It Would Appear That The Seattle Kraken Are Tanking For Shane Wright
Frank Servelli broke basically every single pick and as Jordie detailed earlier...they stink. Almost exclusively. I talked to a guy with CBJ who said the guy selected from their team was basically nothing more than an ECHL guy. Everyone is speculating that there will be a ton of side deals. Don't take player x and we will give you asset y, sort of deal. That would explain why Seattle took John Quenneville from the Blackhawks who is a) a UFA and b) sucks. Quenneville had 2 points in 16 AHL games. There has to be a reason why they'd take him even they were just looking for a cheap player that wouldn't hurt their cap space but...nope
This is actually sort of insulting to the Hawks. Norm told his new friend Ron Francis that none of the Hawks available were worth drafting.
I would be fucking FURIOUS if I were the Calgary Flames or their fans today. It'd be one thing if they took Mark Giordano because they were trying to assemble the best team they could in order to compete right away in the Pacific Division. That, at this point, does NOT appear to be the case. The entire reason why Vegas was successful is because they had 20+ guys from the expansion draft who were proven NHL caliber guys. The Kraken chose to not go that route. Again, maybe things will change, but outside of Giordano, Eberle, Jarnkrok, Larsson, Donskoi, and Driedger there isn't a name on the list released that I would take on the Hawks as a slam dunk. Which is saying something because the Hawks weren't close to being a good team.
The only thing I can think of is that Seattle thinks it is a better long term strategy to have cap space and the chance to draft at the top of the 2022 Draft because Shane Wright is there. Shane Wright is probably the best prospect since Connor McDavid. At least the most hyped.
The only team that wasn't financially impacted by Covid-19 seemingly doesn't want to spend any money on players. I don't get it unless they're planning on being in the Shane Wright, Brad Lambert, Matthew Savoie derby in 2022 and the Connor Bedard sweepstakes of 2023. That's the only way this makes sense on surface. Unless Francis is just way smarter than everyone, which could be the case. Right now though we are all lost. If Seattle didn't want to have an NHL team this year I am sure the league would've let them defer to 2022-23. Let them have their top 3 pick then.
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It's going to be a wild week on hockey twitter. Hold on to your butts. Welcome to the league…sort of, Seattle.