NHL free agency starts in earnest Saturday, but on Friday the Kraken allowed forwards Morgan Geekie and Daniel Sprong to test those open waters by not making them any qualifying offers.
Both players were up for Restricted Free Agents (RFA) and the Kraken had until 2 p.m. Friday to make the qualifying bids to stay in control of the process. Instead, they only made offers to RFA candidates Vince Dunn, Will Borgen, Cale Fleury and minor league player Kole Lind, leaving Geekie and Sprong unrestricted free agents (UFA) that can be signed by any team.
By allowing both of them to leave, the Kraken can avoid arbitration with them and potentially lose the cases and end up paying more than the team is willing to pay. A similar situation arose last summer when the Kraken let forwards Sprong and Ryan Donato go by not making RFA offers, but eventually returned both to more team-friendly amounts.
But there’s no guarantee Geekie and Sprong won’t be signed elsewhere, because Geekie is a rising young center and strong faceoff man, while Sprong has enjoyed a highly productive 21-goal season as a fourth-liner.
The Kraken also announced Friday that AHL goaltender Joey Daccord has been signed for two years for $1.2 million annually, allowing him to avoid free agency and compete for a back-up role behind Philipp Grubauer. The contract is a unilateral deal, meaning Daccord – who guided the Coachella Valley Firebirds to victory in the Calder Cup – will be paid the same salary whether in the Minors or the NHL.
“Joey had an impressive season with the Coachella Valley Firebirds, playing a major role in their Calder Cup Finals and contributing significant minutes with the Kraken,” said Kraken general manager Ron Francis in a press release. “We are pleased that he will remain in our organization.”
That deal and RFA offers were just the start for a Kraken side who have yet to work on re-signing top defender Dunn, preferably on a multi-year deal before he is given an unrestricted free hand in 12 months. Also, there could be difficult negotiations with Borgen, who has had a solid season.
In fact, the Kraken are expected to focus more on retaining their own players this summer than pursuing others as vigorously as they did a year ago.
The additions of Andre Burakovsky, Justin Schultz and Martin Jones on the day free agency opened last year, as well as the early signings of Jaden Schwartz and Grubauer two summers ago, formed a key part of the team’s recent playoff season. But now that the basic core of the NHL roster is in place, the Kraken will likely wait out the early weeks of free agency and instead look to later use salary caps to sign someone another team can’t afford.
“I don’t think we’re going to be as active in free agency as we were last year just based on the composition of our roster,” Francis said in an interview earlier this week. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not willing to look into things, whether it’s free agency, trades or whatever else you might try to improve our roster. We will definitely explore all these things.”
Last year, it was several weeks into free agency when Francis snatched winger Oliver Bjorkstrand from the Columbus Blue Jackets, only for a fourth-round draft pick. Francis should have a few million dollars’ worth of headroom to add another such costly player this season once he’s done with his own pending free agents – Dunn being the largest.
Players receive RFA eligibility after three years and before earning their six-year UFA status.
Players might shy away from accepting Friday’s RFA offers, hoping for a competing offer from another team – although this rarely happens – which the Kraken could then pick up to automatically keep them. All of the Kraken’s remaining RFA players also have arbitration rights, as do Geekie and Sprong, and could exercise these within the next week, taking advantage of the upcoming hearing and its uncertain outcome to ask the Kraken for more money ahead of time.
Carson Soucy, Donato, Joonas Donskoi and Jones are the Kraken’s only UFA players and were not expected to be re-signed on Friday, leaving them free to go elsewhere.
Francis also had until Friday to add $3 million to his remaining Cap spot by buying out goalie Chris Driedger’s salary — something the GM said earlier this week he wouldn’t do.
Driedger has not played for the Kraken since tearing his cruciate ligament at the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship last summer and owes $3.5 million in the coming season, the final year of his contract. He and Daccord could compete for the Kraken replacement role, with the loser going to Coachella Valley.
For now, keep an eye on the upcoming Dunn deal as the Kraken try to lock him up, likely with a seven or eight-year term and an annual value approaching $8 million. Kraken MVP Dunn has had a stellar season, although previous disagreements over his contract length could raise concerns.
Still, the team doesn’t have much of a choice as Dunn could play on a year-long arbitration deal and then go to the open market in unrestricted form a year from now.
After this week’s NHL draft, the Kraken have more talent as forwards than defenders and can’t really afford to lose a mid-20s defender like Dunn in the early stages of his prime. Over the next three years, many Kraken contenders will be added to the roster in larger numbers to replace the current core team’s expiring contracts, and AHL freshman Ryker Evans appears to be the team’s only near-NHL-ready draftee at this time.
Jamie Oleksiak and Adam Larsson’s contracts are up in three years, while Schultz has one season left – making Dunn the team’s best-fit defender for a future leadership role.
The team looks better lined up front once the contracts of initial Kraken expansion holdovers Jordan Eberle, Yanni Gourde, Alex Wennberg and Schwartz expire in one to three years. They already have Burakovsky, Björkstrand and Jared McCann on four more seasons, with former first-round picks Matty Beniers and Shane Wright under control for several years, plus this week’s first-rounder winger Eduard Sale and a number of second-rounders. and also third-round forward.
For now, the Kraken will likely continue to develop defenders Borgen and Fleury while they wait and see where others like Evans, last summer’s second-rounder Ty Nelson and 2021 fourth-rounder Ville Ottavainen ultimately fit in. In other words, even if he pays the Blue Line RFA candidates a little more than he’d like in the coming weeks, Francis isn’t really in as good a position to let those players go as some of his forwards.