Seattle's Offseason Bet Is Simple: Two Players Have to Come Back, and One Has to Arrive Ready

Three straight seasons of 34 or 35 wins. Three straight seasons of 47 or 48 losses. At some point that kind of consistency stops looking like bad luck and starts looking like a ceiling, and the Kraken spent this offseason trying to decide whether to blow through it or quietly accept it. The answer, based on what management has actually done, is neither — it's a targeted bet on two variables they don't fully control yet. A healthy Jared McCann. A ready Mackie Samoskevich. Get both, and the offense that collapsed so badly down the stretch last season looks meaningfully different. Get neither, and this franchise is staring at a fourth consecutive near-identical finish.

The collapse itself deserves to be named plainly before we talk about solutions. Seattle averaged 2.9 goals per game over a 20-game stretch heading into the final push, then fell to 2.0 over their last ten. That's not a slump — that's a team that stopped functioning offensively at the exact moment function was required. They won twice in those ten games. The last three were losses. The core didn't suddenly forget how to play hockey; Jordan Eberle finished with 33 points and Matty Beniers added 32 while logging nearly 20 minutes a night. The problem was depth, and depth is precisely what evaporated when McCann went down.

McCann's season numbers look modest at first glance — 19 points in 23 games. But the per-game rate tells the real story: 0.83 points per game, the best mark on the roster. He was Seattle's most efficient scorer, and he played fewer than 30 percent of the team's games. That gap between what he produces when healthy and what the team produced without him is the single most important number in the Kraken's offseason math. If he comes back at full strength before training camp, the top six looks genuinely dangerous. If he doesn't, or if he comes back compromised, the Samoskevich acquisition has to carry far more weight than a 23-year-old acquired mid-offseason should reasonably bear.

Samoskevich is the more controllable piece of this puzzle, and acquiring him from Florida for the No. 25 pick suggests Seattle's front office believes he can contribute immediately rather than develop gradually. That's a real bet on his readiness — Florida's system has produced forwards who can score at even strength, and at 23 he's past the stage where a team needs to be patient. The McMann extension, signed the same day, reinforces the philosophy: this is a front office building around a core it believes in, adding pieces it thinks can score, not tearing down and starting over. My read is that Samoskevich slots in as a genuine secondary scorer if he's used in a role that lets him attack rather than just fill minutes — but that role has to be defined clearly from day one of camp.

The path to a materially better season is narrow and requires things to go right in a specific sequence. McCann returns healthy and recaptures that efficiency. Samoskevich provides the scoring depth that the roster lacked when the schedule got hard. Joey Daccord — also still sidelined as of early August — gets back between the pipes and stabilizes a goaltending situation that can't afford uncertainty. What breaks that path is equally specific: another long McCann absence, a Samoskevich who needs half a season to find his footing, or a Daccord whose recovery drags into October. Any one of those outcomes and the Kraken are running the same offense that scored two goals a game when it mattered, with the same result waiting at the end of April.

There's also the Pittsburgh question hanging over the center depth. A report surfaced in late July that the Penguins had expressed trade interest in at least one of Seattle's young centers, and Pittsburgh's decision to sign Tommy Novak to a three-year extension on August 1 only confirms how real their need at that position is. The Kraken have Beniers, Chandler Stephenson, Shane Wright, and Jaden Schwartz all logging center minutes last season. That's genuine depth — and genuine trade currency if management decides the return is worth thinning it. I'd be cautious. Stephenson's plus-minus was a problem last season, and Wright is still developing, but Beniers is the