Seattle Kraken Must Address Organizational Weakness At 2024 NHL Draft

Barring the completion of a significant trade in the coming weeks, the Seattle Kraken will select eighth-overall in the first round of the 2024 NHL Entry Draft following the results of the 2024 Draft Lottery last night.

The Kraken entered the lottery with the eighth-best odds of winning the right to select first overall (6%), but no teams moved up in the draft order for the first time since 2010.

This year’s draft is set to take place at Sphere in Las Vegas on June 28th to 29th and will be the last iteration in which representatives of all 32 teams congregate in a centralized location for the foreseeable future. Late last year, the NHL’s teams voted in favor of moving towards a draft-day model which resembles the ones employed by the NFL and MLB.

How much the new setup will impact the nature of trade talks and other related discussions around that time remains to be seen, but it’s a departure from what has long been a staple of the NHL offseason landscape. Now, with nearly two months to go until the draft, how should the Kraken begin to prepare?

Kraken Should Target Defensemen and Goaltenders at the Draft

Though teams should always subscribe to the adage of drafting the best player available, the Kraken have a clear need for more defensemen and goaltenders in the system.

According to Scott Wheeler’s mid-season NHL prospect pool ranking (the Kraken ranked 12th), the team’s five-best prospects – and eight of the top 10 – are forwards. That includes the likes of Shane Wright, Carson Rehkopf, and Jagger Firkus, all three of whom should end up being top-six forwards.

On the blue line, 22-year-old defenseman Ryker Evans (ranked sixth) looks set to graduate into a full-time role at the NHL level next season, leaving Ty Nelson (seventh), Caden Price (11th), Lukas Dragicevic (12th), and Ville Ottavainen (13th) rounding out the top-15 as players with not much more than bottom-pair upside.

Vince Dunn and William Borgen (both 27) were the only NHL regulars under age 30 on a Kraken blue line which lacked a ton of creativity and above-average skating beyond Dunn. While drafting according to best-player-available regardless of position should drive their decision making, they will pick high enough that such a defenseman should still be on the board when their number is called.

The team’s best goalie prospect (Niklas Kokko) didn’t even make the list, and with Joey Daccord (age 27) and Philipp Grubauer (32) moving out of their primes, bolstering the organizational depth in the crease should be a clear mandate this summer.

NHL front offices have trended away from picking netminders in the first round due to the difficulty in projecting their long-term trajectory. Fortunately, the Kraken possess the draft capital to purchase some lottery tickets, owning two picks in both the second and third rounds, this summer. They should use at least one of those selections on a goalie and hope that their scouts are ahead of the pack when it comes to evaluating and projecting the position.

Of the eight starting goaltenders in the second round of the playoffs, only one (Jake Oettinger, Dallas Stars) was picked in the first round of their respective drafts. This simultaneously speaks to the unpredictability and volatility of the position in the modern era and stresses the importance of player development and their environment.

Nabbing a goalie prospect with elite potential at eighth-overall would be a dream, but that type of player rarely exists in any draft class, and definitely not this one.

Kraken Should Have Several Intriguing Names Available at Eighth-Overall

Given that the Kraken’s position in the first round is now established, general manager Ron Francis will have a better idea of which collection of players will likely be available to him when he steps up to the podium on June 28th.

Here are the latest publicly available prospect rankings and mock drafts from some of the scouting industry’s biggest players and report providers:

Sportsnet – Sam Cosentino / Jason Bukala
TSN – Bob McKenzie / Craig Button
NHL Central Scouting
EliteProspects
The Hockey Writers

Based on those rankings, it looks like there isn’t much consensus beyond Macklin Celebrini being a near-lock to go first-overall to the San Jose Sharks, with questions about every forward in this range.

As a result, here are five defensemen who figure to be selected within the five-to-15 range in the first round of this year’s draft, with the Kraken looking like they may be able to merge the best-player-available paradigm with their positional needs:

Sam Dickinson, London Knights (68 GP – 18 G – 52 A – 70 PTS)
Zeev Buium, University of Denver (42 GP – 11 G – 39 A – 50 PTS)
Anton Silayev, Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod (63 GP – 3 G – 8 A – 11 PTS)
Zayne Parekh, Saginaw Spirit (66 GP – 33 G – 63 A – 96 PTS)
Carter Yakemchuk, Calgary Hitmen (66 GP – 30 G – 41 A – 71 PTS)

For my money, I would select one of Buium or Parekh if they were still available to the Kraken at pick number eight. Both are skilled offensive defensemen (though for different reasons), and either one would immediately become the rearguard with the highest ceilings in Seattle’s prospect pool.

Buium led all NCAA Division I defensemen in assists and points and was a major force on the University of Denver blue line as the Pioneers won their second national title in three seasons. He’s not an athletic specimen like some of his peers in this draft class, but he possesses exemplary on-ice awareness at both ends of the ice.

For an NHL comparable, think of Devon Toews of the Colorado Avalanche. He’s anything but flashy, but he is arguably the team’s defensive anchor and has long been one of the most effective defensemen in transition.

Parekh on the other hand is more evocative of Toews’ defensive partner, Cale Makar. He led all OHL blueliners in goals (33) and points (96) and was named the league’s defenseman of the year for his efforts. He’s a dynamic figure on the back-end, and has flashed the skating and puck-handling skills needed to be a legitimate difference-maker on the offensive side of the puck in the modern NHL.

Teams may opt to go with a safer, more dependable option (especially on the defensive end), but I’d argue that taking a swing on a talent such as Parekh would be the better move.

The three finalists for the 2023-24 Norris Trophy are Makar, Quinn Hughes (seventh overall in 2018), and Roman Josi, who are also considered to be the NHL’s top offensive defensemen. I would not go as far as to say Parekh is a future Norris winner, but his game-breaking talents would go further for the Kraken than a more polished prospect. It’s more difficult to acquire such a player in a trade than it is to draft them in the first place.

2024 NHL Draft Is One of Many Checkpoints for the Kraken This Offseason

Though the draft is a key date on the NHL’s offseason calendar, choosing the next crop of Kraken prospects is far from the organization’s only task this summer.

The firing of former head coach Dave Hakstol has ignited a coaching search, and the Kraken will be one of several teams that are interviewing multiple intriguing candidates.

There are also contracts to be signed and trades to be made, all of which make this the most pivotal offseason in franchise history to date. Make the right moves, and the Kraken could be well on their way to Stanley Cup contention in the not-too-distant future. Make the wrong ones and invite the possibility of frustrating, long-term mediocrity.