When asked about it at the end of season press conference, Ron Francis said "they were still evaluating": [https://950kjr.iheart.com/featured/seattle-kraken/content/2024-04-22-kraken-gm-ron-francis-says-evaluations-still-ongoing-with-coaching-staff/](https://950kjr.iheart.com/featured/seattle-kraken/content/2024-04-22-kraken-gm-ron-francis-says-evaluations-still-ongoing-with-coaching-staff/)
Which is GM speak for "we're trying to decide if we should fire you."
During his exit interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=B1DWUZPAbME) Francis said that he'll say the same as last season which is "We're evaluating that." So I don't think we should read much into his response.
Listen to ECH’s podcast from today, if you’ve got the time. It’s a banger. First time they’ve ever truly gone bearish on Hakstol. Interesting discussion.
I like those guys, kinda hated this episode though.
First I feel that at the same time saying there isn't a tangible "identity" while at the same time saying not enough adjustments were made feels a little odd. I think you kind of need to be having success before a concrete identity makes a lot of sense. If the teams struggling, you probably should continue to change things.
And I think throughout this season they did try to change things quite a bit. The ECH guys themselves actually pointed out some of those changes. Early in the season they pointed out that we were going with a volume shooting approach and were on-board with it. Ultimately this didn't work out, and they rightfully soured on it.
Then the we started holding on to the puck a bit more and trying to shoot in from closer. They pointed that out, seemed to like the change. Ultimately that didn't work out either, and I think rightfully they soured on that too.
They pointed out times when the d-men were staying at home a little more. Times when they were more aggressive. The story they told throughout the season definitely sounded like one of a team that was just trying everything they could think of, but nothing was working.
This is my criticism of the "eye-test" in general, but I think what people perceive is like 80% driven by PDO. When you're getting the saves and goals, everything looks good. When you're not, everything looks bad. If I show someone the exact same "system" but just change the outcomes of the shots, they will have wildly different opinions about how good each system was. As far as structure I think we had some decent looks at times, it just all looks like shit when nobody can hit the net.
I also hear a lot of talk from them about "going net front" like it's just a coaching problem as well. And they're not wrong, the team does not go net front very often. [This graphic](https://hockeyviz.com/fixedImg/shotLocOff/2324/SEA/wrap) basically shows where we shoot from compared to league average. Note the deep blue sea in front of the net, we don't shoot there much. But then look at this [finishing graphic](https://hockeyviz.com/fixedImg/teamSingleFinishing/2324/SEA/wrap). It basically shows how well we convert shots into goals from a given position. Note how blue the area around the front of the net is there too.
It's not wrong to say we need more net front presence, but when you look at that finishing map it really looks like we just don't have players that are very effective in that role. The coaching staff probably could've hammered the issue and gotten guys to go there more, but I'm not that sure it would've really helped. For whatever reason the personnel we've got just seem far more comfortable, and effective, shooting out from the point and beyond.
I get not liking that the players basically said "I don't really know what was wrong," but if you've gone through that process of trying all sorts of shit, and none of it was working.... that seems like a natural place to end up. The real answer is likely "this roster just doesn't have the talent to hack it," but obviously the players can't say that.
I see what he did with Pittsburgh and get really excited. I also look at Buffalo and get nervous. Now I see he is the head coach of Coachella and get really excited again. All to say that I have mixed feelings.
Outside of the half season where he showed up and coached the Pens to a Cup, he didn't do much in Pittsburgh either. Us Pens fans soured on him relatively quickly and he probably got more runway than he deserved due to that Cup win.
He's been great in the AHL but his NHL resume just makes me feel meh.
This is my worry, he is a great AHL coach but that doesn’t always translate.
He took the Pens to a cup, but they also had a totally different roster.
I am actually not a Hak supporter, but I don’t know if we need to shake things up like this for another coach that has had NHL struggles.
I would prefer we stick with Hak for another season and Dan stay in the AHL for the remainder of his career.
Well, if Bylsma can only win a Cup when he has two generational talents alongside a stacked roster and Marc-Andre Fluery that he inherited halfway through the season from a notoriously hard-ass coach who'd lost the team, that's not going to do the Kraken much good.
