Seattle Kraken fans may be willing to wait. What they’re not willing to do is wait without a map.
That’s the real issue hanging over this team, and it’s bigger than any one loss, any one prospect, or any one season. The concern isn’t simply that the Kraken have been uneven. It’s that the organization has not clearly shown what comes next, or how it plans to get there.
Kate Shefte of the Seattle Times put it plainly: “The Kraken aren’t willing to commit to losing and sending fans streaming toward the exits with the promise of a brighter future.” That worry has surfaced in other local and national coverage too, especially with the expected return of the expansion NBA Sonics.
But there’s another read on the Seattle crowd. Kraken fans, for all the frustration that comes with a team stuck in the middle, may be more patient than management thinks - as long as there’s a real direction behind the patience. If ownership is willing to show a plan, stick with it, and say so out loud, this fan base should be able to live with short-term pain if it leads somewhere better.
Sunday’s 4-2 win over the Calgary Flames gave Lane Lambert a chance to point at exactly the kind of game that can keep a young group moving forward. In the visitors’ dressing room at the Saddledome, the coach praised the effort from his prospect-heavy lineup.
“I’m proud of the effort,” Lambert said before meeting the media. “There was a lot of honest commitment, blocking shots, battling in certain areas.
It wasn’t pretty, but you found a way to win. I like the way we stuck together.
You had each other’s backs. Well done.”
That’s the sort of message that can resonate with Seattle supporters while the wins are still uneven. The results may be messy, but the idea is easy to sell: young players learning together, competing hard, and building something that can last.
The Pacific Division has already shown how that path can work. Vancouver is currently banking on patience through prospects in its own rebuild, and Edmonton, San Jose and Anaheim have each gone through the pain of multi-year overhauls before reaching a better place.
In those cases, the growing pains came with a purpose, and the prospects matured into something more valuable than middling competence. Add a little draft-lottery luck, and the payoff can come faster than expected.
Seattle, meanwhile, may have waited too long to make that turn. The argument is that the Kraken should have committed to a youth movement last season, or even before that.
But that moment has passed. What matters now is whether the organization finally chooses a lane.
John Forslund, the Seattle TV voice, said the focus for the 2026-27 Kraken should be “direction,” not necessarily “wins.”
“What I want to see is clarity. That’s been the issue over the last couple of seasons.
It’s almost unfair to lead the fans down a path of any kind of expectations today. I want a transition to younger players, where you can actually see a path to the future.”
Scott Maxwell of Daily Faceoff echoed the same frustration with where Seattle has been stuck.
“Will this season be the one that makes it obvious for Jason Botterill to commit to a rebuild? The public demands it. The Kraken have toiled in mediocrity, too good to have high draft picks but too bad to make the playoffs.
“The Kraken have spent the last three seasons doing a whole lot of nothing. And yet they continue to double down on their ‘win by committee’ team build and accumulate middle-lineup talent instead of hitting the reset button.”
For the Kraken, that’s the fork in the road. Not whether fans can handle a rebuild. Whether the team can finally tell them that’s what it is.
In Other News...
Kraken Top Prospect Hits Early Setback At A Tough Time
Jake OBriens first taste of pro hockey has already hit a small but inconvenient bump. The Kraken forward, taken eighth overall in 2025 after a strong junior career, made a lively impression in his preseason debut with a goal and an assist, a reminder of why he is one of the organizations most closely watched young players as he gets ready for his first professional season.
Now the focus shifts to his health after the team listed him as day-to-day with a lower-body injury and held him out of Tuesdays practice. OBrien also missed the second preseason game, and with camp moving quickly, any pause in his ramp-up matters more than usual for a player trying to turn a strong start into a real push for an opening toehold. [Read more 🡒]