closer to contending for the Stanley Cup than when Francis began his work in Seattle.
The lack of postseason success is stark when compared to that of the Vegas Golden Knights, the Kraken’s expansion cousins. The Golden Knights advanced to the Stanley Cup Final in their first season, won the trophy in their sixth, and are poised to qualify for the playoffs for the eighth time in nine seasons overall. It’s difficult to justify keeping one’s position when other teams have done more under similar roster construction constraints.
Francis’ Big Wins as Kraken Boss
The highlight of Francis’ tenure is clearly the team’s 100-point season in 2022-23, capped off by unseating the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche in Round One of the 2023 Playoffs to mark the franchise’s first and only postseason series win to date.
Francis’ acquisition of winger Oliver Bjorkstrand from the Columbus Blue Jackets for a third- and a fourth-round pick was the best of his tenure, and Bjorkstrand’s eventual departure (along with Yanni Gourde to the Tampa Bay Lightning at the 2025 Trade Deadline) also recouped two first-round picks as well as a second-round selection. Trades for diminished assets like Daniel Sprong and Eeli Tolvanen were savvy moves that brought in disgruntled but talented players for cheap. They helped add offensive punch to a defensive-minded roster.
Such moves were few and far between, and his inaction left fans desperate for more proactive management, which was a gripe held over from his time as general manager of the Carolina Hurricanes (2014-18).
The veteran executive also helped build the Kraken’s prospect pool into one of the league’s more enviable collections of talent. According to The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler, the Kraken have the NHL’s seventh-best pool as of his 2026 update, a three-place improvement since last season’s rankings.
That’s about where the positives stop, and unfortunately, Francis’ missteps outweigh the good he had done to this point.
Francis’ Big Losses as Kraken’s Top Executive
Francis’ inability to build a Stanley Cup contender before his resignation can be attributed to his uninspired, unfruitful handling of the Kraken’s expansion draft. While teams may have gotten wise to the Golden Knights’ swindling several years earlier, Francis failed to extract additional assets from other teams by taking a hard line on his demands and by clearly not picking the best options from the unprotected lists.
A poor performance at the expansion draft set the Kraken on a wild goose chase to acquire stars by any means necessary. With a lack of assets in their arsenal, the front office chose to take big swings in free agency. While that approach did result in the acquisition of Brandon Montour, it also meant unsavory contracts handed out to Chandler Stephenson ($6.25 million annually over seven years), Philipp Grubauer ($5.9 million over six years), and Andre Burakovsky ($5.5 million over five years). He also handed extensions to beloved veteran players that were too long or too much for what they provided on the ice.
The Kraken also committed to signing good, but not great, veterans, which raised the team’s floor enough that tanking for a top-five draft pick from the outset was improbable, though they did draft Shane Wright fourth overall in 2022. Such a method is frowned upon when it is done in a blatantly uncompetitive manner, but there is little doubt it is the easiest – and cheapest – way to acquire star talent in the current system.
Francis Leaves Behind a Mixed Legacy in Seattle
Francis and the Seattle Kraken will forever be linked due to his involvement with the organization from the ground floor, and the team’s lone playoff series win is attributed to one of hockey’s most legendary players. The team’s farm system is reaping rewards. Still, the franchise remains hamstrung by expensive contracts handed out to the wrong players in free agency and via extensions, as well as a suboptimal showing in the expansion draft.
Francis has done a lot of good off the ice and in building out Seattle’s hockey operations department, but it’s hard not to see his resignation as a step forward, even if his understudy remains in control.
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