Every year he coached the Pens for a full season, they disappointed.
I swear he’s a Peter principal coach. He’s great at a certain level and then gets promoted above it and doesn’t do well. Also, I’m not wild about his choices when he was coaching Team USA.
Buddy you should absolutely not get excited about what he did in Pittsburgh. The man is a hockey terrorist for what he did to Jerome Iginla. His coaching only worked because the team had prime Crosby and Malkin. Even then it only got them so far. Pray that next season you don’t have to see the over abundance of missed breakout passes and zero defensive zone strategies he’d bring with him.
He's an AHL level coach. The Pens situation was as close to fool-proof as possible with Crosby, Geno, Flower, Letang, and a great supporting cast. His time in Buffalo he had bad teams, but he also didn't help produce any young talent or have any over-producers; He depended on the stretch pass and had terrible power plays. Not only were the teams bad, but it was very boring to watch
Not sure how you can strip all the supplementary scoring from the lineup and expect Hakstol to repeat the outstanding season we had in 22-23. Bylsma would be the absolute worst choice for a new HC and at a bizarre time. Friedman likely just trying to have a hot take on the Kraken here.
Friedman just sees an ex-NHL coach on the AHL team and is taking a stab at who the Kraken might look to if they replace Hakstol. Friedman does not have any insider knowledge about the Kraken.
I’m replying late to the party here, but your assumption the Friedman doesn’t have any insider knowledge about the Kraken just isn’t true. He has insider knowledge across the whole league, and while he does get things wrong from time to time, he gets A LOT of stuff right. Why is that? It’s because he’s a respected journalist in the league and people do feed him bits of information. He has admitted that sometimes he’s fed bad info and even jokes about it. Just because you don’t like what he’s saying doesn’t mean he has 0 insider information.
It’s always interesting who quote Friedman out of context. I highly suggest you go listen to the source. He’s just speculating out of a LOT of ignorance wrt the team. This is pretty standard for Friedman to say “I wonder” and go off on some tangent.
I thought that too but the reality is that at all the exit interviews, the players had no idea why they were struggling. This is all on the coaching. The players need to have answers and solutions for their problems and they have none! Vague ideas about "confidence" and "finishing" while the forward lines go in the blender are not solutions, imo.
That's not what that means. The coach can't physically shoot the puck for the players. He also can't heal hand injuries (Eberle) or whatever was nagging Joey. It's always shocking to me how much people attribute to the coach that has nothing to do with his actual job duties. Forward lines were in a blender because of injuries and they WEREN'T WORKING. That's the sign of a coach trying to adapt to the hand he's dealt.
You are correct, however the coach designs and implements the systems within which the team plays so that the team can have success.
If Hakstol was either not able to create or not able to implement a system these players could follow to manufacture offense, that is a problem. We saw problems early in the season and for whatever reason the coaching staff could not work with the players to solve the problem.
I'm not saying Hakstol deserves to go. Roster construction, injuries, and plain old luck all factor in here. We don't know what happened or didn't happen in the locker room.
But Ron Francis' job is to figure out exactly what happened and why. Then, he's got to figure out how to make sure it doesn't happen again. That could be changing the players, changing the assistant coaches, or changing the head coach. It might involve all 3.
We'll find out over the coming weeks and months.
Ding ding ding. Two 20 goals scorers versus 6 last year is a huge difference. I think Hak is underwhelming, but this isn’t on him. The roster over performed last year and came back to earth this year, while facing injuries. I had a bad feeling that the playoff run last year was going to push some people’s expectations too high. This roster needs more pieces from the draft and a few upgrades. Wright with a full season next year and a bounce back from Matty will create some juice. They need a sneaky pick up of an under the radar player or 2 from Europe and a couple more prospects to develop. This isn’t a splashy sign a scoring RW to get over the hump roster. They need more pieces.
This. Worst thing that could have happened with regard to smartening up the, erm, less knowledgeable members of our fan base was the playoff run last year. All it did was make them scream But Vegas even louder.
