Seattle's Incremental Plan Has a Fragmentation Problem

Three straight seasons at 34 or 35 wins. That is the number that matters most as you try to understand what is actually happening in Seattle, and it is the number management most needs to escape. The Kraken finished 34-48 in 2024, 35-47 in 2025, and 34-48 again this past spring. That is not a rebuild finding its footing. That is a program running in place, and Eeli Tolvanen signing with the New York Rangers this week is the latest evidence that the floor beneath this roster is softer than the front office wants to admit.

Tolvanen's departure stings not because he was irreplaceable but because of what it represents. He finished the 2025-26 season as Seattle's fourth-leading scorer with 29 points — a meaningful contributor on a team that was already starved for offense. The Kraken averaged just 2.0 goals per game over their final ten games of the season, a collapse that turned a disappointing year into an outright ugly one. Losing a player who produced at that level, without a like-for-like replacement already in the building, is not a neutral transaction. It is addition by subtraction only if you believe the subtraction was necessary, and nothing in the public record suggests it was.

Management's response to a third consecutive 34-win season has been to signal continuity: acquire young forward Mackie Samoskevich, extend Bobby McMann for six years, hold the core together. That is a coherent philosophy — the 2019 St. Louis Blues, to cite one famous precedent, won a Cup with a roster that looked broken in January and was essentially intact from the prior year. But the Blues had a goaltender who went cold and then caught fire, and they were not entering October with their starting netminder and their most efficient forward both sidelined since June with no updated timeline. Joey Daccord and Jared McCann remain unavailable as training camp approaches, and that is a different kind of problem than a mid-season slump.

McCann's absence is the one that should keep Seattle's front office up at night. He posted 0.83 points per game last season — the best rate on the roster — but appeared in only 23 games. When he played, the Kraken had a genuine first-line threat. When he did not, they had Jordan Eberle and Matty Beniers carrying the offensive load on a team that finished with a goal differential of minus-37. Beniers logged nearly 20 minutes a night and produced 32 points in 50 games; Eberle led the team outright with 33. Both are legitimate NHL contributors. Neither is enough by himself to cure what ailed this offense, and neither should have to be.

Here is my declaration: the Kraken will not escape this 34-win gravity without a healthy McCann for a full season. Every other variable — Samoskevich's development, Beniers' continued growth, whatever Pittsburgh does or does not offer for a center — is secondary to that one fact. Teams that have broken out of multi-year plateaus at this win total have almost universally done so because a key offensive player returned to health or a previously limited player took a significant step forward. Seattle has the candidate. What they do not yet have is any assurance he will be ready. Until that changes, Tolvanen's departure to New York looks less like roster management and more like a window quietly closing.