What position do the Kraken need to add the most?

The Seattle Kraken have been one of the surprises of this young NHL season, as they’ve gone 6-3-1 and posted a positive goal differential to lay an early claim to a spot in the Stanley Cup Playoffs as the third-place team in the Pacific Division.

While the start is nice, this is largely the same roster that went 34-37-11 and missed out on the postseason by 11 points last year. If the Kraken are going to keep their good run rolling and capitalize on this surprising start, should general manager Jason Botterill be aggressive on the trade market to upgrade an area or two of his roster?

Seattle has two first-round picks this year, and at least one pick in every round of each of the next three drafts for Botterill to weaponize to add a player who can help both now and later.

On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed why the Kraken should be looking to add whatever roster help they can get to try to make sure they can sustain this hot start.

Tyler Yaremchuk: JRock always drops in really well-timed questions, but he puts in, #AskDFO: “Does Seattle need a forward, a D-man, or a goalie more?” And again, like, my answer to it is, like, I don’t know, maybe all of them? Like, Grubauer and Daccord are probably fine, I guess. Their blue line could maybe use another piece. But like, even the forward— like you mentioned it, Hutts— like, they got Freddie Gaudreau and Chandler Stephenson carrying their offense. Like, that’s not sustainable. So they obviously need a forward too. So, I don’t know, man, they’re 6-3-1, they have a positive goal differential. Some of the underlying metrics are somehow really solid, but I just still don’t get it with the Seattle Kraken.

Carter Hutton: I think I’d credit coaching. I think Lane Lambert and just getting everyone to buy in and play the right style, but it just doesn’t seem like— and it’s so funny that the ‘Trackin’ the Kraken’ thing that they have on [What Chaos!], because of the fact, I feel the same way. It’s just this team that’s like, “Oh yeah, it’s just Seattle.” I’m not really sure what they got going on out there. And again, it’s going to be that concern until they can kind of push through, and I think expectations changed on this team because of the fact they made

the playoffs right away and they’re out of the gate. But there is a few good pieces, Ryker Evans is a younger defenseman, is a good player, but I just don’t know sustainability of this team when you’re not in that superstar category as it comes down to crunch time.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode below…