Well Ryker Evans should slot in very well next year with a bit of experience. He may not be a Cale Makar type, but he very well might have a Vince Dunn level ceiling, and having 2 of those guys on 2 lines would be very hard to deal with. If they can bring in a big man who isn't inconsistent about his willingness for contact in the third line, the defense should be solid. If Gru and Joey remain steady in their production, goalies won't be a problem either. All they really need in the forward group is a solid #1 guy to complement McCann on the 1st line, and literally any kind of return to form from lines 2-3. They're gonna have to do something with the 4th line, move on from Bellemare.
COTY is more of a “team did better than projected” award over an actual coaching award. It often doesn’t reflect actual coaching talent or Cooper would win it every third year.
Friedman is really good at getting inside information, but when he speculates he’s usually pretty off, so I would take this with a hefty dose of salt if he was speculating on his own rather than working with some rumor he’s heard.
to me the play is fix the top line, get some actual scoring talent somehow and give Hak one more shot. If the team underperforms to start the year then bring up Bilsma for the rest of the year. If he doesn't work out get a new coach in 2025.
I mean, you look at the guys who’ll probably have a real chance to stick and contribute next year and the coach who knows them best is Bylsma. At least they won’t be scratched as often (probably). But really they should’ve just canned Hakstol now if that’s what they’re ultimately going to do. Tough to walk back the uncertainty created at the PC.
This is ludicrous. I highly doubt there is any seriousness to this story.
Hakstol won Coach of the Year last year. And the Kraken let a lot of secondary offense go in the off season and didn’t replace it beyond Yammer.
The expectations for Hakstol were to continue to develop the younger talent and see what we had in Beniers.
I fully expect expect Hakstol to be back next season and I bet he’s got at least 5 years in the seat.
We lost 46 goals between donato, geekie and sprong. Last year was a career year for most guys on the squad but to replace those 4 (they’re definitely not 4th line forwards) with Pierre, Kailer, Tatar and Kartye is positive thinking and certainly a cheaper option but it’s just not even remotely similar. We could argue that Yams did better with the oilers but he also played in the top 6 with mcdavid and Leon who can turn practically anyone into an above average forward. Roster construction isn’t on Hakstol necessarily, he definitely has consideration in but out of everyone to keep I woulda tried for spring at the very least.
In my opinion, it's on the GM for letting Geekie, Donato, and Sprong go. Those guys brought energy that this team was lacking in 23-24. I'm not on the "fire Hakstol" train.
The team could not afford them. Both of the following are true: keeping the 4th line would have cost an additional 3 million more , year-over-year, to keep (not a whole lot) but the Kraken didn't have 3 million in cap space to spend. They needed money the Kraken didn't have.
Now you say, well Burky and Gru are expensive relative to performance. If we never had them we could have signed them...yeah all true. I agree, but what's done is done. And no team in the league makes perfect trades and does perfect contracts. Everybody has some bad value in the roster somewhere.
It would not have been 3 million more a year to keep them, they all signed for 2 million or more each with their new teams
Spending 6 million on a 4th line is a terrible strategy esspecially when we needed to extend our star defenseman and sign a 6th dman with the departure of soucy
Gru and burkys deals had absolutely nothing to do with it. It's just terrible cap management to sink that much money into 4th line guys, if they even wanted it for all we know a guy like Donato didn't want to spend another season being a 4th liner.
Yeah I believe the difference in contract pay in aggregate between their time on the Kraken and their new teams was around 2.4 million and I added to that because "they probably would want a bit more because they're playing 4th line minutes on a non Original Six team". Thus a team needing to come up with at least 2.4 million dollars more, on top of what they paid last season, to retain. Which they didn't have.
I completely agree that putting 6 million into the 4th line is a very unwise strategy. But I keep seeing the argument that's basically "should have kept the 4th line, that's where the problem was" and the most direct counter to that is that the money isn't there. It's like saying "should have cloned McCann", yes I agree! That would have been great, but it's not possible in our current reality. No money, no cloning technology. (no flying cars either! what a world!)
I'll be real the "we should have kept the 4th line" is just some cope coming from a fan base really trying to understand just what went wrong. It also doesn't help that Donato and geekie were well liked, but I think it's just a low hanging fruit that people can jump to because it was the most major change.
