The Seattle Kraken are officially the 32nd active franchise in the National Hockey League.
With their final expansion payment having been tendered to the league offices, all of the marketing and merchandise goes from “official” to just plain official. That means all the “I”s have been dotted and the very last “T” crossed.
The franchise is able to sign any free agent available, or make trades involving draft picks. Naturally, you cannot trade for a player if you do not have any in your organization. However, that will be rectified with the expansion draft in July. The Kraken will be able to select one player from all other franchises, with Vegas being the lone exception. This is a result of the Golden Knights not having been established as a franchise for at least five years.
The franchise has already announced that their American Hockey League team will be based in Palm Springs, California for next season.
We have all seen the logo and uniforms, which are already some of the nicest in the league. The color scheme falls right in line with the MLB’s Mariners and NFL’s Seahawks for their dark blue and sea green tones.
The former KeyArena, now Climate Pledge Arena is slated to complete renovations vy late summer. The irony with Climate Pledge is the naming rights are actually owned by Amazon, who’s CEO Jeff Bezos chose the name to call for climate change.
I don’t think owners David Bonderman, Jerry Bruckheimer and Tod Leiweke will have to worry about how they’re going to fund the upkeep on the arena with Bezos in the fold, do you?!
This is actually the third round of renovations on the arena, but this time is more of stripping the interior to the studs.
The Kraken are also the first NHL team in history that will have an African-American lead play-by-play announcer. Everett Fitzhugh will be calling games on the radio, making the jump from the ECHL’s Cincinnati Cyclones. If you have not seen Fitzhugh’s work, simply look him up on YouTube.
The man can certainly hold his own behind a microphone.
John Forslund will be on the television call, coming over from the Carolina Hurricanes, as his contract was mysteriously not renewed, having been the voice of the franchise since 1995.
Seattle officially now part of the league puts a pin in the hopes for the foreseeable future to a second team in Toronto, or expanding into Kansas City, Houston, or even back to Quebec City.
Next season will also mark three consecutive where the divisional alignments were not consistent with the year before. With the ongoing pandemic, the league arranged to only have teams play their entire regular season schedule against their division, with the playoffs again taking place in a host bubble city.
The Kraken now force the Arizona Coyotes to join the Central Division once the pandemic is over. Outside of possibly Dallas, do the Coyotes really prefer having Chicago in their division, which is still a three-and-a-half hour flight?!
The Seattle/Vancouver rivalry will not take long to get going, I assure you. Both teams within a tank of gas from the other, while both wearing blue and some shade of green in their uniforms. You also have a rivalry with the Colorado Avalanche just begging to be born, should the pandemic realignments stretch into the 2021-22 season as well.
This should be fun for the two games Seattle plays against the Detroit Red Wings, being that someone is throwing an octopus or squid onto the ice in either Climate Pledge or Little Caesars Arenas.
-JC24