After a week of speculation, Dave Hakstol, the first coach in Seattle Kraken franchise history, was relieved of his duties on Monday, April 29. The news came seven days after club GM Ron Francis gave his end of season exit interview with the media and was curiously cagey about his head coach’s future with the team. In the 24 hours since the news, two main subplots stand out. Let’s dive in.
1. Kraken’s Lack of Consistency
According to Francis himself, the decision to relieve Hakstol and assistant coach Paul McFarland of their duties was taken on Sunday morning. That said, both parties were informed of the decision on Monday morning. One supposes that when making such a big move that affects people not just professionally but personally, one mulls over how to be the bearer of bad news.
Francis was direct and unambiguous in his explanations to the media on Monday afternoon.
“Too many losing streaks and losing streaks of significant numbers. It just felt like it was time to try a new voice,” Francis explained yesterday.
He’s not wrong. To cite one example, as late as the second week of March the Kraken were in the race for a Western Conference wild-card spot but fell in every contest of a critical five-game home stand. Their were five separate sequences this season when the Kraken lost at least four-consecutive matches, one of which ballooned to seven and another to eight.
Related: Winless Home Stand: How are the Kraken This Bad in Seattle?
We could insert links to the multiple articles in which we discussed Seattle’s scoring woes, too. Pound for pound, the team wasn’t good enough. Among the notable comments Francis made, especially last week, is the allusion to 2022-23 being a case of the roster overperforming. It hints that the franchise didn’t expect to be as good as it was that season, relatively speaking, and perhaps reverted to a more appropriate form in 2023-24. It also makes the following comment by Francis on Monday about the club’s young players and prospects something to hold on to during this trying time for the team and its fans:
“If we’re not able to unlock that potential, then we end up being kind of mediocre. It’s going to hurt us moving forward,” the GM emphasized.
“Unlock that potential.” If there is anything that people who follow the club should keep in mind, that’s it. That gets to the heart of what happened in 2023-24. It was never a case of believing that the prior campaign solved all of the team’s issues but rather provided a map to greater success. The problem is that the opposite happened this season.
Browsing the online comments on Monday – ideally from analysts and reporters – one stuck out like a sore thumb. It’s not one that many picked up on, but if true (emphasis on if), it puts a few things into perspective.
NHL and ESPN reporter Emily Kaplan was working Game 5 of the Tampa Bay Lightning/Florida Panthers series on Monday evening. The studio featured her in a brief segment to discuss the news coming out of Seattle. The juicy part was as follows:
“I was told that at the exit meetings with players that a handful of players, and pretty significant players, who made it clear to management ‘I don’t want to play on this team in the future if Dave Hakstol is still the coach.’”
Well now. That’s the sort of information that may or may not be definitively corroborated just because parties wouldn’t want to tarnish their reputations. By the same token, judging by how the club played down the stretch, it’s not difficult to imagine certain players felt that way. Performances like the one on March 18 against the Buffalo Sabres, March 24 at home against the Montreal Canadiens, April 13 against the Dallas Stars, and April 14 when visiting the St. Louis Blues, all suggest the team was not having any fun showing up to the office.
Let’s recall that on April 20, when the players gave their exit interviews, Jordan Eberle and Oliver Bjorkstrand both hinted at a lack of cohesion and connectivity within the group. That’s basically the opposite of the typical “win as a group, lose as a group” mentality. This was a thinly-veiled allusion to there being some sort of character issues in the dressing room.
At the time, it wasn’t fair to draw big conclusions. As writers, we can only offer what we know; extrapolation is a different line of business. But now that Hakstol has been given his pink slip, a lot of what we’ve read and heard makes more sense.
What Happens Next With the Head Coach Search?
There are two interesting things to keep in mind regarding what Seattle’s next moves could be. For one, Francis unsurprisingly revealed that the search for a new leader commences immediately. Second, the GM did not commit to sharing the qualities he believes the next person behind the bench should possess. He astutely explained that by divulging that, he’d be giving an answer that would encourage too many people to assume what Hakstol lacked. That’s not a game Francis feels like playing and is a fair and honorable answer. Also, what else would a GM say to reporters that the usual “a leader of men, a motivator, etcetera.” spiel?
One relatively-obvious name that could soon pop up is Dan Bylsma, head coach of the club’s American Hockey League affiliate, the Coachella Valley Firebirds. Bylsma has a ton of NHL experience and time spent behind the bench in Buffalo and with the Pittsburgh Penguins, with whom he won the Stanley Cup in 2009.
Perusing what the analysists are saying, Rod Brind’Amour, whose contract with the Carolina Hurricanes expires this summer, is being mentioned. Francis and Brind’Amour know each other well from their time together with the Hurricanes both on and off the ice.
The hiring of a new NHL coach is always a delicate exercise. It would be smart to try to settle on someone before the NHL Entry Draft. Not that Francis isn’t a good evaluator of talent, but it would be wiser to make those all-important draft selections with the coach who is going to be working with the players daily.
Because the franchise is so young, it makes the present predicament quite interesting to evaluate. What should be the expectations? What is the team’s identity? Those are fascination questions that can be answered with the hiring of a new coach. It looks as though the Kraken’s offseason is going to be a lot more momentous than previously imagined.