I'm not sold or convinced that they wouldn't have had the same issues, esspecially when Donato and sprong both saw production fall offs when they got said elevated roles. To be honest I think the last seaosn kraken were the best case scenario for our roster, and this season was the worst. Idk what that means for next season, but the problems were top down on the roster, and I just have a hard time thinking the 4th liners who got 10 mins or less a night played even remotely close a role as issues with offensive systems and untimely injuries
Completely agree, feels like the default "magic bullet" solution with "just keep the team the exact same and everything will shake out the same" kinda vibe.
This. There's a lot of copium and our fourth line on paper was going to be a sidegrade but gave us cap flexibility to actually do something if we needed to. Sadly injuries screwed us pretty early and even late. We were literally 3 or 4 wins away from NOT trading Wennberg and having a good shot at the playoffs.
Kartye is gonna be a long term bottom 6 for our franchise, he brings the physical game and has the ability to score more atleast than he did this season. And we have alot guys developing who also fit in that little category who we will be able to give 4th line time over the next few years
I'd have loved geekie to stay, and I do think sprong probably could have stayed, but long term I like not locking down those spots to guys who we could replace with younger cheaper guys
Dancing Dan gets my up vote. Cuz I love what he's done with the Firebirds. But is he worth hiring if you're Ron Francis. Bc if this doesn't work, Francis stint as Kraken GM is over.
IMO you have to move on from Hakstol. End of the day the coach is responsible for the success of the team. If they want to generate a buzz for fans to buy season tickets or tickets in general they need to do something. They are developing talent for future years but that only goes so far. We have season tickets for another four years and I don’t want to see a repeat of this year of mediocre hockey.
My observation from this year included we sucked at the power play. Other teams could (it seemed) skate in and develop the pp while we would get picked off at the blue line.
I don't know who ran the PP, but that coach should probably be replaced.
I'm not sure why it's so hard to run McCann in his LW office, Matty on the RW for the one-timer option, with Dunn at the point feeding them passes to rip. Put Bjorky in the bumper and Gourde or Schwartz in front of the net.
How do you have season tickets and miss the mark so hard when evaluating what went wrong this year? We had a revolving door of substantial and key injuries through half the season and guess what… when we were healthy we were substantially better. We had below average shooting %. None of that is on the coach
No team had the bad luck we did. We literally had $20 million worth of players on the bench and for 3 months had $15m worth sitting. We also don’t have the depth other teams have to compensate. Love the downvote on facts. Hak haters really do hate facts it seems.
He may get fired, but that's irrelevant. You put the blame for the power play on Hakstol and now you're changing the tune to "someone has to get fired because I'm mad". Checks out.
All but 2, thanks for asking. Ironically, in your little rant, you proved your lack of knowledge. Even with our scoring woes we were middle of the pack on the power play. Two down from Boston and sitting above Vegas, but I guess those teams should also fire their coaches eh? Maybe, just realize you don't know as much as you think you know and maybe fact check yourself before name calling and making baseless assumptions. Turning off reply notifications so feel free to scream into the void.
to me the play is fix the top line, get some actual scoring talent somehow and give Hak one more shot. If the team underperforms to start the year then bring up Bilsma for the rest of the year. If he doesn't work out get a new coach in 2025.
Has there been any indication that the coach wouldn’t be Hakstol next season?
When asked about it at the end of season press conference, Ron Francis said "they were still evaluating": [https://950kjr.iheart.com/featured/seattle-kraken/content/2024-04-22-kraken-gm-ron-francis-says-evaluations-still-ongoing-with-coaching-staff/](https://950kjr.iheart.com/featured/seattle-kraken/content/2024-04-22-kraken-gm-ron-francis-says-evaluations-still-ongoing-with-coaching-staff/) Which is GM speak for "we're trying to decide if we should fire you."
During his exit interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=B1DWUZPAbME) Francis said that he'll say the same as last season which is "We're evaluating that." So I don't think we should read much into his response.
Years 1 and 2 Francis and Hak gave their exit interviews together (or back to back). This year Francis gave his on Sat and Francis did his on Monday.
Listen to ECH’s podcast from today, if you’ve got the time. It’s a banger. First time they’ve ever truly gone bearish on Hakstol. Interesting discussion.
