KRAKEN TAKE CAUTIOUS ROUTE

NHL expansion draft was more significant for who wasn’t selected than for who was

With the first pick of the expansion draft, the Seattle Kraken selected cap flexibility.

The 32nd team in the NHL ended up with Calgary's Mark Giordano, Tampa Bay's Yanni Gourde and a roster full of players who should make them competitive right out of the gates.

But Wednesday's expansion draft was more significant for who wasn't selected.

No Carey Price. No Vladimir Tarasenko. No James van Riemsdyk, Dylan Demelo or Evgenii Dadonov.

Along with P.K. Subban, Shea Weber and a bunch of other household names that were available, all of them were left on the cutting room floor as Seattle went with a different approach than Vegas did when it entered the league four years ago.

Salary cap was king. So was term. And although the Kraken had a blank slate and the “green light” to spend toward the Us$81.5-million ceiling, GM Ron Francis was more conservative as he stayed away from big-ticket players, such as Price ($10.5 million), Tarasenko ($7.5 million) and van Riemsdyk ($7 million) and locked up young, controllable assets.

Whether it leads to a playoff spot in Year One, or whether Seattle is positioning itself for the next two NHL entry drafts, where generational forwards Shane Wright (2022) and Connor Bedard (2023) are up for grabs, is anyone's guess. But on paper, it doesn't look like Seattle will be challenging for a Stanley Cup — much less a playoff spot — anytime soon.

If they were, they probably wouldn't have passed up on taking a five-time 30-goal scorer in Tarasenko or a six-time 20-goal scorer in van Riemsdyk. Nor would they have passed on Price. Or decided that Mason Appleton was a better fit than Demelo.

They weren't the only puzzling decisions that Francis made on a day when the news broke fast and furious. Though the expansion draft was held at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Seattle had to submit its selections early in the morning, meaning teams, players and their agents were all notified of the news. For many of them, including Buffalo's Will Borgen, who posted “Seattle bound!” on his Instagram page before deleting it, the secret was too big to keep.

No one predicted this roster. Instead of the 33-year-old Price, who would have been Seattle's version of selecting Marc-andre Fleury, the Kraken went with unproven journeyman Chris Driedger (Florida) as its No. 1 goalie, as well as rookies Joey Daccord (Ottawa) and Vitek Vanecek (Washington).

Gourde is the only player who is signed beyond three years. Giordano is the only player earning more than $6 million. No one on the team scored more than 17 goals last season. And yet, that doesn't mean Seattle didn't end up with some potential gems.

Remember, no one predicted that William Karlsson would score 40 goals in his first year in Vegas. Or that Nate Schmidt, Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith would cause seller's remorse from the teams that left them exposed in the 2017 expansion draft.

Until the games are played, we won't know what this team will look like or what some of the players can do now that they are given more ice time and opportunity.

Is Calle Jarnkrok the next Karlsson? Could Cale Fleury become the next Schmidt? Will there be players on the roster who use being slighted as motivation in the way that James Neal, Alex Tuch and the so-called Golden Misfits did for Vegas?

There is a lot to like about certain aspects of the Kraken.

The defence is better than most had anticipated. Giordano, who won the Norris Trophy in 2019, is the centrepiece. But he has a lot of help in Adam Larsson, Jamie Oleksiak, Vince Dunn and Haydn Fleury.

The offence is a bit of an unknown, particularly at the centre position. As good as Gourde had been in Tampa Bay, he was the No. 3 centre. Now, he figures to be the No. 1 option, with Jared Mccann or Brandon Tanev slotted behind him. That's not exactly a position of strength.

At the wing, there are more options. Jordan Eberle is coming off a 16-goal season, while Jarnkrok and Joonas Donskoi each scored 17 goals this year. Appleton, who is six foot two, and the six-foot-four Nathan Bastian and six-foot-five Alex True, meanwhile, give the Kraken plenty of size in the bottom six.

And this might be just the start. After all, it's clear the Kraken are following their own blueprint.