Kraken playoff hockey is here. What does it mean for the city of Seattle?
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By Thomas Drance
Apr 22, 2023
SEATTLE — The one-minute spot running on Seattle television to promote the first Seattle Kraken appearance in the Stanley Cup playoffs in franchise history doesn’t feature a single hockey highlight until the 50-second mark.
Instead, the Kraken logo appears briefly above the long-since imploded Kingdome as the commercial opens with Edgar Martinez, roping a line drive down the third-base line. Ken Griffey Jr. is waved home and the Seattle Mariners seal a walk-off win in the 1995 ALDS.
Then Dennis Johnson brings the ball up court in overtime, down two in Game 1 of the 1980 NBA Western Conference semifinals. Dogged by two Milwaukee Bucks defenders, Johnson launches from distance and sinks the first playoff-winning 3-point shot in NBA history.
The spot continues. It highlights a Cascadia Cup-winning Seattle Sounders goal and an iconic Sue Bird make. Marshawn Lynch goes beast mode on the San Francisco 49ers. Randy Johnson strikes out Tim Salmon to win the AL West.
It’s only after the extended montage of iconic Seattle sports moments runs — none of them having anything to do with hockey — that the tagline runs in disappearing text: “Legendary Moments Are Made in the Playoffs.”
Only then does star Kraken rookie — and probable Calder Trophy winner as the NHL’s best first-year player — Matty Beniers appear on screen. The sole hockey highlight in the ad is an overtime goal, a key one for the upstart Kraken this season. Beniers skates in alone, past a helpless Washington Capitals defender directly off the draw, scoring the overtime winner that pushed a late November Seattle win streak to seven games and vaulted Seattle to second in the Pacific Division — putting a pedestrian start to their second NHL campaign into the rearview mirror.
“If you’re a Seattleite or if you follow Seattle sports, you’ll remember at least one of those moments,” explained Kraken CMO Katie Townsend of the commercial. “It’s making the point that now we’re on this same level, that the Kraken are going to create our own moments, which will go down in history and will define our journey, and you want to be on board for them. So we’ve leaned into Seattle’s sports history deliberately because it’s cool, because it gives you goose bumps when you watch it, but it also helps new fans understand what this means.”
There’s an assumption within the commercial, one that speaks to both the challenges and opportunities faced by the NHL’s newest playoff team in a vibrant, competitive Seattle professional sports marketplace that’s still learning the game of hockey.
Sports fans in Seattle are rowdy and passionate when it comes to supporting their professional teams and University of Washington Huskies football, too. Seattle fans understand the rhythms and the stakes of the playoffs, but it’s been 104 years since the city hosted a Stanley Cup playoff game.
“We haven’t had one of these in 100 years,” jokes Dave “Softy” Mahler, who hosts the afternoon drive time show on 93.3 KJR FM, Seattle’s sports talk radio station. “There’s literally nobody alive that knows what this is like in Seattle.”
Therein lies the challenge. Like most big American markets, Seattle is first and foremost Seattle Seahawks territory. The NFL is the main obsession; the Seahawks pull in local household television ratings in the mid-30s on a routine basis and remain the subject of the bulk of the city’s sports talk radio content.
“We can sit on the air for four hours and talk nothing but Seahawks and not lose a single listener,” Mahler said. “There’s still is a bit of a niche with Kraken hockey.”
The Mariners, meanwhile, have the advantage of generational support — the club ranked in the top half of all MLB teams based on average attendance during the 2022 campaign — and are fielding a team that ended a 21-season playoff drought last fall.
For the Kraken, then, there’s a scramble to compete with the more entrenched sports franchises in the marketplace and it’s often been an uphill climb in the club’s first two years of existence.
“The market, people have busy schedules, and now we come to town and ask them to join us for 41 nights,” explained Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke. “People’s time, more than ever, is at a premium, getting people’s share of mind is tough, but I think that our fans fought through the challenges of year one. They’ve been incredible. And our fans fully understand what this is about.”
Those challenges in year one were significant. The Kraken were slated to begin competing in the NHL in 2020, but their inaugural season was pushed back a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the disruptions it brought to the NHL, and the live sports and entertainment business in general.
“Kids couldn’t come down to games, fans who cheered were muffled by a mask, you weren’t giving your neighbors high-fives,” Leiweke said of the challenge. “When I think back on it — and I think back on it every day — because with a little bit of distance and perspective, it was so hard.
“I don’t think we had the year we anticipated, not just because it was difficult to be a fan, but for our players. The families didn’t get to see each other until February of last year, and we didn’t want the families to gather in groups and players weren’t going out in the community.”