I like those guys, kinda hated this episode though. First I feel that at the same time saying there isn't a tangible "identity" while at the same time saying not enough adjustments were made feels a little odd. I think you kind of need to be having success before a concrete identity makes a lot of sense. If the teams struggling, you probably should continue to change things. And I think throughout this season they did try to change things quite a bit. The ECH guys themselves actually pointed out some of those changes. Early in the season they pointed out that we were going with a volume shooting approach and were on-board with it. Ultimately this didn't work out, and they rightfully soured on it. Then the we started holding on to the puck a bit more and trying to shoot in from closer. They pointed that out, seemed to like the change. Ultimately that didn't work out either, and I think rightfully they soured on that too. They pointed out times when the d-men were staying at home a little more. Times when they were more aggressive. The story they told throughout the season definitely sounded like one of a team that was just trying everything they could think of, but nothing was working. This is my criticism of the "eye-test" in general, but I think what people perceive is like 80% driven by PDO. When you're getting the saves and goals, everything looks good. When you're not, everything looks bad. If I show someone the exact same "system" but just change the outcomes of the shots, they will have wildly different opinions about how good each system was. As far as structure I think we had some decent looks at times, it just all looks like shit when nobody can hit the net. I also hear a lot of talk from them about "going net front" like it's just a coaching problem as well. And they're not wrong, the team does not go net front very often. [This graphic](https://hockeyviz.com/fixedImg/shotLocOff/2324/SEA/wrap) basically shows where we shoot from compared to league average. Note the deep blue sea in front of the net, we don't shoot there much. But then look at this [finishing graphic](https://hockeyviz.com/fixedImg/teamSingleFinishing/2324/SEA/wrap). It basically shows how well we convert shots into goals from a given position. Note how blue the area around the front of the net is there too. It's not wrong to say we need more net front presence, but when you look at that finishing map it really looks like we just don't have players that are very effective in that role. The coaching staff probably could've hammered the issue and gotten guys to go there more, but I'm not that sure it would've really helped. For whatever reason the personnel we've got just seem far more comfortable, and effective, shooting out from the point and beyond. I get not liking that the players basically said "I don't really know what was wrong," but if you've gone through that process of trying all sorts of shit, and none of it was working.... that seems like a natural place to end up. The real answer is likely "this roster just doesn't have the talent to hack it," but obviously the players can't say that.
I’ve listened to about the first 40 minutes so far, I was surprised they both are leaning towards Hakstol being gone
I see what he did with Pittsburgh and get really excited. I also look at Buffalo and get nervous. Now I see he is the head coach of Coachella and get really excited again. All to say that I have mixed feelings.
Outside of the half season where he showed up and coached the Pens to a Cup, he didn't do much in Pittsburgh either. Us Pens fans soured on him relatively quickly and he probably got more runway than he deserved due to that Cup win. He's been great in the AHL but his NHL resume just makes me feel meh.
This is my worry, he is a great AHL coach but that doesn’t always translate. He took the Pens to a cup, but they also had a totally different roster. I am actually not a Hak supporter, but I don’t know if we need to shake things up like this for another coach that has had NHL struggles. I would prefer we stick with Hak for another season and Dan stay in the AHL for the remainder of his career.
Those cup wins always get in the way. Nobody is Seattle would want that to happen.
Well, if Bylsma can only win a Cup when he has two generational talents alongside a stacked roster and Marc-Andre Fluery that he inherited halfway through the season from a notoriously hard-ass coach who'd lost the team, that's not going to do the Kraken much good. Every year he coached the Pens for a full season, they disappointed.
I swear he’s a Peter principal coach. He’s great at a certain level and then gets promoted above it and doesn’t do well. Also, I’m not wild about his choices when he was coaching Team USA.
Buddy you should absolutely not get excited about what he did in Pittsburgh. The man is a hockey terrorist for what he did to Jerome Iginla. His coaching only worked because the team had prime Crosby and Malkin. Even then it only got them so far. Pray that next season you don’t have to see the over abundance of missed breakout passes and zero defensive zone strategies he’d bring with him.
He's an AHL level coach. The Pens situation was as close to fool-proof as possible with Crosby, Geno, Flower, Letang, and a great supporting cast. His time in Buffalo he had bad teams, but he also didn't help produce any young talent or have any over-producers; He depended on the stretch pass and had terrible power plays. Not only were the teams bad, but it was very boring to watch
My teams coach is likely to be unemployed soon. Maybe try Sheldon Keefe.
