Kraken GM Ron Francis explains why his picks seem underwhelming and where the trades are
After everything was said and done with the Seattle Expansion Draft Wednesday night, many were left scratching their heads. We'll forget about the awful presentation from the NHL and ESPN for now and concentrate on the picks themselves. Once GM Ron Francis had his 30 picks lined up, the roster seemed underwhelming at best. The defence core looks decent, but the forward core seems very mediocre. Following the draft, Francis said things were different this time when compared to the Vegas Expansion Draft four years ago.
"We talked about that going into this. This was going to be so much different than what Vegas went through," said Francis. "There hadn't been an expansion draft in 17 years. Vegas did a good job taking advantage of the rules and everyone's lack of experience in that environment. But the minute that one was done, they knew we were coming in. It was supposed to be three years and then it was four years. So they had a lot more time to prepare for us," said Francis.
"Last time, general managers were more willing to overpay to protect certain assets. This time, they learned from that and they weren't willing to make the mistakes that they made last time," Francis said.
Meanwhile, most people assumed that any trades associated with the draft picks would be announced Wednesday night. Apparently that was not the case. Trades are coming once the roster freeze ends at 1 PM EST on Thursday. However, Francis cautioned that there won't be many.
"Probably a lot less than you guys think there might be," he told ESPN.
Some of the more recognizable names that Francis passed on include Carey Price, James van Riemsdyk, P.K. Subban, Vladimir Tarasenko, Ben Bishop and others. By doing that, Francis currently has $28 million in cap space to play with.
"We think that's a valuable thing to have right now, especially due to the COVID environment and the flat cap. We looked over our choices. There are good players that are out there where maybe we weren't comfortable with the cap hit on some of them," Francis said. "We tried to draft the best team possible that we could while still keeping our cap space available. So we can do some things as we move forward."
Free agency opens on July 28th and it appears the Kraken will be major players in that.
| G | A | PTS | ||
| Christian Dvorak | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Brendan Gallagher | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Jason Robertson | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Matt Duchene | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Adam Fox | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Matej Blumel | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Mavrik Bourque | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Will Cuylle | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Wyatt Johnston | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Marco Kasper | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Chris Kreider | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Alexis Lafrenière | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Patrik Laine | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Zack Ostapchuk | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Juraj Slafkovsky | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Nick Suzuki | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Tomas Tatar | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Mika Zibanejad | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Artem Zub | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Mike Amadio | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Complete stats | ||||
| STANDINGS 2024-2025 | ||||||
TOP 10 | GP | W | L | OL | PTS | |
Capitals | 46 | 31 | 10 | 5 | 67 | |
Jets | 47 | 31 | 13 | 3 | 65 | |
Oilers | 46 | 29 | 14 | 3 | 61 | |
Golden Knights | 46 | 29 | 14 | 3 | 61 | |
Maple Leafs | 47 | 29 | 16 | 2 | 60 | |
Stars | 46 | 29 | 16 | 1 | 59 | |
Wild | 46 | 27 | 15 | 4 | 58 | |
Devils | 49 | 26 | 17 | 6 | 58 | |
Hurricanes | 46 | 27 | 16 | 3 | 57 | |
Avalanche | 47 | 28 | 18 | 1 | 57 | |
| Conference | Cumulative | ||||||