What could have been

I understand why Seattle didn't pick Duchene with how he was trending, but man with hindsight this team could be sooo much better. Even the picks they could have gotten for flipping some of these guys would be far more noteworthy.

I tried not using hindsight and I flipped back and forth between Johansen and Duchene and I've made teams like this with both. I just felt like those two were the only players available that have and could fill a 1C roll, Yanni Gourde is a 3C at best and McCann just isn't there either, although I do like him.

I do like your optimism, but there were reasons why Francis didn’t go after the bigger contracts in the expansion draft. He was really hoping that GM’s would be as stupid as they were with Vegas and they would pay in draft capital. Unfortunately, Francis rolled the hard line of wanting a first round pick for ANY expansion draft considerations. He wants to build the team through the draft, and while hindsight screws over certain picks, Francis went on the safe route. Francis wanted to take as anti Vegas an approach as possible, so the earliest that the Kraken might look to compete would be in maybe the 2025-26 season, when they have their core established and the prospects coming up.

Still alot of their picks don't make sense for that either, why not grab guys and trade them for draft capital? They drafted a couple guys that they let walk as UFAs when they could have drafted players as positive assets. The whole expansion draft was very confusing. Also this roster would have alot more draft capital than their current one.

Seattle took Bayruether and let him walk because they wanted Kivlenieks. Obviously, that was before Kivi did what he did and lost his life, so they opted to take effectively no one by letting Bayruther return to Columbus. It was just a sign of respect.