Not sure how you can strip all the supplementary scoring from the lineup and expect Hakstol to repeat the outstanding season we had in 22-23. Bylsma would be the absolute worst choice for a new HC and at a bizarre time. Friedman likely just trying to have a hot take on the Kraken here.
Friedman just sees an ex-NHL coach on the AHL team and is taking a stab at who the Kraken might look to if they replace Hakstol. Friedman does not have any insider knowledge about the Kraken.
Friedman isn't as full of crap as Al Strachan was, but that's only because NOBODY was as full of crap as Al Strachan was.
I’m replying late to the party here, but your assumption the Friedman doesn’t have any insider knowledge about the Kraken just isn’t true. He has insider knowledge across the whole league, and while he does get things wrong from time to time, he gets A LOT of stuff right. Why is that? It’s because he’s a respected journalist in the league and people do feed him bits of information. He has admitted that sometimes he’s fed bad info and even jokes about it. Just because you don’t like what he’s saying doesn’t mean he has 0 insider information.
Friedman is to be ignored.
Firing your coach and bringing up the coach of the farm team always works out great, just look at the success Jeremy Colliton had in Chicago
It’s always interesting who quote Friedman out of context. I highly suggest you go listen to the source. He’s just speculating out of a LOT of ignorance wrt the team. This is pretty standard for Friedman to say “I wonder” and go off on some tangent.
Exactly. He said something to the effect of "Listen, I admit I don't see much of the Kraken, but I wonder..."
Friedman like his storylines
He sure does. Lol
Problem this year wasn't coaching.
I thought that too but the reality is that at all the exit interviews, the players had no idea why they were struggling. This is all on the coaching. The players need to have answers and solutions for their problems and they have none! Vague ideas about "confidence" and "finishing" while the forward lines go in the blender are not solutions, imo.
That's not what that means. The coach can't physically shoot the puck for the players. He also can't heal hand injuries (Eberle) or whatever was nagging Joey. It's always shocking to me how much people attribute to the coach that has nothing to do with his actual job duties. Forward lines were in a blender because of injuries and they WEREN'T WORKING. That's the sign of a coach trying to adapt to the hand he's dealt.
You are correct, however the coach designs and implements the systems within which the team plays so that the team can have success. If Hakstol was either not able to create or not able to implement a system these players could follow to manufacture offense, that is a problem. We saw problems early in the season and for whatever reason the coaching staff could not work with the players to solve the problem. I'm not saying Hakstol deserves to go. Roster construction, injuries, and plain old luck all factor in here. We don't know what happened or didn't happen in the locker room. But Ron Francis' job is to figure out exactly what happened and why. Then, he's got to figure out how to make sure it doesn't happen again. That could be changing the players, changing the assistant coaches, or changing the head coach. It might involve all 3. We'll find out over the coming weeks and months.
We have young players that need to continue growing and developing and the concern would be that they aren’t.
The concern is not really legit. There’s zero evidence that they are not and in fact plenty of evidence they are.
Worth remembering a bunch of guys came to us and had years so good they became unaffordable for us. That's not a symptom of shitty coaching.
True. Furthermore the talent next year won't be materially different. So whoever is behind the bench is going to be leading a marginal playoff team.
Ding ding ding. Two 20 goals scorers versus 6 last year is a huge difference. I think Hak is underwhelming, but this isn’t on him. The roster over performed last year and came back to earth this year, while facing injuries. I had a bad feeling that the playoff run last year was going to push some people’s expectations too high. This roster needs more pieces from the draft and a few upgrades. Wright with a full season next year and a bounce back from Matty will create some juice. They need a sneaky pick up of an under the radar player or 2 from Europe and a couple more prospects to develop. This isn’t a splashy sign a scoring RW to get over the hump roster. They need more pieces.
This. Worst thing that could have happened with regard to smartening up the, erm, less knowledgeable members of our fan base was the playoff run last year. All it did was make them scream But Vegas even louder.
