The plot thickens. On Monday, the same day Seattle Kraken general manager (GM) Ron Francis gave head coach Dave Hakstol his marching orders, unexpected information came to light. ESPN NHL reporter Emily Kaplan, while discussing the situation on a segment called The Point, brought up the possibility of some Kraken players proclaiming that they would not want to remain on the roster if Hakstol was still the head coach. That, we now know, did not sit well with either the team’s GM or the players.
What ESPN Reported
Let’s jog our memories as to how the hubbub in Seattle started to brew. On Monday afternoon, after the Hakstol firing was public knowledge, Kaplan had this to say while talking to ESPN’s NHL studio:
“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.’”
That was quite the knowledge bomb. We wrote on Tuesday that some of the performances down the stretch after the club was mathematically eliminated from the playoffs corroborated that. To corroborate means either confirming something or at least providing support to a theory or argument. Evidence, if you will. The lackluster performances during the final couple of weeks support Kaplan’s reporting.
Do they confirm it? No, not unless Hakstol, Francis, or any of the players admit to it.
Related: 2 Reasons Why the Kraken Fired Dave Hakstol & What’s Next
It’s important to remember something in all of this. In journalism school, one quickly learns that a reporter’s reputation is their main calling card. Lose one’s reputation and there is little reason for any reader, listener, or viewer to give lip service to one’s work. There is even less reason for potential interview subjects to want to talk to them again.
Mistakes can happen, even in news reporting. However, it simply doesn’t fly to willingly say something like that without a shred of concrete info. So somebody, somewhere in the organization or close to it told Kaplan something that prompted that report. Who said it and what did they say? We don’t know.
What Ron Francis and the Players Are Saying
The story is not over. On Wednesday (May 1), both Francis and Jordan Eberle were among the people within the organization who publicly reacted to what had been said on ESPN.
As per Geoff Baker of The Seattle Times, Francis responded with:
“Zero players issued any ultimatums of any kind regarding the coach – that I can assure you. That’s not what those meetings are really about…No one sits there asking them ‘What did you think of the coach?’” (from ‘Kraken ‘extremely disappointed’ in report that players demanded Dave Hakstol’s firing’, Seattle Times, May 1, 2024)
The Seattle Times article continues with the GM admitting that when a season ends as poorly as Seattle’s, players will obviously express complaints, but no one shared anything to the level of refusing to play under Hakstol’s guidance.
Francis’ frustrations were echoed by Eberle, one of the leaders in the dressing room. He was interviewed by a radio station, 93.3 KJR.
“I heard that, I was watching the game. I was extremely disappointed. I think that at the end of the year when you do an exit meeting with the coach, an exit meeting with the general manager – and you’re honest – the whole goal is to get better. You know, you’re trying to adjust things. Yourself, personally and with the team, but by no means did anyone go in with an ultimatum. That’s just not how our team operates.”
Who is telling the truth? We may never know. This isn’t necessarily Kaplan doing a bad job. It could be a situation in which a reporter was misinformed. Granted, a reporter should verify their information, so in that sense, she may not have been quite up to par, but it’s difficult to imagine she made everything up. As of this writing, there has been no follow-up from ESPN as to where their information came from.
Reputations don’t just matter for journalists. They count for something for GMs and players too. Even if weeks, months, or years down the road it’s made public that the original report was completely true, it’s hard to fault Francis, Eberle, or any other players for disassociating them from that kind of negativity (Jared McCann is also quoted in the Seattle Times article).
There aren’t many situations in the NHL like what happened in 2023 in the National Basketball Association. For those not in the know, current Los Angeles Clippers star James Harden, still with the Philadelphia 76ers in August 2023, publicly called that club’s owner a liar.
At the centre of all the attention is the former Kraken coach. If Hakstol wants to coach again, this is not a good look. The facts are he helped the Philadelphia Flyers make the postseason twice during his tenure with them (2015-16 and 2017-18) and brought Seattle to the second round of the playoffs in 2022-23. He can do a good job. Francis knows this, as do the players.
They say don’t believe everything you read or hear. In this particular instance, it’s still difficult to know what to believe and what not to.