Transforming the cramped, dated confines of Key Arena into Climate Pledge Arena, a privately financed $1.15 billion project that is more accurately described as an engineering marvel as opposed to a renovation, was a process that continued right up until puck drop of the Kraken’s franchise home opener in October 2022.
The club opened that first season on the road — falling behind the eight ball immediately with a 1-3-1 record before playing its first home game — and last-minute construction work continued at Climate Pledge Arena throughout the day of that first home game. Then the logistical challenges of settling into the new building continued for many months beyond that.
Meanwhile, the team struggled mightily. In contrast with the fairy tale of the first Vegas Golden Knights season, which saw Seattle’s expansion cousins qualify for the Stanley Cup Final in their first year of existence, the Kraken had what seemed like a conventional expansion season. In year one, the Kraken won just 27 games and finished in eighth place in the Pacific Division.
“There were a lot of challenges to build that arena, getting through the first training camp, fighting through COVID — when games were about to begin, we were still in that phase where we were wondering if people would have to be spaced out, would the building even be full? — so there was never that sense of cohesion,” said KOMO News senior reporter Chris Daniels.
“In building a brand and a franchise, you at least wanted them to be competitive through that first season, be at least a .500 team and they weren’t. There was a lot of interest lost in the back half of that season, I think.”
“It was a hard way for a player to engage,” Leiweke admits. “But that core group did believe though, and they showed up this year, we brought in new players, and I think now our market is seeing the greatness of the NHL.”
The challenges of the first year were marked, which makes the opportunity that awaits the Kraken this weekend, and over the balance of their run in the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs — however long it lasts — so essential for the organization.
Playoff hockey has the potential to resonate differently as a live sports and entertainment product. It has an unmatched ability to help the Kraken cement themselves as a fixture on a crowded local professional sporting scene.
Which is why the organization is approaching this weekend a little bit differently than you might expect and with the long view in mind.
“We’re giving away or distributing more tickets than you’d expect us to, knowing that they’re at such a premium price,” said Townsend, explaining why the club is leveraging media partners, social media promotions and community-based initiatives to distribute playoff tickets targeting those fans who haven’t yet experienced live NHL hockey.
“We’re distributing those rather than selling them for an exorbitant amount because we want to get as many people involved in playoff hockey as possible.”
“You have to take moments like this and inspire people,” Leiweke added. “This is a big dream come true, the dream of big, powerful games played under that roof that means a lot. Now the fans get to see the energy and the glory of the NHL playoffs and I don’t think there’s anything like it in professional sports.”
On the ice, with a win and two solid performances in Denver to open the Kraken’s first-round series against the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche, the hockey club has delivered the organization with narrative momentum.
This Kraken team has shown that it can hang with the Avalanche. Even more than that, at times in the opening two games of this series, the Kraken have had the defending champs on the ropes.
That should amplify local hype surrounding the first Stanley Cup playoff games to be played in Seattle in over a century. And it raises the stakes of whatever comes next in this first-round series — particularly given the widespread expectation, one recently echoed by Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell, that an NBA expansion franchise could return to Seattle by the end of this decade.
“If you want to make a dent and get on the same page even remotely as the Seahawks and Mariners, you’ve got to start winning,” Mahler said.
“They’re going to need to give people a reason to want to be a part of this, and if they make a deep run, people are going to want to be a part of it. Even if they can make this to Game 7, get some excitement going, give people maybe a slice of the dream that they can make a run, that would do it.”
“The Sounders are a close example,” Daniels said. “They came in after the Sonics left, they were great out of the gate, they were the hottest thing in town. They had to extend the amount of tickets in their bowl. They had a long and great record of success winning so many different Cups.
“Then they had a down season last year and now they’re struggling to get their season ticket holders to show up on a routine basis. When any future NBA team comes back, I mean, now you’re talking about spreading out discretionary dollars even more.”
The Kraken flag will fly from the Space Needle at Seattle Center this weekend, a visual marker of the Kraken’s arrival as a Stanley Cup playoff team. Unlike the golden road traveled by Vegas, the Kraken’s path to this point has been circuitous, fraught and winding.
Challenges have been hurdled, but some significant ones still loom on the horizon. In the present, however, there is only opportunity.
“This isn’t for the faint of heart,” said Leiweke, reflecting on this club’s first two seasons. “Our fans took a leap of faith, everyone involved in this took a leap of faith. And these are the days that leap of faith pays off.”
Thomas Drance covers the Vancouver Canucks as a senior writer for The Athletic. He is also the co-host of the Canucks Hour on Sportsnet 650. His career in hockey media — as a journalist, editor and author — has included stops at Canucks Army, The Score, Triumph Publishing, the Nation Network and Sportsnet. Previously, he was vice president, public relations and communications, for the Florida Panthers for three seasons. Follow Thomas on Twitter @ThomasDrance
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