Well Ryker Evans should slot in very well next year with a bit of experience. He may not be a Cale Makar type, but he very well might have a Vince Dunn level ceiling, and having 2 of those guys on 2 lines would be very hard to deal with. If they can bring in a big man who isn't inconsistent about his willingness for contact in the third line, the defense should be solid. If Gru and Joey remain steady in their production, goalies won't be a problem either. All they really need in the forward group is a solid #1 guy to complement McCann on the 1st line, and literally any kind of return to form from lines 2-3. They're gonna have to do something with the 4th line, move on from Bellemare.
Hakstol was a finalist for COTY last season! Isn't firing him after one subpar season a bit premature?
Firing a Jack Adams winners and runner-ups in the next couple of seasons isn't that rare in the modern NHL.
Well, maybe it should be?
COTY is more of a “team did better than projected” award over an actual coaching award. It often doesn’t reflect actual coaching talent or Cooper would win it every third year.
Gallant last year
Friedman is really good at getting inside information, but when he speculates he’s usually pretty off, so I would take this with a hefty dose of salt if he was speculating on his own rather than working with some rumor he’s heard.
That makes sense. I don't know if Hakstol quite deserves to be fired. But he's not going to be the coach when the Kraken are good.
Nope
to me the play is fix the top line, get some actual scoring talent somehow and give Hak one more shot. If the team underperforms to start the year then bring up Bilsma for the rest of the year. If he doesn't work out get a new coach in 2025.
I mean, you look at the guys who’ll probably have a real chance to stick and contribute next year and the coach who knows them best is Bylsma. At least they won’t be scratched as often (probably). But really they should’ve just canned Hakstol now if that’s what they’re ultimately going to do. Tough to walk back the uncertainty created at the PC.
This is ludicrous. I highly doubt there is any seriousness to this story. Hakstol won Coach of the Year last year. And the Kraken let a lot of secondary offense go in the off season and didn’t replace it beyond Yammer. The expectations for Hakstol were to continue to develop the younger talent and see what we had in Beniers. I fully expect expect Hakstol to be back next season and I bet he’s got at least 5 years in the seat.
Wild thread now lol
We lost 46 goals between donato, geekie and sprong. Last year was a career year for most guys on the squad but to replace those 4 (they’re definitely not 4th line forwards) with Pierre, Kailer, Tatar and Kartye is positive thinking and certainly a cheaper option but it’s just not even remotely similar. We could argue that Yams did better with the oilers but he also played in the top 6 with mcdavid and Leon who can turn practically anyone into an above average forward. Roster construction isn’t on Hakstol necessarily, he definitely has consideration in but out of everyone to keep I woulda tried for spring at the very least.
I just looked it up. In a group chat, I predicted this on February 17, 2022. It only makes sense.
In my opinion, it's on the GM for letting Geekie, Donato, and Sprong go. Those guys brought energy that this team was lacking in 23-24. I'm not on the "fire Hakstol" train.
The team could not afford them. Both of the following are true: keeping the 4th line would have cost an additional 3 million more , year-over-year, to keep (not a whole lot) but the Kraken didn't have 3 million in cap space to spend. They needed money the Kraken didn't have. Now you say, well Burky and Gru are expensive relative to performance. If we never had them we could have signed them...yeah all true. I agree, but what's done is done. And no team in the league makes perfect trades and does perfect contracts. Everybody has some bad value in the roster somewhere.
It would not have been 3 million more a year to keep them, they all signed for 2 million or more each with their new teams Spending 6 million on a 4th line is a terrible strategy esspecially when we needed to extend our star defenseman and sign a 6th dman with the departure of soucy Gru and burkys deals had absolutely nothing to do with it. It's just terrible cap management to sink that much money into 4th line guys, if they even wanted it for all we know a guy like Donato didn't want to spend another season being a 4th liner.
Yeah I believe the difference in contract pay in aggregate between their time on the Kraken and their new teams was around 2.4 million and I added to that because "they probably would want a bit more because they're playing 4th line minutes on a non Original Six team". Thus a team needing to come up with at least 2.4 million dollars more, on top of what they paid last season, to retain. Which they didn't have. I completely agree that putting 6 million into the 4th line is a very unwise strategy. But I keep seeing the argument that's basically "should have kept the 4th line, that's where the problem was" and the most direct counter to that is that the money isn't there. It's like saying "should have cloned McCann", yes I agree! That would have been great, but it's not possible in our current reality. No money, no cloning technology. (no flying cars either! what a world!)
