Bailey Hillesheim/Icon Sportswire/IMAGO
How the Kraken Quickly Turned Seattle Into a Hockey Town
In this story:
After a well-traveled professional hockey career that included two NHL seasons, Jim McTaggart spent five years working for Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment in British Columbia. It owned and operated several professional sports franchises, including the Canucks.
Vancouver had never won a Stanley Cup. But the franchise did reach three finals, losing in 1982, ’94 and 2011. Along the way, the closest big-time hockey team to Seattle picked up a larger and international fan base addendum. Emerald City residents had no other driveable option. And it fell to McTaggart to develop that market for the hockey team up north, starting in 1995.
His task began relative to expectations, the bar in play so low that minimal seems kind. Upon inspection, he found Canucks coverage in the greater-Seattle area pretty much nonexistent. His team tried some initiatives to bolster interest. They found a local broadcast partner, which carried the first over-the-air broadcast of an NHL game. As in, one, one game. Afterward, the NHL said no. The league, its officials reasoned to Orca executives, wanted to protect the Seattle market for the future, however distant or improbable that prospect seemed.
McTaggart and his colleagues spent time analyzing the market and its viewership numbers. For the first round of the playoffs, the market share was zero, the number of humans tuning into the best games pro hockey had to offer so small as to not even register. At that time, Seattle-Tacoma represented the country’s eighth-largest media market, so there were certainly enough people to meet demand. The Mariners were amid their most successful stretch in team history then, too, signaling a large base of devoted sports fans.
Looking back, the hockey lifer who still lives in the Seattle suburbs must concede. “I guess they were right,” McTaggart said over the phone this week. “I didn’t see this coming. Didn’t see the NHL. Didn’t see the group that brought a team here. Didn’t see their Midas touch.”
He laughs, the implication obvious and left hanging. The future of hockey is here, right now, with a team, the Kraken, that’s in the playoffs and nabbed its first NHL postseason win this week (against the Western Conference’s top-seeded Avalanche, no less)—and the first for any Seattle-based NHL franchise in nearly a century. The future isn’t just here, even. It’s so bright that citizens of this rain-rain-won’t-go-away metropolis might need to buy sunglasses to complement their new hockey jerseys.
Lindsey Wasson/AP
It’s a typical Thursday morning (cold, gray, damp) in downtown Seattle. But there is hockey—the Kraken’s second-ever playoff game—scheduled for that night. That the team will play far from home matters not even a little. Not when locals have come down with a glorious bug known as hockey fever.
The ever-shifting and dramatically changing nature of Seattle is typified by this neighborhood, Lower Queen Anne. Grown by corporate development. Once home to the NBA’s Sonics (sigh). Decimated by their departure. In the process of reclaiming what was lost. Even with all the transformations, though, there is a constant on this Thursday. Perhaps the strangest mascot anywhere, Buoy the Troll, ties everything—and everyone—together, along with the city and team ole Buoy represents. The constant is the Kraken. Banners hanging outside the arena. One says 2023 STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS. Jerseys, hats and T-shirts worn by construction workers, tech employees and new hockey fans. Dozens streaming through three—three!—area team stores on a random weekday morning in April.
The search for Seattle’s hockey fever begins here, with the NFL season long over and baseball and soccer campaigns ramping up.
After all, the Kraken will host a home hockey playoff game Saturday—the city’s first, at this level, since 1924. The gap between that season, the last for the Metropolitans, and the unveiling of the expansion franchise in 2020 is precisely the gap that seemed impossible to close. “Everybody knew it was gonna be a huge challenge,” McTaggart says, with typical Canadian politeness.
Watch the NHL with fuboTV. Start your free trial today.
Hockey’s place in the local landscape started with the unveiling of a name and logo amid another NHL expansion. The newly named Kraken would garner some 32,000 season-ticket deposits in mere hours on the day they became available, while building out a waiting list with more than 60,000 who wanted in.
Already, critical elements were in place. It all started with Tod Leiweke, a creative, respected, itinerant sports executive who understood the local landscape, having helped run the Seahawks’ first reemergence—and Super Bowl appearance—in the mid-2000s. He left for Portland (’07), Tampa (’10) and the NFL’s corporate office (’15), where he became the league’s first chief operating officer since commissioner Roger Goodell.
In 2018, Leiweke returned to the Emerald City. A minority ownership stake helped. As did expansion rules the NHL relaxed before Las Vegas participated in its expansion draft in ’17. The gist: Changes made it harder for existing teams to keep most of their best players, inducing difficult decisions that funneled more talent to new teams.
