Seth, A New Hockey Fan

 If the Kraken are like most NHL teams, they will organize their personnel thusly: 4 groups of 3 forwards: Each group has a designated center, left winger, and right winger. 3 groups of 2 defensemen: Each group has a designated left defenseman and right defenseman. The forward groups are called lines. The defense groups are called pairings (and sometimes lines, too). The Kraken will designate a first line/pairing (starters), second line/pairing, third line/pairing. The players in each designated group will always be on the ice together (barring in-game injury, penalties, etc.) This is all new to me, and I'm trying to get a handle on how it works. Here's what I think I've figured out. The Top Players Are Only Out There 1/3 of the Time! The foremost fact of interest is that most of the time, the best players aren't on the ice.  Sidney Crosby, one of the very few NHL players I could name as of two weeks ago, has averaged 20 minutes, 50 seconds on ice per game during his c...

The Kraken finished making their first NHL Entry Draft picks today. The first round was Friday, and they used their top pick — #2 overall — to take Michigan center Matt Beniers. Like any Sonics fan, I can think of a couple of #2 overall picks who  turned out  to be  pretty ok .  But like any Mariners fan, #2 overall picks frighten me.  A little research put my mind at rest.  The NHL draft is not the MLB draft where #2 overall picks sometimes  give you only a few mediocre seasons  or never play in a single &^*#$@# game for you at all .  Nearly every NHL #2 overall pick has had a long and productive NHL career. Even the worst-performing picks played multiple seasons. More than a few, as you'd imagine, have become superstars.  So buying a Beniers jersey is a pretty safe bet. You can expect him to be on the roster opening day, likely playing 20 minutes per night. He might not be one of the team's best players right away, but it would be...

Time to make room for new Seattle sports names in my brain. But who? The Kraken drafted 30 players yesterday, but that doesn't mean all 30 will actually suit up as Kraken. As NHL.com's outstanding Kraken writer Bob Condor reminds us : 10 players drafted by Vegas in 2017 never played an NHL game for the Golden Knights. Another five played 60 NHL games or less. Already, the Kraken have traded away one expansion draftee. Forward Tyler Pitlick and his $1.75M salary went to Calgary in return for a 4th round pick .  NHL 4th round picks are not particularly valuable,  fewer than half ever make the league . So this is can be read as a salary dump...but it did inspire this all-timer of a tweet from the Kraken SM team . And the New York Post reports that the Kraken may trade Mark Giordano , the highest-salaried player on the roster at $6.75M. (Though Giordano's appearance at the expansion draft suggests that the Kraken aren't for sure going to flip him.) The Defensive Core Seems ...

"Big boards" are ideal for drafts, tournaments, and tallying up scores in a hot dog eating contest. I made one for Wednesday's expansion draft. The name, team, and position seemed obvious. But after reading my first hockey book I realized that salary cap is going to be important too. So I've got a section to write down all 30 original Kraken (Krakens?).  The sections on the right relate to the position minimums and the salary cap. Position Minimums:  The Kraken must take at least 14 forwards, 9 defensemen, and 3 goalkeepers. That accounts for 26 of their 30 picks — there are no maximums, so in theory they could take 7 goalies (but how would they all fit?).  Running Salary Cap Tally: With every new Kraken, the team will start losing salary cap flexibility. They start with $81.5 million to spend this year. The NHL has a hard cap, you can't go over. (If you run out of money at the end of the season, you just have to make do with fewer players.)  The Kraken assuredly...

Hockey isn't going to teach me about itself, so I paid Bezos nine bucks for a Kindle book . Baseball's my top sport, and the smartest folks writing about baseball at the moment are analytics people. I guessed that the same might be true for hockey. Hence... Here's what I think I learned.  1) The salary cap is everything when it comes to building a team. Just like in the NFL and especially the NBA, teams come up with all kinds of weird ways to clear cap space to get better players — like trading for injured guys. There are some different rules that only the NHL has which I'm sure I'll get acquiainted with as the off-season goes on.  2) Peak player performance comes at age 24 or 25, which is a little less than baseball where peak is closer to age 27 or 28. NBA is supposed to be around there as well. Age 30 is major dropoff time, though there are the rare players that hang on to their mid-30s. So sounds like it's a little more similar to NFL aging curves. So, J...