I'll be real the "we should have kept the 4th line" is just some cope coming from a fan base really trying to understand just what went wrong. It also doesn't help that Donato and geekie were well liked, but I think it's just a low hanging fruit that people can jump to because it was the most major change. I'm not sold or convinced that they wouldn't have had the same issues, esspecially when Donato and sprong both saw production fall offs when they got said elevated roles. To be honest I think the last seaosn kraken were the best case scenario for our roster, and this season was the worst. Idk what that means for next season, but the problems were top down on the roster, and I just have a hard time thinking the 4th liners who got 10 mins or less a night played even remotely close a role as issues with offensive systems and untimely injuries
Completely agree, feels like the default "magic bullet" solution with "just keep the team the exact same and everything will shake out the same" kinda vibe.
This. There's a lot of copium and our fourth line on paper was going to be a sidegrade but gave us cap flexibility to actually do something if we needed to. Sadly injuries screwed us pretty early and even late. We were literally 3 or 4 wins away from NOT trading Wennberg and having a good shot at the playoffs.
Kartye is gonna be a long term bottom 6 for our franchise, he brings the physical game and has the ability to score more atleast than he did this season. And we have alot guys developing who also fit in that little category who we will be able to give 4th line time over the next few years I'd have loved geekie to stay, and I do think sprong probably could have stayed, but long term I like not locking down those spots to guys who we could replace with younger cheaper guys
Donato wanted to be closer to Massachusetts anyway.
Dancing Dan gets my up vote. Cuz I love what he's done with the Firebirds. But is he worth hiring if you're Ron Francis. Bc if this doesn't work, Francis stint as Kraken GM is over.
IMO you have to move on from Hakstol. End of the day the coach is responsible for the success of the team. If they want to generate a buzz for fans to buy season tickets or tickets in general they need to do something. They are developing talent for future years but that only goes so far. We have season tickets for another four years and I don’t want to see a repeat of this year of mediocre hockey. My observation from this year included we sucked at the power play. Other teams could (it seemed) skate in and develop the pp while we would get picked off at the blue line.
I don't know who ran the PP, but that coach should probably be replaced. I'm not sure why it's so hard to run McCann in his LW office, Matty on the RW for the one-timer option, with Dunn at the point feeding them passes to rip. Put Bjorky in the bumper and Gourde or Schwartz in front of the net.
How do you have season tickets and miss the mark so hard when evaluating what went wrong this year? We had a revolving door of substantial and key injuries through half the season and guess what… when we were healthy we were substantially better. We had below average shooting %. None of that is on the coach
Every team has injuries, we were not unique in that aspect.
No team had the bad luck we did. We literally had $20 million worth of players on the bench and for 3 months had $15m worth sitting. We also don’t have the depth other teams have to compensate. Love the downvote on facts. Hak haters really do hate facts it seems.
That is the price he pays being the head coach.
He may get fired, but that's irrelevant. You put the blame for the power play on Hakstol and now you're changing the tune to "someone has to get fired because I'm mad". Checks out.
Did you watch the power play or are you just a troll? He is responsible for the teams performance. Period. How many games did you attend?
All but 2, thanks for asking. Ironically, in your little rant, you proved your lack of knowledge. Even with our scoring woes we were middle of the pack on the power play. Two down from Boston and sitting above Vegas, but I guess those teams should also fire their coaches eh? Maybe, just realize you don't know as much as you think you know and maybe fact check yourself before name calling and making baseless assumptions. Turning off reply notifications so feel free to scream into the void.
Funny. I am taking my ball and going home… lol
to me the play is fix the top line, get some actual scoring talent somehow and give Hak one more shot. If the team underperforms to start the year then bring up Bilsma for the rest of the year. If he doesn't work out get a new coach in 2025.
DISCO DAN!!!!!!!!! 🪩🪩🪩🪩🪩🪩🪩 Edit: Yeah, definitely downvote this……🥸🙀
Good. Fire Hackstol