Like the franchise that, under Leiweke, decided to … try anything. Seattle unveiled two logos—a green tentacle fashioned into an S and the Space Needle placed inside of an anchor. Officials chose four separate blue hues—deep sea, ice, shadow, boundless—on uniforms. They peddled their own originality, telling eager journalists the team name originated from a giant Pacific octopus that lived in the Puget Sound. The fiercest beast in the world, they called it.
Joe Nicholson/USA TODAY Sports
The Kraken wanted to prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion, from its hiring practices to its fan base. It wanted the coolest, most environmentally friendly arena in sports. Climate Pledge began arena life back in the 1960s, as the Washington State Coliseum, built for the World’s Fair. As KeyArena, it housed the Sonics and the WNBA’s Storm. Its lack of suites—and their revenue generation—was cited as a main reason for the NBA’s departure. Its redevelopment, at the cost of $1.15 billion, is now cited as the main reason many expect the NBA to return.
Construction lasted nearly three years, through the pandemic. The extreme makeover, the arena’s first of any kind since 1995, netted a new interior, walls and roof, while adding seating capacity (up to 17,100 for hockey, 18,100 for hoops and 17,200 for concerts) and square footage (now about 800,000 overall, or nearly double the former size). The renovated space contains solar panel farms, a recycled rainwater system (used to resurface the rink, at higher purity levels), enhanced natural lighting, a living wall of plants outside and an electric-power grid that eliminated the need for natural gas entirely. The arena sells concession items in (mostly) recyclable materials and features electric Zambonis. Even its main sponsor, Amazon, chose Climate Pledge, rather than splashing its name everywhere, per corporate tradition.
The Kraken accomplished all this while building an actual team, partaking in the expansion draft and retiring jersey No. 32 to match its status as the NHL’s 32nd franchise. Officials started a nonprofit, the One Roof Foundation, to fight youth homelessness and for environmental justice. Everything but hockey was falling into place.
The search continues. Head up Highway 99, through the juxtapositions of an ever-changing landscape, past the homeless encampments and the closed-but-seemingly-inhabited motel that’s covered in garbage and graffiti. Past Canlis, one of Seattle’s best and oldest restaurants, and dozens of condo high-rises. Over where Lake Union meets Lake Washington. Past Greenlake, into Greenwood, where a Kraken flag hangs from a porch. And there it is, Seattle’s hockey bar, one of few but never more popular than now.
The Angry Beaver. That’s the name. The beaver looks, well, angry. It holds a hockey stick in one hand and a pint of lager in the other. The entrance is painted with a Kraken tentacle. One neon sign is the team’s logo over a pair of flashing blue sticks. Another screams, simply, GAME ON.
Among the patrons: Leiweke, of course.
In their initial season, the Kraken didn’t nail the whole hockey part of the experiment. Seattle didn’t win the Western Conference, like the Golden Knights did in Season 1. Dragged down by sketchy goaltending and a lack of offensive production, the Kraken finished 27-49-6 last year, good for 30th overall.
The fans lingered, cautious but still optimistic. Jamie Huscroft, a retired NHL defenseman and director of facilities for Sno-King Ice Sports, played on Tampa Bay’s expansion team in 1998–99, and this wasn’t that. He credits the difference to the draft changes and Leiweke. Nor was this previous professional hockey iterations in Seattle—Metropolitans (1915 to ’24); Eskimos (’28 to ’31); Sea Hawks (!) (’33 to ’41); Ironmen (’44 to ’52); Bombers (’52 to ’54); Americans (’55 to ’58); Totems (’58 to ’75); Breakers (’77 to ’85); and Thunderbirds (various iterations from ’71 to now, with a couple of breaks).
This was the NHL, where the Kraken’s on-ice goal remained unchanged. Win the city’s first Stanley Cup since 1917.
Projections were … less than optimistic. Despite ample salary cap space and draft capital (projected at $23 million), not to mention roster stability from Year 1, local columnists and die-hard fans criticized the franchise—and not unfairly. No one seemed particularly happy with coach Dave Hakstol or goaltender Philipp Grubauer.
Reviews came back for the draft (went quite well!) and free agency (not so much). Some proclaimed the Kraken the draft’s “winner” simply by staying at No. 4 and taking touted prospect Shane Wright. But he spent only part of this season in Seattle. Meanwhile, analysts panned the Kraken’s vaunted analytics department for the players it did bring in. The franchise wasn’t bold enough; it left too many dollars unspent and underwhelmed with what it did dole out. One pundit wrote that this hockey experiment would stay “doomed … to puck purgatory.”
Those analyses were, ultimately, gloriously wrong. Forward Andre Burakovsky—reception: meh—recorded 39 points in 49 games, before heading to the injured reserve list in February. Defenseman Justin Schultz—reception: baffling—added 34 points. New goalie Martin Jones—reception: odd, not to mention extraneous, with Grubauer under contract—led Seattle in saves (1,145) and starts (48). Jaden Schwartz—reception: injury-prone—played 71 games and poured in 40 points.
Joe Nicholson/USA TODAY Sports
It wasn’t just additions. It was center Jared McCann, in his second Kraken season, leading the team with 70 points and transforming into a young star. And defenseman Vince Dunn—also young, in his prime and certainly prolific (with a team-leading plus-minus of 28). And right winger Jordan Eberle, centers Matthew Beniers (the No. 2 pick in the 2021 draft) and Yanni Gourde, right wingers Daniel Sprong and Oliver Bjorkstrand, and the rest.
The surge started early, with a five-game winning streak in October, followed by a seven-game victory stretch that crossed into November and featured four overtime wins. The Kraken matched last season’s win total by Jan. 19, then exceeded it four nights later. They won eight straight right after the new year, with seven of those victories coming on the road, which made the Kraken—the Kraken!—the first NHL team to sweep a road trip of at least seven contests.
Last season the Kraken could say that they had games; real, bona fide NHL hockey. This season the Kraken have a squad, hence the 19 additional wins, 21 fewer losses and two additional ties—an astonishing 40-point improvement. With Beniers excelling and Wright on the way, the Kraken project one of the league’s best offenses. With Jones and Grubauer, they’re fortified in goal. They’re deep and getting deeper. Young. And they were built, already, to play strong defense. Plus depth. Plus prospects. Plus capital for this year’s draft. Plus that once-maligned cap space.
The remodeled arena and the hockey team that plays there project a similar vibe: new, fresh, sustainable, balanced and ready to compete. They didn’t fall into an accidental playoff run. They earned their spot, eliciting fear in opponents, starting with the defending NHL champions.
Huscroft sees the hockey fever everywhere he looks. Sno-King saw an uptick in customers at both its rinks from the initial announcement onward. More adults stopped in for league play. But so did more and more youth players. Interest continues to rise, and that’s why he sees the boom as sustainable. Because it’s not only tied to NHL hockey. It’s tied to NHL hockey and everything—revenue, resources, community impact, excitement—that comes with it.
There are major junior teams south of Seattle (Thunderbirds) and north (Silvertips), and the now-mighty Kraken right downtown. That should mean increased interest not just in professional hockey but all types, throughout the region.
Huscroft grew up in small-town B.C., where hockey dominated … everything else. He played some junior seasons in Seattle. “I never thought that they could get a team here,” he says. And yet, when he came home from work Tuesday, his grandchildren, ages 8 and 3, didn’t complain when cartoons went off in favor of Game 1. Another sign. Seattle won that affair, beating the NHL’s defending champions, the Avalanche, on the road. It won behind 34 saves from former Avs goalie Grubauer, a stingy defense and three goals. Imagine the momentum, Huscroft says, and how many kids, like his grandchildren, parked in front of televisions that now could—and did—show NHL games. “Imagine if they make it to the second round,” he says. “It’s sheer excitement. When I was in Boston, it shut down the whole city.”
Isaiah J. Downing/USA TODAY Sports
Keep imagining. That’s the Kraken’s impact. They may not topple the Avalanche, but they certainly have a chance to win. (Colorado took Game 2, 3–2, to even the series Thursday night.) Success becomes a marketing tool. All these factors pointing in the same direction—leadership, arena, team, region—beget even more success.
Huscroft paused on the phone, still considering the immense possibilities that seemed impossible only a few years ago. “There’s a lot of hockey fans around,” he says. “And they got the bug.”
More searching. Head east, as a light rain begins to fall. Cruise up Interstate 5. Exit for Northgate mall, north of the city center. Keep an eye on the construction fencing, where a sign points toward a new family medicine/ sports medicine/physical therapy pavilion run by the Kraken’s official medical services provider, of course.
More signs lead toward the rink. The Kraken logo. The 32 BAR & GRILL. The KRAKEN COMMUNITY ICEPLEX. That’s the thing about this previously unremarkable space, the mall where Seattleites go for easy parking. Hockey is the centerpiece.
And the rink! On this Thursday, teenagers skate in circles. The beginners lean forward on walkers that work as training blades of sorts. None wear Seahawks jerseys or Mariners hats, and both those franchises hold realistic playoff hopes for their next seasons. How many will watch the hockey game later that same night?
In roughly 48 hours, Seattle Center activity will balloon around the team and buzz the Kraken built. In April. For hockey. While two teams skate on recycled rainwater. Very Seattle and not Seattle at all.
Whether the franchise will ever reach the same perch as the 1990s Mariners or mid-2010s Seahawks seems immaterial. For the professional hockey obsession developing in a baseball town that became a football city, it’s one hell of a start.